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Preface

Introduction to Toxemia

Toxemia Explained

Enervation Is General

Poise

The Causes of Enervation

Retrospection

    Many diseases are considered to be of a dangerous nature, and many attempts are made to combat the danger, with, however, no perception of its nature. This is particularly the case with epidemic diseases, such as measles, influenza, scarlet fever, and diphtheria. As a consequence, proposals have at different times been put forward to treat individuals who suffer these diseases upon some general plan, without consideration of the peculiarities of the individual case--and thus we get that rule-of-thumb treatment which is shown in the indiscriminate use of a serum or vaccine.

    During influenza epidemics there is always a cry for a universal method of treatment, and attempts are made to meet this cry in the shape of so-called specifics and vaccines.

    When a great authority declares that dangerous diseases are combated without any perception of their nature--and that, too, in spite of the germ theory--it should be obvious to thinking minds that the germ theory has been weighed and found wanting. Yet, when something must be done, and nothing better has been discovery, "serums and vaccines may be used indiscriminately."

    That the "rule of thumb" is the rule governing all thinking concerning symptoms, diseases, their cause and treatment, is so obvious that anyone possessing a reasoning mind, not camouflaged by scientific buncombe, should read as he runs.

    Medicine rests on a sound scientific foundation. Anatomy, physiology, biology, chemistry, and all collateral sciences that have a bearing on the science of man, are advanced to great perfection. But the so-called sciences of symptomatology, disease, diagnosis, etiology, and the treatment of disease go back to superstition for their foundation. We see the incongruity of jumbling real science with delusion and superstition. Disease is believed to be an entity; and this idea is necessarily followed by another as absurd--namely, cure. Around these two old assumptions has grown an infinite literature that confounds its builders.

    
TRUTH AS FAMOUS MEN SEE IT

    When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has, the greater will be his confusion.--(Herbert Spencer.)

    Confusion worse confounded is the only explanation that can be given of the theory and practice of medicine. Of course, it is hoary with age, and is one of the learned professions. With much just pride can the rank and file point to its aristocracy--its long list of famous dead as well as living physicians? What has made most of them famous? The same that has made others famous in and out of the professions--namely, personal worth and education. Franklin was not a doctor; yet he was as great as any doctor, and could use his gray matter in advising the sick as well as those not sick. He appeared to have a sense-perception for truth; and I would say that his discrimination is the leading, if not the distinguishing, trait that has divided, and always will divide, the really great from the mediocre majority. They are the leaven that leaveneth the whole herd of humanity--the quality of character that could not be found in all Sodom and Gomorrah.

    There was another discriminating mind in the eighteenth century--another Benjamin, who also was a signer of the Declaration of Independence--Benjamin Rush, a physician, a luminary that brought distinction to medical science. He was larger than his profession. He left seeds of thought which, if acted upon by the profession, would have organized medical thought and prevented the present-day confusion. He left on record such golden nuggets as:

    Much mischief has been done by the nosological arrangement of diseases. . . . Disease is as much a unit as fever. . . . Its different seats and degrees should no more be multiplied into different diseases than the numerous and different effects of heat and light upon our globe should be multiplied into a plurality of suns.

    The whole materia medica is infected with the baneful consequences of the nomenclature of disease; for every article in it is pointed only against their names. . . . By the rejection of the artificial arrangement of diseases, a revolution must follow in medicine. . . . The road to knowledge in medicine by this means will likewise be shortened; so that a young man will be able to qualify himself to practice physic at a much less expense of time and labor than formerly, as a child would learn to read and write by the help of the Roman alphabet, instead of Chinese characters.

    Science has much to deplore from the multiplication of diseases. It is as repugnant to truth in medicine as polytheism is to truth in religion. The physician who considers every different affection of the different parts of the same system as distinct diseases, when they arise from one cause, resembles the Indian or African savage who considers water, dew, ice, frost, and snow as distinct essences; while the physician who considers the morbid affections of every past of the body, however divers)fied they may be in their form or degrees, as derived from one cause, resembles the philosopher who considers dew, ice, frost, and snow as different modifications of water, and as derived simply from the absence of heat.

    Humanity has likewise much to deplore from this paganism in medicine. The sword will probably be sheathed forever, as an instrument of death, before physicians will cease to add to the mortality of mankind by prescribing for the names of diseases.

    There is but one remote cause of disease . . . . These remarks are of extensive application, and, if duly attended to, would deliver us from a mass of error which has been accumulating for ages in medicine; I mean the nomenclature of diseases from their remote causes. It is the most offensive and injurious part of the rubbish of our science.

    The physician who can cure one disease by a knowledge of its principles may by the same means cure all the diseases of the human body; for their causes are the same.

    There is the same difference between the knowledge of a physician who prescribes for diseases as limited by genera and species, and of one who prescribes under the direction of just principles, that there is between the knowledge we obtain of the nature and extent of the sky, by viewing a few feet of it from the bottom of a well, and viewing from the top of a mountain the whole canopy of heaven.

