Charles de Bernard - "Gerfaut, v2"

Constant - "Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, V8"

Rex Beach - "The Ne'er Do Well"

Jerome K. Jerome - "Clocks"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Nature Cure

H >> Henry Lindlahr >> Nature Cure




Cancer Caused by Over-Living

"'The nearer the human race approaches the animals in habits and
particularly in the matter of diet and dress, the freer it is from
cancer,' he said. 'Cancer comes from over-feeding and over-living.

"'Drinking, gourmandizing, unnatural habits of women, like lacing,
all those things help to plant the seeds of cancer in the child.

"'And as we have not learned to cure it the best thing to do is to
prevent it when we can. If children were brought up in simplicity by
natural mothers; then, if care should be taken to prevent
hypernutrition, there would be much less danger from cancer. Cancer
itself is an over-fed thing--tissue that never matures, for if I
could mature the cells I could cure the disease. The thing for
people to do who fear they may have inherited it, is to live
simply--there are many cases among people with a tendency to obesity
to one among those of a scanty habit of living--and particularly to
remove all sources of irritation, like bad teeth, tobacco, and
clothes that chafe.'"

Studies African Race

"Besides his hobby, as he calls it, Dr. Senn studied the African
generally in his voyage along the East Coast of that continent.

"'It was a fine trip,' he said, 'with so many things to learn.
Ethnologically I am certain Africans are of common stock. The negro
is a negro wherever you find him. From Kaffir to Bushman and pygmy
they are all Hamites.

"'They are mostly a fine people physically, lean and tall, except
the dwarfs. There is little tendency toward obesity; they have no
apoplexy, no distended veins as we have in civilization. Hence their
freedom from cancer. They live naturally, and are vegetarians
mostly, while the Northern Esquimaux are meat-eaters, but both races
eat naturally to sustain life, hence their immunity from that
disease. It is where eating is made an art that cancer is most
prevalent.

"'They are free from many other diseases that pester us also.
Tuberculosis is hardly known, and only along the coast, where it has
been taken by the whites. The real curse of the coast country is
malaria. It is bad all up and down the East shore. I kept away from
it myself by taking five grains of quinine and the juice of a lemon
once a day on an empty stomach. That is a good remedy for malaria,
for in all my running around I have never had it."

(Editor's Note.--Dr. Senn died January 2, 1908. The papers stated
after his death, that the doctor had never been well since the
return from his long voyage, that his heart and nervous system had
been seriously affected by the altitudes of the Andes and of other
mountains. We wonder whether the "high altitudes" or the "five
grains of quinine daily" were to blame for the celebrated
physician's heart disease and death.)

Suppression, the Cause of Chronic Diseases

Dr. Senn was right. If men and women lived more naturally, the
majority of diseases would disappear.

The primary cause of disease is violation of Nature's Laws.
"Civilization" has largely stood for artificiality of life and for
unnatural habits. A higher civilization, yet to come, will combine
the most exquisite culture of heart and mind with true simplicity
and naturalness of living. Excessive meat eating, strong spices and
condiments, alcohol, coffee, tea, overwork, night work, fear, worry,
sensuality, corsets, high heels, foul air, improper breathing, lack
of exercise, loveless marriages, race suicide, all of these and many
other evils of hypercivlization have contributed their share in
creating the universal degeneracy of civilized nations commented
upon by Dr. Senn.

When the unnatural habits of life alluded to have lowered the
vitality and favored the accumulation of waste matter and poisons to
such an extent that the sluggish bowels, kidneys, skin and the other
organs of elimination are unable to keep a clean house, Nature has
to resort to other, more radical means of purification or we should
choke in our own impurities. These forcible housecleanings of Nature
are colds, catarrh, skin eruptions, diarrheas, boils, ulcers,
abnormal perspiration, hemorrhages and many other forms of
inflammatory febrile diseases.

Sulphur and mercury may drive back the skin eruptions, antipyretics
and antiseptics may suppress fever and catarrh. The patient and the
doctor may congratulate themselves on a speedy cure; but what is the
true state of affairs? Nature has been thwarted in her work of
healing and cleansing. She had to give up the fight against disease
matter in order to combat the more potent poisons of mercury,
quinine, iodine, strychnine, etc. The disease matter is still in the
system, plus the drug poison.

