The Royal Road to Health.

by C.A. Tyrrell.

PREFACE

TO THE ONE HUNDREDTH EDITION.

In presenting to the public the one hundredth edition of this work, it is a matter for profound gratification to be able to state that the treatment described in its pages has steadily increased in public favor since its introduction. Tens of thousands of grateful people testify to its efficiency, not only as a remedial process, but better still, as a preventive of disease. Truth must ever prevail, and this treatment being based on natural law (which is unerring), must achieve the desired result, which is the restoration and preservation of health.

This edition has been completely revised and much of it rewritten, and, while the essential principles remain unchanged, some slight departures from previously expressed opinions may be noted; for in the years that have elapsed since the first edition saw the light, some notable advances have been made in rational therapeutics and dietetics, and no one can afford to lag behind the car of Progress.

The arrangement of the book has been still farther altered, by adding another part, making nine in all, each part being devoted to a special phase of the general subject, thus simplifying it, and making its principles easier of application. Quotations have been freely made from articles written during the past three years by the author, in his capacity as editor of "Health," and several new formulas for the treatment of important diseases have been added to those that have appeared in previous editions.

While painfully conscious that the critically disposed may find something to condemn in its pages, the work is sent forth with the fervent hope, that despite any defects it may possess it may, in the future, as in the past, prove the means of restoring to suffering thousands the possession of their natural and rightful heritage health.

THE AUTHOR.

THE ROYAL ROAD TO HEALTH.

PART I.

DRUGGING PROVED UNSCIENTIFIC.

It is one of the most profound mysteries of our civilization, and has been one of the most perplexing and discouraging phenomena of human existence, that, while the world at large has maintained an ever increasing "medical profession," whose members are popularly supposed to be competent to deal with all the ills that flesh is heir to; still there has always been a long list of what are termed "incurable diseases." But the immense strides made, in recent years, in every branch of modern science, has led the thinking public to consider such a condition of things as an outrageous libel on the G.o.d of Nature, and to question whether there can be such a thing as an incurable disease.

Health is such an inestimable blessing, that the individual who shall devise means to preserve it, or to restore it, when lost, is deserving of all the thanks and honors that a grateful community can bestow.

Unfortunately, there are very few who estimate life at its true value, until they are confronted with the grim destroyer, Death. No one can fully appreciate the priceless blessings of health, until they feel that it has slipped from their grasp. The oft quoted phrase, "Health is Wealth," is truly a concrete expression of wisdom, for without the former, the latter is well nigh an impossibility. But its interference with the activities of life is one of the least evils of sickness, for perfect health is the very salt and spice of life; without it, existence is "weary, stale, flat and unprofitable."

But let none despair, for it is my purpose to show how those who enjoy the blessing of robust health may preserve it indefinitely, and how those who have lost it may regain it with access of vigor, and once more feel that life is indeed worth living. In presenting a new system of medication, it is necessary to attack the existing systems, and hence, I am placed in a delicate position, for of all the problems ever presented for the ingenuity of man to solve, undoubtedly the most difficult is, how to present new facts so as not to offend old errors; for individuals are very p.r.o.ne to regard arguments levelled against their opinions as direct attacks upon their personality; and not a few of them mistake their own deeply rooted prejudices for established certainties.

I shall endeavor to show that the practice of administering drugs to cure disease is a fallacy, and in so doing, I am bound to incur the condemnation of my brother pract.i.tioners, who prescribe drugs, and the druggists who vend them.

It may safely be a.s.serted that the drug system of treating disease would be destroyed if it were to be critically examined; in fact, to defend it is provocative of unmistakable damage to it. If it is once subjected to the a.n.a.lysis of calm reason its defects become palpable to the meanest understanding.

There are three princ.i.p.al schools of medicine, each with a distinctive t.i.tle, but they are all one in essential principles. They may differ in unimportant details; but in the main premises they are a unit. They all believe in the principle of "curing one disease by producing another." In other words, their practice is, to induce a drug disease to cure a primary one, for this is exactly what is done when drugs are administered, in pathological conditions as we shall prove later on by testimony from authorities on medical practice.

The materia medica of the schools, to-day, includes upwards of two thousand substances the number increasing daily and when viewed dispa.s.sionately it presents what? A list of drugs, chemicals, dye- stuffs, all subversive of organic structures. They are all antagonistic to living matter: all produce disease when brought in contact in any manner with the living domain as a matter of fact, all are poisons. Now, what logical standing can a system have, that employs, as remedies for diseases, those things that produce disease in healthy persons? No advocate of the drug system has ever advanced a reason that would bear one moment's scientific examination, why poisonous substances should be administered to the sick, and no one will ever be able to give a satisfactory explanation of the theory that underlies the practice, for none exists. When once the public fully grasps the true import of this glaring anomaly, the days of the drug system will be numbered.