    I would as soon believe that ratafia was intended by the Author of Nature to be the only drink of man, instead of water, as believe that the knowledge of what relates to the health and lives of a whole city, or nation, should be confined to one, and that a small or a privileged, order of men.

    From a short review of these facts, reason and humanity awake from their long repose in medicine, and unite in proclaiming that it is time to take the cure of pestilential epidemics out of the hands of physicians, and to place it in the hands of the people.

    Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of the seats of disease, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions.... What mischief have we done under the belief of false facts, if I may be allowed the expression, and false theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases. We have done more--we have increased their mortality.

    I shall not pause to beg pardon of the faculty for acknowledging, in this public manner, the weaknesses of our profession. I am pursuing Truth, and while I can keep my eye fixed upon my guide, I am indifferent whither I am led, provided she is my leader.

    Oliver W. Holmes, M. D., was a man who gave dignity and respectability to the profession. He was a literary man, and from his beginning to his end, was always larger than his profession. He once said: "I firmly believe that, if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes." "Breakfast-Table Series" will be read by the intelligent people of the future, who will know nothing of Holmes' fight for women against the dirty hands of herd-doctors and their consequences--puerperal fever.

    "AEquanimitas" will keep Osler in the minds of intelligent people "Osler's Practice of Medicine" will be found only in the shops of bibliomaniacs. Such men as Osler keep the dead weight of mediocre medicine from sinking to oblivion by embellishing medical fallacies with their superb personalities and their literary polish.

    Throughout all the ages the finest minds have sensed the truth concerning the cause of disease, and this has bulked large against medical insanities and inanities.

    A very striking picture of the medical herd was made by "Anonymous" in his essay on "Medicine" in "Civilization in the United States."

    It has been remarked above that one of the chief causes of the unscientific nature of medicine and the antiscientific character of doctors lies in their inflate credulity and inability to think independently. This contention is supported by the report on the intelligence of physicians recently published by the National Research Council. They are found by more or less trustworthy psychologic tests to be lowest in intelligence of all the professional men, excepting only dentists and horse-doctors. Dentists and horse-doctors are ten per cent less intelligent. But since the quantitative methods employed certainly carry an experimental error of ten per cent or even higher, it is not certain that the members of the two more humble professions have not equal or even greater intellectual ability. It is significant that engineers head the list in intelligence. In fact, they are rated sixty per cent higher than doctors.

    This wide disparity leads to a temptation to interesting psychological probings. Is not the lamentable lack of intelligence of the doctor due to lack of necessity for rigid intellectual discipline? Many conditions conspire to make him an intellectual cheat. Fortunately for us, most diseases are self-limiting. But it is natural for the physician to turn this dispensation of nature to his advantage and to intimate that he has cured John Smith, when actually nature has done the trick. On the contrary, should Smith die, the good doctor can assume a pious expression and suggest that, despite his own incredible skill and tremendous effort, it was God's (or nature's) will that John should pass beyond. Now, the engineer is open to no such temptation. He builds a bridge or erects a building, and disaster is sure to follow any misstep in calculation or fault in construction. Should such a calamity occur, he is presently discredited and disappears from view. Thus he is held up to a high mark of intellectual rigor and discipline that is utterly unknown in the world the doctor inhabits.

    The critic appears to think that "one of the chief causes of the anti-scientific character of doctors lies in their innate credulity and inability to think independently." I presume he means that the doctors cannot think independently; for if medicine, scientific or unscientific, could think at all, it might have thought itself out of its present-day muddle.

    The only thing that saves all physicians from the above indictment is that they are not examined on the cause and treatment of disease. If average physicians pass low on "trustworthy psychological tests," it does not speak very well for the higher education which put so many medical schools out of business a few years ago. But these psychological tests may be fitted to educational standards which are assembled with intelligence left out. Intelligence, like the cause of disease, is a force in nature that can be used under the proper environments; but it cannot be monopolized to the exclusion of all mankind. Gladstone in youth was passed upon by the psychological test of his teacher, and pronounced incorrigible; yet at eighty-six he was wielding an ax and translating Virgil.

    
SCIENTIFIC TESTS

    People should not take too seriously to heart verdicts resting on scientific tests, where a very large part of the integral is scientific assumption and presumption. The New York Life Insurance Company turned me down more than fifty years ago.

    "Anonymous," whoever he is, writes well, and as that of an iconoclast, his style is quite fetching. But, to save his bacon, it was well that he criticized from ambush; for he would make an excellent target. From my point of view, I find him as vulnerable as any Standard A type of professional men.

    He shows his medical length and breadth when he says: "Of all the dreadful afflictions that plague us, a few may be cured or ameliorated by the administration of remedies." That was said by medical men now one and two hundred years dead, and with no more aplomb than that of the doctors of today in the literary class of our "Anonymous."