Proof positive of the retention of drug poisons in the organism is
furnished by the Diagnosis from the Eye. This will be explained more
fully in another chapter.

When vitality has been sufficiently restored, Nature may make
another attempt at purification, this time, possibly, in another
direction; but again her well-meant efforts are defeated. This
process of suppression is repeated over and over again until blood
and tissues become so loaded with waste material and poisons that
the healing forces of the organism can no longer react against them
by acute diseases. Then results the chronic condition, which in the
vocabulary of the "Old School" of medicine is only another name for
incurable disease.

The more skilled the allopathic school becomes in the suppression
and prevention of acute diseases by drugs, knife, x-rays, serums,
vaccination virus, etc., the greater will be the increase of chronic
dyspepsia, nervous prostration, insanity, locomotor ataxy, paresis,
cancer, secondary and tertiary syphilis, tuberculosis and many other
so-called incurable diseases. Thus, the standard medical practice is
self-supporting; the treatment of acute conditions assuring a
lifelong supply of chronic conditions for the doctor to treat.

Suppression of acute diseases, by drugs and knife, is the
all-important factor in the creation of malignant diseases which Dr.
Senn had overlooked in his discourse on the causes of distructive
ailments. If he had steudied his experiences in foreign lands in the
light of these explanations he would have found that these scourges
of mankind exist only in those parts of earth where the drug store
flourishes.

These statements may seem exaggerated; but allow me to cite a few
typical cases of suppression and their effects upon the system from
our daily practice.

Paresis, locomotor ataxy and paralysis agitans are not, as is
usually assumed, due to secondary and tertiary syphilis, but to the
mercury administered for the cure of luetic and other diseases. In
less than six months' time we cure the so-called specific diseases
by our natural methods, provided they are not suppressed and
complicated by mercury, iodine or other poisonous drugs. We never
interfere with the original lesion, but allow Nature to discharge
the poisons through the channels established for this purpose.

Under this rational treatment, discharge and ulcer act as fontanels
to the system. Not only the specific poison, but much of hereditary
and acquired disease matter also are eliminated in the process; and
after such a cure, blood and tissues of the patient are purer than
they were before infection.

The foregoing statement has nothing to do with the moral aspects
involved in acquiring venereal diseases. In this connection we are
dealing solely with the rational or irrational treatment of the
infection after it has been contracted. We do not wish to intimate
that it is advisable to cure the body by killing the soul.

Nevertheless, we must deal with the facts in Nature as we find them.
Furthermore, a great many persons, especially women and children,
acquire these diseases innocently. Are we not justified in relieving
their minds of needless fear and in showing them the way to prevent
the dreadful sufferings of the secondary and tertiary stages brought
on by suppressive drug treatment by means of mercury, the iodides,
"606," etc.?

These poisonous drugs suppress the initial lesion and diffuse the
disease poison through the system. Nature takes up the work of
elimination by means of skin eruptions and ulcers in various parts
of the body, but these also are promptly suppressed with mercurial
ointments and other alternatives. This process of suppression is
continued for months and years, until the organism is so thoroughly
saturated with alterative poisons that vital force can no longer
react by acute reactions against the original syphilitic poisons.
This state of vital paralysis is then called a cure.

The medical professor, however, knows better. He instructs the
students from the lecture platform: "When, after two or three years
of mercurial treatment, syphilitic symptoms cease to appear, you may
permit the patient to marry--but never guarantee a cure."

Why not? Because the professor is aware that the offspring of such a
union are born with hereditary symptoms well known to every
physician, and because the patient thus cured (?) may turn up in the
doctor's office at any time thereafter with a hole in his palate,
ulcers on his body, caries of the bones or with other secondary and
tertiary symptoms.

Mercury has an especial affinity for the bony structures. It will
work its way through the vertebrae of the spine and the bones of the
skull into the nerve matter of the brain and spinal cord, causing
inflammation, excruciating headaches, nervous symptoms, girdle
pains, etc. These stages of acute inflammation are followed in a few
years by sclerosis (hardening) of nerve matter and blood vessels,
resulting in paresis, locomotor ataxy or paralysis agitans.

