The question is now in order why, of all the dreaded plagues of the past, smallpox alone survives to this day.

The answer is: on account of vaccination. If scrofulous and syphilitic poisons were not artificially kept alive in human blood by vaccination, smallpox would by this time be as rare as cholera and yellow fever.

Thanks to the oft-repeated compulsory vaccination of every citizen, young and old, we as a nation have become saturated with the smallpox virus. Is it any wonder that every once in a while this latent taint breaks out in acute epidemics?

Undoubtedly, the almost universal systematic contamination and degeneration of vital fluids and tissues, not alone with vaccine virus, but also with many other filthy serums, ant.i.toxins and drug poisons, account in a large measure for the steady increase of tuberculosis, cancer, insanity and a mult.i.tude of other chronic destructive diseases unknown among primitive people that have not come in contact with the blessings (?) of vaccination.

By weakening the system's reactionary powers against one disease, its reactionary powers against all diseases are weakened. In other words, creating in the body a form of chronic smallpox by means of vaccination favors the development of all kinds of chronic diseases.

Quit sowing the seed, gentlemen, and you will cease reaping the harvest. By the mercurial suppression of syphilis and by means of vaccination you are perpetuating smallpox.

What has syphilis to do with smallpox? They are very closely related, and similar in appearance, symtomatology and in their effects upon the organism.

A German physician, Dr. Cruwell, who studied the subject thoroughly, says: "Every vaccination with so-called cowpox virus means syphilitic infection. Cowpox is not a disease peculiar to cattle; it is always due to syphilitic or smallpox infection from the diseased hands of human beings. Cowpox pustules have been found only on the udders of milk cows which came in contact with human hands. Cattle roaming in pasture and prairie have never been affected by cowpox, nor have domesticated steers and oxen. If this disease were a disorder peculiar to cattle, both s.e.xes would be equally affected.

Jenner's cowpox was caused by the diseased hands of the syphilitic milkmaid, Sarah Nehnes."

Vaccination of healthy children and adults is often followed by a mult.i.tude of symptoms which cannot be distinguished from syphilis, viz., characteristic ulcers and eczematous eruptions, swellings of the axillary and other lymphatic glands, atrophy of the mammary glands in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of women and of girls above the age of p.u.b.erty, etc.

This explains the constantly growing demand for "bust foods" and "bust developers." A perfectly developed bust has become so rare that many hundreds of beauty doctors and of business concerns that make a specialty of developing the flat-bosomed realize thousands of dollars annually. One firm in this city, and a small concern at that, has made from $2,500 to $5,000 a year and has over ten thousand names on its constantly increasing list of patrons.

It is reasonable to a.s.sume that almost without exception these ten thousand women had been vaccinated from one to three times before the age of p.u.b.erty. When this is realized, and the fact that vaccination dries up the mammary glands is taken into account, is it not time to pause and consider?

The figures of this one small concern represent the report of only one out of several hundred such firms doing business in all parts of the country.

Some years ago, a disease similar to smallpox broke out among the sheep in certain parts of Scotland. As a preventive, the sheep were vaccinated. In the course of a few years it was noticed that a great many ewes were unable to nourish their lambs. With the discontinuance of vaccination this phenomenon disappeared.

Does this help to explain why nowadays over fifty percent of human mothers are incapable of nursing their babies?

Looking Forward

At present the trend of allopathic medical science is undoubtedly toward the serum, ant.i.toxin and vaccine treatment. Practically all medical research tends that way. Every few days we see in the daily papers reports of new serums and ant.i.toxins which are claimed to cure or create immunity to certain diseases.

Suppose the research and practice of medical science continue along these lines and are generally accepted or, as the medical a.s.sociations would have it, forced upon the public by law. What would be the result? Before a child reached the years of adolescence, it would have had injected into its blood the vaccines, serums, and ant.i.toxins of smallpox, hydrophobia, teta.n.u.s (lockjaw), cerebro-spinal meningitis, typhoid fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, scarlet fever, etc.

If allopathy were to have its way, the blood of the adult would be a mixture of dozens of filthy bacterial extracts, disease taints and destructive drug poisons. The tonsils and adenoids, the appendix vermiformis and probably a few other parts of the human anatomy would be extirpated in early youth under compulsion of the health departments.

What is more rational and sensible: the endeavor to produce immunity to disease by making the human body the breeding ground for all sorts of antibacteria and antipoisons, or to create natural immunity by building up the blood on a normal basis, purifying the body of morbid matter and poisons, correcting mechanical lesions and by cultivating the right mental att.i.tude? Which one of these methods is more likely to be disease-building, which health-building?

Just imagine what human blood will be like in coming generations if this artificial contamination with all sorts of disease taints and drug poisons is to be forced upon the people!

Chapter XVIII

Surgery

The discoverers of anesthetics are cla.s.sed among the greatest benefactors of humanity, because it is believed that ether, chloroform, cocaine and similar nerve-paralyzing agents have greatly lessened the sum of human suffering. I doubt, however, that this is true.

Anesthetics have made surgery technically easy and have done away with the pain caused directly by the incisions; but on the other hand, these marvelous effects of pain-killing drugs have encouraged indiscriminate and unnecessary operations to such an extent that at least nine-tenths of all the surgical operations performed today are uncalled for. In most instances these ill-advised mutilations are followed by lifelong weakness and suffering, which far outweigh the temporary pains formerly endured when unavoidable operations were performed without the use of anesthesia.