    "Dreadful afflictions" do not "plague us." If we are plagued by disease, it is of our own building; and all five need to do to get back to comfort and health is to quit building disease; then our subconscious self gets busy cleaning house.

    "Anonymous" could not have made a statement that would have been more perfectly one hundred per cent fallacy. He says: "A few may be cured." That is a mild statement coming from one of the ambushed Caesars of scientific medicine. I presume he means that there is a contingent possibility that a few can be cured. This is false; for "afflictions" or disease cannot be cured. Nature--our subconsciousness--has a full monopoly on the power to cure. Healing is nature's prerogative, and she cannot, if she would, delegate it to doctors or to the academies of medical science.

    What a glorious legacy, vouchsafed by the powers that be! What a sad plight humanity would be in if medical commercialism had a monopoly on healing or curing the sick! It does very well, however, as it is vending its camouflage cures of all kinds. But when mankind awakens to a full realization of the truth that for all past time it has been buying a pretense of power of which it alone possesses a monopoly, old hoary-headed Aesculapius will be unfrocked and thrown out of business--staff, snake, and all.

    "Anonymous," fearing that the statements, "A few may be cured," was too strong, added the modifying phrase "or ameliorated;" which, in medical parlance, means palliated, relieved, etc. This in reality is the whole truth concerning so-called remedies or cures. And when the truth is known that curing, or the power to throw off disease and get well is wholly within the subconscious and is personal, we will know that curing and palliating by the administration of remedies--drugs, serums, vaccines, surgery, feeding to keep up the strength, etc.--are superfluous, meddlesome, and on the order of throwing a monkey-wrench into the machinery.

    After criticizing "Anonymous" for what we know, inferentially, that he stands for, we will quote the remainder of what he says concerning the treatment of the "dreadful afflictions that plague us." He further declares:

    And an equally small number improved or were abolished by surgical interference. But, in spite of the relatively few diseases to which surgery is beneficial, the number of surgeons that flourished in the land is enormous. The fundamental discoveries of Pasteur, and their brilliant application by Lister, were quickly seized upon in America. The names of Bull, Halstead, Murphy, the brothers Mayo, Cushing, and Finney are to be ranked with those of the best surgeons of any nation. In fact, we may be said to lead the world--to use an apt Americanism--in the production of surgeons [and surgical plants], just as we do in that of automobiles, baby carriages, and antique furniture.

    "A few diseases may be cured or ameliorated." I say, never cured; and amelioration is a form of building disease.

    A delicate woman became my patient, after suffering from megrim for twenty-two years and taking more or less palliatives from twenty-two different doctors--a few widely known, one a neurologist of more than national fame; the majority of whom told her that there was no cure, but that, when she changed life, the headaches would cease. This was a "bum" guess; for she declared that her suffering had been greater the past two years, since her menstruation has ceased, than ever before. Just how much the psychological suggestion, made by fifteen or twenty doctors, that she would not get well for a given time, had to do with prolonging her headaches, no one can tell. Drug palliation is always inclined to enervate and build Toxemia. This woman had been relieved by hypodermics of morphine--a fiendish treatment. There should be a law against such malpractice. But the majority never handicap themselves with prohibitory laws.

    My prescription was: No more smoking in the home (the husband being an inveterate smoker); stay in bed; fast, take a tub bath and an enema every night until a paroxysm of headache had been missed.

    The paroxysms had been coming weekly, beginning on Tuesday and leaving her prostrate until Friday. Orders were given for a hot bath to be given to full relief, even if it required an hour. The patient had only one paroxysm after becoming my patient, and that required three-quarters of an hour in a hot bath to relieve. The husband became very enthusiastic over the fact that his wife had been of her pain without drugs for the first time in twentytwo years. My comment on his outburst of rejoicing was: "Your smoking and the doctor's drugging were responsible for her unnecessary suffering during nearly a quarter of a century."

    Drugging pain of any kind checks elimination and prevents the human organism from cleaning house. In this case of megrim, every time an eliminating crisis developed' the doctor slammed the doors of egress shut and barred them with morphine. My prescription reversed the order; it opened all the doors, with the result that she never had another headache after the one that the hot bath relieved. Of course, I tinkered with her eating and other habits afterward. People are never sick who have no bad habits.

    About the same time I advised another woman who had suffered weekly from paroxysms of megrim for sixteen years. Like the first case, she had been medicated by many doctors, and told she need not look for a cure until after the change of life. The woman, too, had one paroxysm after giving up drug palliation and making a few changes in her daily habits.

    There were two patients with a "dreadful affliction," which was kept "dreadful" by a senseless and criminal medication--and that, too, by physicians holding degrees from class A colleges.

    I refer to these two cases to illustrate what "Anonymous" means by saying: "Few diseases may be cured or ameliorated." Megrim is not cured; and if doping, as these two cases were doped, is ameliorating, some other name should be used in designating the procedure.