Neither is it necessary to contract specific diseases in order to
fall a victim to these dreadful conditions: mercury, iodine and
other destructive alternatives are given in a hundred different
forms for a multitude of other ailments.

A few years ago we had under our care a patient in the last stages
of locomotor ataxy, who for years had been suffering the tortures of
the damned. There had never been a taint of specific disease in her
system, but four different times in her life she had been salivated
by calomel (a common laxative containing mercury). This dreadful
poison was given to her in large doses for the cure of liver trouble
and constipation. She was only fourteen years old when, on account
of this, she first suffered from acute mercurial poisoning.

Another patient who, after fifteen years of slow and torturous dying
by inches, succumbed to the same disease, absorbed the mercurial
poison in his boyhood days while attending a boarding school. He was
twice salivated by mercurial ointments applied to cure the itch
(scabies), a disease which was epidemic at times among the boys. He
likewise never had a syphilitic disease.

A young man, insane at the age of thirty, absorbed the infernal
poison when four years of age. He had at the time a psoric skin
eruption, but the family physician suspected syphilitic infection
from the nurse girl and kept the child under mercury for six months.
How do we know that the diagnosis of syphilis was false? Because the
iris of the eye revealed "psora" as the cause of the suspicious
eruption which reappeared several times later in life, and because
the servant girl was afterwards absolutely exonerated by competent
physicians.

Proofs by the Diagnosis from the Eye

We have treated many hundreds of cases of so-called chronic
neuralgia, neuritis, rheumatism, neurasthenia, epilepsy and idiocy,
due to the pernicious effects of quinine, iodine, arsenic,
strychnine, coal-tar products and other virulent poisons taken under
the guise of medicine.

How do we know that this is so?

Because the Diagnosis from the Eye plainly reveals the presence of
these poisons in the system. Because the drug signs in the eye are
accompanied by the symptoms of these poisons in the system. Because
the record in the eye is confirmed by the history of the patient.
Because, under natural living and treatment, diseases long ago
suppressed by drugs or knife reappear as healing crises. Because, in
these healing crises, drugs indicated by the signs in the iris of
the eye are frequently eliminated under their own peculiar symptoms.
Because, to the extent that a drug is eliminated from the system by
a healing crisis, its sign will disappear from the iris of the eye.

To illustrate:

The Diagnosis from the Eye reveals heavy quinine poisoning in the
region of the brain. This enables us to say to the patient, without
questioning him, that he suffers from severe frontal headaches and
ringing in the ears, that he is very irritahle, and so on through
the various symptoms of quinine poisoning. The history of the
patient reveals the fact that he has taken large amounts of quinine
for colds, la grippe or malaria. Under our methods of natural living
and treatment, the patient improves; the organism becomes more
vigorous, and the organs of elimination act more freely; the latent
poisons are stirred up in their hiding places; healing crises make
their appearance. The processes of elimination thus inaugurated
develop various symptoms of acute poisoning. The eliminating crises
are accompanied by headaches, ringing in the ears, nasal catarrh,
bone pains, neuritis, strong taste of quinine in the mouth, etc.
Every healing crisis, if naturally treated, diminishes the signs of
disease and drug poisons in the eye.



Chapter VIII


Inflammation


From what has already been said on this subject, it will have become
apparent that inflammatory and feverish diseases are just as
natural, orderly and lawful as anything else in Nature, that,
therefore, after they have once started, they must not be checked or
suppressed by poisonous drugs and surgical operations.

Inflammatory processes can be kept within safe limits, and they must
be assisted in their constructive tendencies by the natural methods
of treatment. To check and suppress acute diseases before they have
run their natural course means to suppress Nature's purifying and
healing efforts, to court fatal complications and to change the
acute, constructive reactions into chronic disease conditions.

Those who have followed the preceding chapters will remember that
their general trend has been to prove one of the fundamental
principles of Nature Cure philosophy, namely the Unity of Disease
and Cure.

We claim that all acute diseases are uniform in their causes, their
purpose, and if conditions are favorable, uniform also in their
progressive development.