We do not wish to be understood as condemning unqualifiedly any and all surgical interventions in the treatment of human ailments. An operation may occasionally be absolutely necessary as a means of saving life. Surgery is also indicated in cases of injury, such as wounds or fractured bones, in certain obstetrical complications and in other affections of a purely mechanical nature.

In all such cases anesthetics prevent much suffering which cannot be avoided in any other way. But anyone who has had an opportunity to watch the prolonged misery of the victims of un-called-for operations will not doubt that anesthesia has been a two-edged sword which has inflicted many more wounds than it has healed.

Many physicians have recognized more or less distinctly the uselessness and harmfulness of "Old School" medical treatment.

Dissatisfied and disgusted with old-fas.h.i.+oned drugging, they turn to surgery, convinced that in it they possess an exact scientific method of curing ailments. They seem to think that the surest way to cure a diseased organ is to remove it with the knife--fine reasoning for school boys, but not worthy of men of science.

I, for my part, cannot understand how an organ can be cured after it has been extirpated and, preserved in alcohol, adorns the specimen cabinet of the surgeon.

Destruction or Cure--Which Is Better?

"But," the surgeon says, "we do not remove organs from the body unless they have become useless."

However, this claim is not borne out by actual facts. During the past ten years thousands of patients have come under our treatment, both in the sanitarium and in the downtown offices, whose family physicians had declared that in order to save their lives they must submit to the knife without delay. With very few exceptions these people were cured by us without using a poisonous drug, an antiseptic or a knife.

Several women who, years ago, were confronted with removal of the ovaries, are today the joyful mothers of children. Many of our former patients, who were treated by "Old School" physicians for acute or chronic appendicitis and were strongly urged to have the offending organ removed, are today alive and well and still in possession of their vermiform appendices. Other patients were threatened with operations for kidney, gall and bladder stones; fibroid and other tumors; floating kidneys; stomach troubles; intestinal and uterine disorders, not to mention the mult.i.tude of children whose tonsils and adenoids were to have been removed. All of these onetime surgical cases have escaped the knife and are doing very well indeed with their bodies intact and in possession of the full quota of organs given them by Nature.

Is it not better to cure a diseased organ than to remove it? Nature Cure proves every day that the better way is at the same time the easiest way.

Thousands of men and women operated upon for some local ailment which could have been cured easily by natural methods of treatment are condemned by these inexcusable mutilations to lifelong suffering. Many, if not actually suffering pain, have been unnecessarily uns.e.xed and in other ways incapacitated for the normal functions and natural enjoyments of life.

Cases of this kind are the most pitiable of all that come under our observation. When we learn that a major operation has been performed upon a consultant, our barometer of hope drops considerably. We know from much experience that the mutilation of the human organism has a tendency to lessen the chances of recovery; such patients are nearly always lacking in recuperative power.

A body deprived of important parts or organs is forever unbalanced.

It is like a watch with a spring or a wheel taken out; it may run, but never quite right; it is hypersensitive and easily thrown out of balance by any adverse influence.

The Human Body Is a Unit

We are realizing more and more that the human body is a h.o.m.ogeneous and harmonious whole, and that we cannot injure one part of it without damaging other parts and often the entire organism. Cutting in the vital organs means cutting in the brain. It affects the functions of the nervous system most profoundly.

A physician in Vienna has written a very interesting book in which he shows that the inner membranes of the nose are in close relations.h.i.+p and sympathy with distant parts and organs of the body.

He located in the nose one small area which corresponds to the lungs. By irritating this area with an electric needle he could provoke asthmatic attacks in patients subject to this disease. By anesthetizing the same area he could stop immediately severe attacks of asthma and of coughing. Another area in the nasal cavity corresponds to the genital organs. The doctor proved that by electric irritation applied to this area abortions could be produced, and that by anesthesia of the same area in the nose, uterine hemorrhages could be stopped.

These and many other facts of experience throw a wonderful light upon the unity of the human organism. The body resembles a watch.

You cannot injure one part of it without affecting its entire mechanism.

The evil aftereffects of surgical operations do not always manifest at once. On the contrary, the surgical treatment is frequently followed by a period of seeming improvement. The troublesome local symptoms have been removed, and aftereffects of the mutilation have not had time to a.s.sert themselves. But sooner or later the old symptoms return in aggravated form, or a new set of complications arises. The patient is made to believe that the first operation was a perfect success and that this latest crop of difficulties has nothing to do with the former, but is something entirely new. At other times he is a.s.sured that the first operation did not go deep enough, that it failed to reach the seat of the trouble and must be done over again.

And so the work of mutilation goes merrily on. The disease poisons in the body set up one center of inflammation after another. These centers the surgeon promptly removes; but the real disease, the venereal, psoriatic or scrofulous taint, the uric or oxalic acid, the poisonous alkaloids and ptomaines affecting every cell and every drop of blood in the body, these elude the surgeon's knife and create new ulcers, abscesses, inflammations, stones, cancers, etc., as fast as the old ones are extirpated.

Those who have studied the previous chapters carefully will readily comprehend these facts. They will know that acute and subacute conditions represent Nature's cleansing and healing efforts, and that local suppression by drug or knife only serves to turn Nature's corrective and purifying activities into chronic disease.

The highest art of the true physician is to preserve and to restore, not to mutilate or destroy.