    
CRISES

    According to the Toxin Philosophy, every so-called disease is a crisis of Toxemia; which means that toxin has accumulated in the blood above the toleration-point, and the crisis, the so-called disease--call it cold, "flu," pneumonia, headache, or typhoid fever--is a vicarious elimination. Nature is endeavoring to rid the body of toxin. Any treatment that obstructs this effort at elimination baffles nature in her effort at self-curing.

    Drugs, feeding, fear, and keeping at work prevent elimination. A cold is driven into chronic catarrh; "flu" may be forced to take on an infected state; pneumonia may end fatally if secretions are checked by drugs; we already know what becomes of headache; typhoid will be forced into a septic state and greatly prolonged, if the patient is not killed.

    The above illustrates how "a few cases may be cured or ameliorated." But the story is different when the attending physician knows that every so-called disease is a complex of symptoms signifying a crisis of Toxemia--nature's house-cleaning. And she--nature--can succeed admirably if not interfered with by venders of poison, who are endeavoring to destroy an imaginary entity lurking somewhere in the system, which is mightily increased and intensified by the venders' cures or amelioratives.

    It is a real pleasure for the doctor who knows that he cannot cure anything, to watch nature throw off all these symptoms by elimination, if he is willing to do a little "watchful waiting" and "keep hands off." The patient will he comfortable most of the time, and will say, when asked how he is: "I feel all right; I am comfortable." Patients never answer in that way when drugged and fed. Yes, when nature is not hindered by officious professional meddling, sick people can truthfully say, when well over a crisis of house-cleaning: "I had a very comfortable sickness." Nature is not revengeful. Great suffering, chronic and fatal maladies, are built by the incorrigibleness of patients, and the well-meaning but belligerent efforts of the doctors who fight the imaginary foe without ceasing. The people are so saturated with the idea that disease must he fought to a finish that they are not satisfied with conservative treatment. Something must be done, even if they pay for it with their lives, as tens of thousands do every year. This willingness to die on the altar of medical superstition is one very great reason why no real improvement is made in fundamental medical science. When the people demand education--not medication, vaccination, and immunization--they will get it.

    Is there nothing for a doctor to do? Yes, of course! He should enter the sick-room with a smile and a cheerful word, free from odors, and neat and clean; be natural, and free from affectations. He should not tell at how many confinements he officiated the night before, or how many thousands he has had in the past ten years. Professional lobbying is not appropriate in the sickroom. Patients should have confidence in their doctor; and if he does a lot of medico-political lying, the patient will know it, and it sloughs confidence.

    He should advise an enema daily--a stomach-wash if it is needed; something warm to the feet; perfect quiet; no food, liquid or solid, and positively no drugs, but all the water desired; a warm bath at night; a hot bath when necessary for pain, and as often as necessary to secure comfort. Rest, warmth, fresh air, and quiet are curative. Then the physician should educate his patient into proper living habits, so as to avoid future crises of Toxemia.

    When this regime is carried out, and Doctor Nature is allowed full control, the pessimistic statement of "Anonymous" that "a few diseases may be cured or ameliorated" can be changed to read: All acute so-called diseases can be cured; and the patient will stay cured if he will practice self-control concerning the enervating habits that brought on his crises of Toxemia. Where this is carried out faithfully, so-called chronic diseases will never be built.

    
ALL DISEASES ONCE INNOCENT

    Cancer, tuberculosis, Bright's disease, and all chronic diseases were once innocent colds "ameliorated," and which returned and were "ameliorated" again and again; each time accompanied by a greater constitutional enervation, and a greater constitutional toleration for toxin-poisoning, requiring a greater requisition of mucous membrane through which to eliminate the toxin.

    Research is being carried on vigorously in an attempt to find the cause of disease; the conception of disease being that it is individual. Here is where investigators meet their Waterloo. All the so-called diseases are increasing symptom complexes due to repeated crises of Toxemia. They have no independent existence. As soon as Toxemia is controlled, they disappear, unless an organ has been forced by innumerable crises to degenerate. Even organic change, when the organ is not destroyed, will be overcome by correcting the life and getting rid of the cause--crises of Toxemia.

    To find the cause of cancer, start with colds and catarrh, and watch the pathology as it travels from irritation, catarrh, inflammation, induration, ulceration to cancer.

    As well try to find the cause of man by ignoring his conception, embryonic life, childhood, manhood, etc.

    All symptoms of all so-called diseases have one origin. All diseases are one. Unity in all things is nature's plan. Polytheism is gone, and everything pertaining to it and coming out of it must go.

    
HERD-BELIEFS

    Few realize man's possibilities if his handicaps are removed--handicaps which are old beliefs and herd-instincts.

    The Toxemic Philosophy is founded on the truth that there is no such thing as cure. In this it differs from all the so-called curing systems. Every pretense or promise of cure, in all lines of therapeutics, is false. This cannot be grasped by all minds until time for thinking has allowed the idea to soak in. Convention and superstition have the floor, and they are unwilling to sit down and listen to the other side. Many learn slowly, others not at all, and still others are put to sleep mentally by truth.