In former chapters I endeavored to prove and to elucidate the unity
of acute diseases in regard to their causes and their purpose, the
latter not being destructive, but constructive and beneficial. I
demonstrated that the microorganisms of disease are not the
unmitigated nuisance and evil which they are commonly regarded, but
that, like everything else in Nature, they, too, serve a useful
purpose. I showed that it depends upon ourselves whether their
activity is harmful and destructive, or beneficial: upon our manner
of living and of treating acute reactions.

Let us now trace the unity of acute diseases in regard to their
general course by a brief examination of the processes of
inflammation and their progressive development through five
well-defined stages. We shall base our studies on the most advanced
works on pathology and bacteriology.

The Story of Inflammation

To me the story of inflammation has been one of the most wonderful
revelations of the complex activities of the human organism. More
than anything else it confirms to me the fundamental principles of
Nature Cure, the fact that Nature is a good healer, not a poor one.

Before inflammation can arise, there must exist an exciting cause in
the form of some obstruction or of some agent inimical to health and
life. Such excitants of inflammation may be dead cells, blood clots,
fragments of bone and other effete matter produced in the system
itself or they may be foreign bodies such as particles of dust,
soot, stone, iron or other metals, slivers of wood, etc.; again,
they may be microorganisms or parasites.

When one or more of these exciting agents of inflammation are
present in the tissues of the body in sufficient strength to call
forth the reaction and opposition of the healing forces, the
microscope will always reveal the following phenomena, slightly
varying under different conditions:

The blood rushes to the area of irritation. Owing to this increased
blood pressure, the minute arteries and veins in the immediate
neighborhood of the excitant dilate and increase in size. The
distension of the blood vessels stretches and thereby weakens their
walls. Through these the white blood corpuscles squeeze their mobile
bodies and work their way through the intervening tissues toward the
affected area.

In some mysterious way they seem to sense the exact location of the
danger point and hurry toward it in large numbers like soldiers
summoned to meet an invading army. This faculty of the white blood
corpuscles to apprehend the presence and exact location of the enemy
has been ascribed to chemical attraction and is called ~chemotaxis.~

The army of defense is made up of the white blood corpuscles or
leukocytes and of connective tissue cells which separate themselves
from the neighboring tissues. All these wandering cells possess the
faculty of absorbing and digesting microbes. They contain certain
proteolytic or protein-splitting ferments, by means of which they
decompose and digest poisons and hostile microorganisms. On account
of their activity as germ destroyers, these cells have been called
germ killers or ~phagocytes~. In their movements and actions these
valiant little warriors act very much like intelligent beings,
animated by the qualities of patience, perseverance, courage,
foresight and self-sacrifice.

The phagocytes absorb morbid matter, poisons or microorganisms by
enveloping them with their own bodies. It is a hand-to-hand fight,
and many of the brave little soldiers are destroyed by the poisons
and bacteria which they attack and swallow. What we call pus is made
up of the bodies of live and dead phagocytes, disease taints and
germs, blood serum, broken-down tissues and cells, in short, the
debris of the battlefield.

We can now understand how the processes just described produce the
well-known cardinal symptoms of inflammation and fever; the redness,
heat and swelling due to increased blood pressure, congestion and
the accumulation of exudates; the pain due to irritation and to
pressure on the nerves. We can also realize how impaired nutrition
and the obstruction and destruction in the affected parts and organs
will interfere with and inhibit functional activity.

The organism has still other ways and means of defending itself. At
the time of bacterial infection, certain germ-killing substances are
developed in the blood serum. Science has named these defensive
proteins ~alexins.~ It has also been found that the phagocyte and
tissue cells in the neighborhood of the area of irritation produce
antipoisons or natural antitoxins, which neutralize the bacterial
poisons and kill the microorganisms of disease.

With the Evil, Nature Provides the Cure

Furthermore, the growth and development of bacteria and parasites is
inhibited and finally arrested by their own waste products. We have
an example of this in the yeast germ, which thrives and multiplies
in the presence of sugar in solution. Living on and digesting the
sugar, it decomposes the sugar molecules into alcohol and carbonic
acid. As the alcohol increases during the process of fermentation,
it gradually arrests the development and activity of the yeast
cells.

Similar phenomena accompany the activity of disease germs and
parasites. They produce certain waste products which gradually
inhibit their own growth and increase. The vaccines, serums and
antitoxins of medical science are prepared from these bacterial
excrements and from extracts made of the bodies of bacteria.