Physicians of ability and long experience, who have devoted their lives to the relief of suffering humanity, both in this and other countries, have declared after close observation, that they were fully and thoroughly convinced that medicines do not cure patients, that they do not a.s.sist Nature's process of cure, so much as they r.e.t.a.r.d it, and, that they are more hurtful than remedial in all diseases. A still larger number have reached the same conclusion with regard to certain complaints, such as scarlet fever, croup, pneumonia, cholera, rheumatism, diphtheria, measles, small-pox, dysentery, and typhoid fever, and that in every case where they have abandoned all medicine, abjured all drugs and potions, their success has been marvellously increased.

Professor B. F. Parker, of the New York Medical College, once said to a medical cla.s.s: "I have recently given no medicine in the treatment of measles and scarlet fever, and I have had excellent success."

Dr. Snow, Health Officer of Providence, R. I., reported for the information of his professional brethren, through the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal that he had treated all the cases of small-pox, which had prevailed endemically in that city, without a particle of medicine, and that all of the cases some of which were very grave ones recovered.

Dr. John Bell, Professor of Materia Medica in one of the Philadelphia Colleges, and also in the Medical College of Baltimore, testified in a work which he published ("Bell on Baths"), that he and others had treated many cases of scarlet fever with bathing, and without medicines of any kind, and without losing a patient.

Dr. Ames, of Montgomery, Alabama, some years since published in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, his experience and observation in the treatment of pneumonia. He had been led to notice for many years, that patients who were treated with the ordinary remedies--bleeding, mercury, and remedies--breeding certain complications which always aggravated the malady, and rendered the convalescence more lingering and recovery less complete. Such patients were always liable to collapses and re-lapses; to "run into typhoid"; to sink suddenly, and die very unexpectedly.

He noticed particularly that patients who took calomel and antimony were found, on post-mortem examinations, to have serious and even fatal inflammation of the stomach and small intestines, attended with great prostration, delirium, and other symptoms of drug poisoning.

These "complications" were nothing more or less than drug diseases.

And Dr. Ames found, on changing his plan of treatment to milder and simpler remedies, that he lost no patients.

The late Professor Win. Tully, M.D., of Yale College, and of the Vermont Academy of Medicine at Gastleton, Vt., informed his medical cla.s.s, that on one occasion the typhoid pneumonia was so fatal in some places in the valley of the Connecticut River, that the people became suspicious that the physicians were doing more harm than good; and in their desperation they actually combined against the doctors and refused to employ them at all; "after which," said Professor Tully, "no deaths occurred." And I might add, as an historical incident of some pertinency in this place, that regular physicians were once banished from Rome, so fatal did their practice seem, so far as the people could judge of it.

The great Magendie, of France, who long stood at the very head of Physiology and Pathology in the French Academy which, by the way, has claimed to be, and perhaps is, the most learned body of men in the world performed this experiment. He divided the patients of one of the large Paris hospitals into three cla.s.ses. To one he prescribed the common remedies of the books. To the second he administered only the common simples of domestic practice. And to the third cla.s.s he gave no medicine at all. The result was, those who took less medicine did better than those who took more, and those who took no medicine did the best of all.

Magendie also divided his typhoid fever patients into two cla.s.ses, to one of whom he prescribed the ordinary remedies, and to the other no medicines at all, relying wholly on such nursing and such attention to Hygiene as the vital instincts demanded and common sense suggested. Of the patients who were treated the usual way, he lost the usual proportion, about one-fourth. And of those who took no medicine, he lost none. And what opinion has Magendie left on record of the popular healing art? He said to his medical cla.s.s, "Gentlemen, medicine is a great humbug."

In the face of such damaging testimony from prominent representatives of the medical profession, it becomes exceedingly difficult to place any reliance on the drug remedies prescribed by them.