    There are ox-cart minds in every generation. The recent episode at Dayton, Tennessee, should cure the enthusiasm of those who think the world has outgrown superstition. I have bucked up against medical superstitions of all kinds all my life, and I know that clear-thinking minds are as scarce as hens' teeth. Many compliment me on my clear reasoning on medical subjects; but the moment I cross the border-line into their ethical, moral and theological preserves, they remind me of my trespassing in no uncertain terms. Even my own profession is quick to ink the waters of my reasoning by declaring that I am an infidel--a word that fills the elect with abhorrence. Who is an infidel? One who rejects a senseless convention. Didn't Christ repudiate the Jehovic cult?

    The average mind prefers the old interpretation of to the "new-fangled" definitions. Until the world agrees on one dictionary, one Bible, and one God, the tempest in the teapot of misunderstanding will continue to ebullate, sending the atomized fundamentalists heavenward and the anatomized modernists hellward.

    Of course, God made man. He made everything. But why not find out just how He made him? Surely there is as much "glory to God" in discovering just how He did it as in accepting an infantile interpretation which up to date has got us nowhere. When we know how man is made, we shall understand the laws of his being; and it will not be necessary for him to die of apoplexy, stone in the gall-bladder or kidney, hardening of the arteries, or any other so-called disease caused by breaking the laws of his body and mind.

    If we do our duty to our children, shall we teach them the laws of their being and how to respect them, or shall we go on in the same old way, and, when they get sick from breaking the laws of their being and ruin their health, call a surgeon who will cut out God's mistakes? Think it over; or, if you're too fanatical or bigoted to think, pay a surgeon to cut out the effects of wrong living, and continue the cause.

    
LET US REASON TOGETHER!

    Let us do a little homely reasoning. We are inclined to be awed by the word "infinite." The infinite is limitless to our limited comprehension--it is a relative term and ambiguous; but, as we grow in experience, our once limited comprehensions take on extended dimensions. Each person's infinite is personal and varies from every other person's comprehension. We cannot think in terms of the limitless, and we should not try; for, if we know the analysis of an atom of salt, we know the analysis of the infinite amount there is in the world. This is true of all elements. If we know the analysis of a pound of butter, we know the analysis of the infinite amount contained in the world. If we know all about a man, we know all about all men. If we know what finite love is, we know that infinite love is of the same character.

    We should keep our feet on the ground--stay on earth--and be satisfied that all worlds are like our world.

    
HOW TO MEASURE THE INFINITE

    We know all by an intensive study of a part. If we know all about one disease, we know all about all diseases.

    We shall tell the reader all about Toxemia, and then he should know all about all diseases; for Toxemia is the basic cause of all diseases.

    Instead of beginning at the top of any subject, we should begin at the bottom and work up. The usual way for our finite minds is to accept the infinite on faith; then to us the comprehensible does not agree with our preconception, our faith is shocked, our house of belief is divided against itself, and we fall. This is the parting of the ways; and we must reconcile our faith and knowledge by transferring our faith to the belief that the road to all knowledge is by way of the comprehensible. We must either do this or live in doubt concerning the knowable, and accept the unknowable on faith.

    Every truth squares itself with every other truth; every department of science and reason blends into a unit. The laws of life are those of the cosmos; the laws of the universe are the laws of God. The road to an understanding of God is from rock to man, and through man to God. Every step must be a block of truth, or God, the goal, will be sidestepped. Behold the head-on collision of the Christian world and the wholesale massacre that took place during the World War--all due to undigested truth. The world is full of truth; but mental indigestion, due to wrong food combinations, is universal.

    Many think they know what I mean when I use the word "Toxemia," having referred to the dictionary for its definition.

    
TOXEMIA, THE BASAL CAUSE
OF ALL SO-CALLED DISEASES


Toxin Poisoning--Toxin: Any of a class of poisonous compounds of animal, bacterial, and vegetable origin--any poisonous ptomaine. (Standard Dictionary.)

    There are so many ways for the blood to become poisoned that, unless what I mean by "Toxemia" is thoroughly comprehended, there must be a confused understanding. This explanation is made necessary because even professional men have said to me: "Oh, yes, I believe in the poisoning resulting froin retained excretions (constipation) and ptomaine (food) poisoning."

    As stated before, a ptomaine poisoning resulting from the ingestion of food that has taken on a state of putrescence, or a poisoning resulting from this change taking place in food after it has been eaten, and which is generally called autotoxemia, is not an autogenerated poisoning. Both of these poisons are generated on the outside of the body, and must be absorbed before the blood can be poisoned. Food or poison in the intestines is still on the outside of the body. A suppurating wound, ulcer, or chancre is on the outside of the body, and if it causes septic (blood) poisoning, it will be because the waste-products are not allowed to drain--to escape. The discharge being obstructed, it becomes septic, and its forced absorption poisons the blood. Even vaccinia fails to produce septic poisoning, because its poison is discharged on the surface--on the outside of the body. Occasionally the waste-products are forced to enter the blood because of faulty dressings; then septic poisoning, with death, follows.