In the serum and antitoxin treatment, therefore, the allopathic
school is imitating Nature's procedure in checking the growth of
microorganisms, but with this difference: Nature does not suppress
the growth and multiplication of disease germs until the morbid
matter on which they subsist has been decomposed and consumed, and
until the inflammatory processes have run their course through the
five stages of inflammation; while serums and antitoxins given in
powerful doses at the different stages of any disease may check and
suppress germ activity and the processes of inflammation before the
latter have run their natural course and before the morbid matter
has been eliminated.

The Five Stages of Inflammation

What has been said in former chapters confirms my claim that all
acute diseases are uniform in their causes and in their purpose.
From the foregoing description of inflammation it will have become
clear that they are also uniform in their pathological development.
The uniformity of acute inflammatory processes becomes still more
apparent when we follow them through their five succeeding stages,
that is: Incubation, Aggravation, Destruction, Abatement and
Reconstruction, as illustrated in the following diagram:

I. Incubation. The first section of the diagram corresponds to the
period of Incubation, the time between the exposure to an infectious
disease and its development. This period may last from a few minutes
to a few days, weeks, months or even years.

During this stage morbid matter, poisons, microorganisms and other
excitants of inflammation gather and concentrate in certain parts
and organs of the body. When they have accumulated to such an extent
as to interfere with the normal functions or to endanger the health
and life of the organism, the life forces begin to react to the
obstruction or threatening danger by means of the inflammatory
processes before described.

II. Aggravation. During the period of Aggravation the battle between
the phagocytes and Nature's antitoxins on the one hand, and the
poisons and microorganisms of disease on the other hand, gradually
progresses, accompanied by a corresponding increase of fever and
inflammation, until it reaches its climax, marked by the greatest
intensity of feverish symptoms.

III. Destruction. This battle between the forces of disease and the
healing forces is accompanied by the disintegration of tissues due
to the accumulation of exudates, to pus formation, the development
of abscesses, boils, fistulas, open sores, etc., and to other morbid
changes. It involves the destruction of phagocytes, bacteria, blood
vessels, and tissues just as a battle between contending human
armies results in loss of life and property.

The stage of Destruction ends in crisis, which may be either fatal
or beneficial. If the healing forces of the organism are in the
ascendancy, and if they are supported by right treatment which tends
to build up the blood, increase the vitality and promote
elimination, then the poisons and the microorganisms of disease will
gradually be overcome, absorbed or eliminated and, by degrees, the
tissues will be cleared of the debris of the battlefield.

IV. Abatement. The absorption and elimination of exudates, pus,
etc., take place during the period of abatement. It is accompanied
by a gradual lowering of temperature, pulse rate and the other
symptoms of fever and inflammation.

V. Resolution or Reconstruction. When the period of Abate-ment has
run its course and the affected areas have been cleared of the
morbid accumulations and obstructions, then, during the fifth stage
of inflammation, the work of rebuilding the injured parts and organs
begins. More or less destruction has taken place in the cells and
tissues, the blood vessels and organs of the areas involved. These
must now be reconstructed, and this last stage of the inflammatory
process is, therefore, in a way the most important. On the perfect
regeneration of the injured parts depends the final effect of the
acute disease upon the organism.

If the inflammation has been allowed to run its course through the
different stages of acute activity and the final stage of
Reconstruction, then every acute disease, whatever its name and
description may be, will prove beneficial to the organism because
morbid matter, foreign bodies, poisons and microorganisms have been
eliminated from the system; abnormal and diseased tissues have been
broken down and built up again to a purer and more normal condition.

As it were, the acute disease has acted upon the organism like a
thunderstorm on the sultry, vitiated summer air. It has cleared the
system of impurities and destructive influences, and re-established
wholesome, normal conditions. Therefore acute diseases, when treated
in harmony with Nature's intent, always prove beneficial.

If, however, through neglect or wrong treatment, the inflammatory
processes are not allowed to run their natural course, if they are
checked or suppressed by poisonous drugs, the ice bag or surgical
operations, or if the disease conditions in the system are so far in
the ascendancy that the healing forces cannot react properly, then
the constructive forces may lose the battle and the disease may take
a fatal ending or develop into chronic ailments.