The melancholy truth is, that drug medication has become an integral part of our domestic economy. At no time in history has the consumption of drugs even approximated the present rate. Enormous sums of money are invested in manufacturing and distributing them, and the physicians of the various schools, being educated to prescribe them, a mutual bond of interest has grown up between doctor and druggist, which is not at all surprising. The medical profession, as a whole is, and ever has been eminently conservative, and this fact, in connection with its traditional predilection for drugs causes its members to resolutely set their faces against any remedial process that runs counter to the theories they imbibed at college. They look askance at all such things and regard them as dangerous experiments, and a.s.sert that their dignity will not permit them to recognize any irregular practice, or any form of quackery.

Dignity! When was dignity ever known to save a life? Most humanity continue to suffer because the medical profession (blindly following in the rut of custom) fail to see anything superior to the antiquated system of treating disease by drugging, which many of its ablest members condemn as unreliable?

It is with all schools of medicine as it is with each individual pract.i.tioner of the healing art the less faith they have in medicine, the more they have in Hygiene; hence those who prescribe little or no medicine, are invariably and necessarily more attentive to Hygiene, which always was, and ever will be, all that there is really good, useful, or curative in medication. Such physicians are more careful to supply the vital organism with whatever of air, light, temperature, food, water, exercise or rest, etc., it needs in its struggle for health, and to remove all vitiating influences all poisons, impurities, or disturbing influences of any kind. This is hygienic medication, the natural and rational method of cure, and the more closely it is examined, the more strongly it will commend itself to reason.

It is a lamentable fact that the preservation of health is not taught in the medical schools, neither is it explained in their books, and judging from general practice not much regard is attached to it in their prescriptions. But when the inevitable typhoid or malaria appears as an inevitable consequence of neglected precautions, the physician can drug without mercy, and, as we contend, on most illogical grounds.

Who imagines for one instant, that quinine is a poison? Who is not aware that a.r.s.enic is a deadly poison? And yet physicians and medical journals calmly and gravely a.s.sert that a.r.s.enic is the better article of the two, and recommend it as a subst.i.tute for quinine. Can any intelligent person believe that a comparatively harmless tonic, and an intense poison are perfect equivalents for each other?

It is stated on reliable authority, that during the civil war, hundreds of sick soldiers implored the nurses to throw away their medicine. They feared drugs worse than bullets, and not without reason.

It is a curious fact that young physicians prescribe more medicine than the older ones.

Said the venerable Professor Alexander H. Stevens M.D., of the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons: "Young pract.i.tioners are a most hopeful cla.s.s of community. They are sure of success. They start out in life with twenty remedies for every disease; and after an experience of thirty years or less they find twenty diseases for every remedy." And again: "The older physicians grow, the more skeptical they become of the virtues of medicine, and the more they are disposed to trust to the powers of Nature."

The effect of drugging a person, is to lock up the actual causes of the disease in the system; thus producing permanent and worse diseases. It is in accordance with common sense that they should be expelled, not retained. What is known as disease, is nothing more or less than the struggle of Nature, to cast out impurities, and this remedial effort should be regulated, and a.s.sisted, not obstructed by administering drugs, which only complicate the situation, by producing more disease.

No man can fight two enemies better than one, and, to give drugs to a system already struggling to regain its normal condition, is like tying the hands of a man who is beset by enemies. The truth is, that the real nature of disease is misapprehended by the popular schools of medicine, and until broader views obtain a lodgment among them, it is useless to hope for any alteration or improvement in the antiquated system of drugging. "Who shall decide, when doctors disagree ?" is an oft Quoted sentence, and, the following conflicting opinions from prominent physicians show conclusively how little is actually known of the action of drugs upon the human system, by those who administer them right and left.

Says the "United States Dispensatory," "Medicines are those articles which make sanative impressions on the body." This may be important if, true. But, per contra, says Professor Martin Paine, M.D., of the New York University Medical School, in his "Inst.i.tutes of Medicine": "Remedial agents are essentially morbific in their operations."

But again says Professor Paine: "Remedial agents operate in the same manner as do the remote causes of disease." This seems to be a very distinct announcement that remedies are themselves causes of disease.

And yet again: "In the administration of medicines we cure one disease by producing another." This is both important and true.

Professor Paine quotes approvingly the famous professional adage, in good technical Latin,

"Ubi virus, ibi vitus,"

which, being translated, means, "our strongest poisons are our best remedies."

Says Professor Alonzo Clark, M.D., of the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons: "All of our curative agents are poisons, and as a consequence, every dose diminishes the patient's vitality."

Says Professor Joseph M. Smith, M.D., of the same school: "All medicines which enter the circulation poison the blood in the same manner as do the poisons that produce disease."

Says Professor St. John, of the New York Medical College : "All medicines are poisonous."