    
THE DEADLY GERM

    It should not be forgotten that unobstructed free drainage from wounds, ulcers, canals, ducts, keep them aseptic (non-poisonous). The deadly germ on the hands, lips, drinking-cups, hanging-straps of street cars--in fact, found anywhere and everywhere--is not deadly until it gets mixed up with man's deadly dirty, filthy physical and mental habits. There are people who cannot be taught cleanliness; they either scrub their bodies raw or neglect them overtime. It is an art to wear clothes and maintain a state of cleanliness conducive to health. Venereal and all skin diseases, including the eruptive fevers, are fostered by clothes. There is something more than prejudice, fanaticism, and partisanship in my reiterated allusions to the congenerie relationship of syphilis, vaccination, and smallpox. The kinship would have been settled long ago if vaccine and vaccinia were not commercialized. Will those with millions invested, and turning out large dividends, willingly be convinced that they are engaged in the wholesale syphilization of the people? It is not in keeping with our commercialized religion.

    The deadly germ must be mixed with retained, pent-up waste-products before it becomes metamorphosed into its deadly toxic state. The dog or other animal licks it out of his wound. When the "deadly germ" is osculated into the mouth, and from there into the stomach, it is digested. The normal secretions of the body, on the outside as well as on the inside of the body, are more than enough to get away with all the "deadly germs" allotted to each person.

    Normal persons are deadly to all germs and parasites peculiar to the human habitat.

    Normal people have no need of heaven or hell; these are conjurations of ignorance and filth on the search for artificial immunization. Truth immunizes the germ fallacy.

    Cures and immunization are the products of a civilization that does not civilize. Creedal religion is a cure and an immunization for those who would be good if evil did not betide them.

    Self-control and a knowledge of the limitations of our privileges bring to us the best in life; then, if we are contented to live one world at a time, we shall have the best preparation for the tomorrows (future) as they come. If we live well today--live for health of mind and body today--we need not worry about the germs that come tomorrow.

    Those who preach fear of germs today are the mental offspring of those who have preached fear of God, devil, hell, and heaven in the past. They do not know that the fear which they inculcate is more to be dreaded than the object of their warning. Fear does a thousand times more harm than any other one cause of Toxemia.

    Nature goes her limit in the prevention or absorption of any and all poisons. The indurated wall built at the base of ulceration is a conservative measure--it is to prevent absorption. In the matter of prevention, nature sometimes goes too far, and builds tumors and indurations so dense as to obstruct the circulation; then degeneration takes place, with slow absorption of the septic matter. This poisoning takes place very insidiously. It is called cachexia, and the names given to this pathology are syphilis or cancer; or, if of the lungs, it is called tuberculosis.

    This may be thought a very great digression from the subject of Toxemia; but, as all pathological roads lead to Rome--the unity of all diseases--an apology is not necessary.

    
THE MEDICAL WORLD IS LOOKING FOR CURES

    The medical world has been looking for a remedy to cure disease, notwithstanding the obvious fact that nature needs no remedy--she needs only an opportunity to exercise her own prerogative of self-healing.

    A few years ago a sick doctor offered dollars for a cure for cancer. If he had known the cause of disease, instead of being scientifically educated, he would not have died believing in the possibility of a cure, after nature had passed her eternal fiat of unfitness in his case. Cancer is the culmination of years of abuse of nutrition, and years of Toxemia from faulty elimination. Forcing the bowels to move is an old and conventional method of so-called elimination which gets rid of the accumulation in the bowels, causing an extra amount of water to be thrown out by the kidneys and bowels; but this forcing measure adds to enervation by its overstimulation, and further inhibits elimination proper--elimination of waste-products in the blood, the source of all disease-producing toxins. The most powerful eliminant is a fast. In other words, give nature rest, and she needs no so-called cures. Rest means: Stay in bed, poise mind and body, and fast. Nature then works without handicaps, unless fear is created by all the old fear-mongers, professional and lay, sending to the patient the warning: "It is dangerous to fast; you may never live through it." These wiseacres do not know that there is a vast difference between fasting and starving.

    Here is a hint for those kill-joys who are afraid to allow their patients to fast: You know, or think you do, that people who are forced to stay in bed from injury never do well, and this is especially true of old people. Why? Because they are overfed.

    
GERMS AS A CAUSE OF DISEASE

    Germs as a cause of disease is a dying fallacy. The bacteriological deadmarch is on, and those with their ears to the ground can hear it. Intuition is forcing the active medical minds to fortify against the coming revulsion; they are buckling on the armor of endocrinology. Endocrinology, focal infection, autogenous and synthetic remedies, vaccine and serum immunization, are some of the high points in the science of medicine today; but there is a lack of fundamental unity to the system; and nature abhors chaos as she does a vacuum.

    Toxemia accepts the germ (organized ferment) as it does the enzyme (unorganized ferment). Both are necessary to health.

    My theories have received but little attention except from plagiarists. A few, a very few, physicians know what I stand for. Those few, however, are enthusiastic, and have proved to their own satisfaction that the theory has a universal application. Many attempt to work Toxemia along with some little two-by-four pet curing system--it means petting a little personal pride; but it will not work. Toxemia is big enough for the best in any man.

    What more can be asked by any doctor than a philosophy of cause that gives a perfect understanding of the cause of all so-called diseases? To know cause supplies even the layman with a dependable cure and an immunization that immunizes rationally. Dependable knowledge is man's salvation; and when it can be had with as little effort as that required for a thorough understanding of the Philosophy of Toxemia there is little excuse for any man, lay or professional, to hazard ignorance of it.

    Toxin--the designating poison in Toxemia--is a product of metabolism. It is a constant, being constantly generated; and when the nerve-energy is normal, it is as constantly eliminated as fast as produced.

    The body is strong or weak, as the case may be, depending entirely on whether the nerve-energy is strong or weak. And it should be remembered that the functions of the body are carried on well or badly according to the amount of energy generated.

    
IMPORTANCE OF NERVE-ENERGY

    Without nerve-energy the functions of the various organs of the body cannot be carried on. Secretions are necessary for preparing the building-up material to take the place of worn-out tissue. The worn-out tissue must be removed--eliminated--from the blood as fast as it is formed, or it accumulates, and, as it is toxic, the system will be poisoned. This becomes a source of enervation.

    Elimination of the waste-products of tissue-building is just as necessary as the building-up process. As these two important functions depend on each other, and as both depend on the proper amount of nerve-energy to do their work well, it behooves all people who would enjoy life and health to the full to understand in what way they may be frugal in using nerve-energy so that they may learn how to live conservatively or prudently, thereby enjoying the greatest mental and physical efficiency, and also the longest life. (See chapter on "Enervating Habits.")

    To the ignorant, thoughtless, and sensual such suggestion and advice will seem unnecessary, or perhaps the whims or preachments of a crotchety person, or the qualms of a sated sensualist; but it is the writer's belief that the more sober and thoughtful will welcome a knowledge that will help them to become masters of themselves. So far the masses have trusted their health and life to a profession that has failed to make good. I say this advisedly; for now the supposed masters in the profession are looking for the causes of disease, and it should be obvious to any thinking mind that, until the cause of disease is found, certainly no dependable advice can be given as to how to avoid disease.

    Fifty-eight years of independent thinking, unbiased by sect or creed, have enabled me to discover the true cause of disease; and it is so simple that even a child can learn to protect itself against the said-to-be "diseases peculiar to children."

    "These are the times that try men's souls." If Tom Paine were here now, he would change the wording of that line to read: "These are the times that try men's nerves." Nerve-energy and good money are the commodities that are spent very rapidly these days. Chasing the dollar causes great waste of energy; and the dollar has been chased so much that it has developed wanderlust to such a degree that men enervate themselves catching up with a few, but prostrate themselves endeavoring to break them of their wander-habit. There are many ways to use up nerve-energy. It should be the ambition of everybody to conserve all the nerve-energy possible for the extraordinary amount required to keep the speeding-up necessary to adjust humanity to the automobile pace. This will come in time.

    Man adjusted himself to the change from the ox-cart, Dobbin the flea-bitten, string-halt, and blind, and the steamboats, on which our forebears took their honeymoon trips, to the "steam-cars" and high- stepping bays and family carriage.

    Many will go into the hands of the receiver before the nervous system becomes adjusted to high-power automobiles and flying-maehines.

    Without nerve-energy the functions of the body cannot be carried on properly. The present-day strenuousness causes enervation, which checks elimination, and the retained toxins bring on Toxemia.

    Everything that acts on the body uses up energy. Cold and heat require the expenditure of nerve-energy to adjust the body to the changes.

    After middle life, those who would keep well and live to be old must have a care concerning keeping warm and avoiding chilling of the body. They must let up on table pleasures and practice self-restraint in all ways. Allowing the feet to be cold for any length of time allowing the body to chill when a top-coat would prevent--is using up nerve-energy very fast.

    Work with worry will soon end in flagging energy--enervation.

    As no provision is made for the demand of an extra supply of energy at a given time, it is necessary, very necessary, to know how to conserve what we have and build more.

    
CONSERVATION OF ENERGY THE GREATEST
THERAPEUTIC MEASURE

    Now that I have found that enervation is the source of the cause of the only disease (Toxemia) to which mankind is heir, it is easy to see that the so-called science of medicine, as practiced, is an ally extraordinary of all the causes of enervation, and becomes a builder of disease instead of curing or ameliorating man's sufferings. Every so-called cure in its very nature causes enervation. Even the drugs used to relieve pain end in making a greater pain, and sometimes kill. The drugs to relieve cough in pneumonia sometimes kill the patient. Removing stone from the gall-bladder does not cure the cause, and more stones form.

    Rest from habits that enervate is the only way to put nature in line for curing. Sleep and rest of body and mind are necessary to keep a sufficient supply of energy. Few people in active life rest enough.

    
WHY ENERVATION IS THE CAUSE AND NOT
THE DISEASE

    Enervation per se is not disease. Weakness, lost power, is not disease; but, by causing a flagging of the elimination of tissue-waste, which is toxic, the blood becomes charged with toxin, and this we call Toxemia--poison in the blood. This is disease, and when the toxin accumulates beyond the toleration-point, a crisis takes place; which means that the poison is being eliminated. This we call disease, but it is not. The only disease is Toxemia, and what we call diseases are the symptoms produced by a forced vicarious elimination of toxin through the mucous membrane.

    When the elimination takes place through the mucous membrane of the nose, it is called a cold--catarrh of the nose; and where these crises are repeated for years, the mucous membrane thickens and ulcerates, and the bones enlarge, closing the passage, etc. At this stage hay-fever or hay-asthma develops. When the throat and tonsils, or any of the respiratory passages, become the seat of the crises of Toxemia, we have croup, tonsilitis, pharyngitis, laryngitis, bronchitis, asthma, pneumonia, etc. What is in a name? All are symptoms of the expulsion of toxin from the blood at the different points named, and are essentially of the same character and evolving from the one cause namely, Toxemia--crises of Toxemia.

    This description can be extended to every organ of the body; for any organ that is enervated below the average standard from stress of habit, from work or worry, from injury, or from whatever cause, may become the location of crises of Toxemia. The symptoms presented differ with each organ affected; and that gives color to the belief that every symptom-complex is a separate and distinct disease. But, thanks to the new light shed upon nomenclature (naming disease) by the Philosophy of Toxemia, every symptom-complex goes back to the one and only cause of all so-called diseases--namely, Toxemia.

    The symptoms that are called gastritis (catarrh of the stomach) are very unlike the symptoms of cystitis (catarrh of the urinary bladder); yet both are caused by crises of Toxemia--both become the locations for the vicarious elimination of toxin from the blood.

    It should be obvious to the discerning how extraordinarily illogical it is to treat catarrh of the nose as a local disease; or, when crises are repeated until ulceration takes place, and the mucous membrane becomes so sensitive that dust and pollen cause sneezing and watering of the eyes--symptoms called hay-fever--to treat these symptoms as a distinct disease caused by pollen. Rest and total abstinence from food, liquid and solid, and reforming all enervating habits, will restore nerve-energy; the elimination of toxin through the natural channels will take place, and full health will return. This state will remain permanently if the erstwhile victim of hay-fever, or any other so-called disease, will "stay put."

    The first elimination of toxin through the nose is called a cold. When this elimination is continuous, with exacerbation--toxin crises (fresh colds)--occasionally, ulceration takes place, bony spurs form, and hay-fever develops. These are all symptoms of toxin elimination. The cause is the same from the first cold to hay-fever. The catarrhal discharge that continues throughout the interims of fresh colds (crises of Toxemia) is chronic catarrh, named such in medical nomenclatures, and treated locally as though it were an independent, fiendish entity; when the truth is that the victim of so-called chronic catarrh keeps his system enervated by tobacco, alcohol, sugar and sweets of all kinds, coffee, tea, excessive eating of butter and bread, too much rich cooking, excessive eating of all foods, excess of sensual pleasures, etc. ( See chapter on "Causes of Enervation.")

    Keeping the system enervated prevents the reestablishment in full of elimination through the normal excretory organs. The organism, as time runs on, becomes more tolerant of toxin, and the "catching-cold habit" shows fewer (colds) crises of Toxemia. A greater number of the mucous membranes are requisitioned to carry out vicarious elimination. The whole organism begins to show deterioration. The so- called chronic diseases begin to manifest. In catarrh of the stomach the mucous membrane takes on thickening, hardening, ulceration, and cancer--all described in the nomenclature of medical science as so many distinctive diseases. But they are no more distinctive than President Washington was distinct from the boy George who cut down his father's cherry tree. Cancer was once the symptom-complex of a so-called cold; but, according to the Philosophy of Toxemia, it is the end of many crises of Toxemia. As the crises continued, symptoms changed, in accordance with the organic degeneration caused by the crises of Toxemia.

    Every so-called disease has the same inception, evolution, and maturity, differing only as the organic structure involved differs.

    Treating the various symptom-complexes as distinct entities is fully as scientific as salving the end of a dog's tail for its sore ear.

    All diseases are the same fundamentally.

    The cause travels back to Toxemia, caused by enervation, which checked elimination; and enervating habits of body and mind are the primary causes of lost resistance enervation.

    Every chronic disease starts with Toxemia and a toxemic crisis. The crises are repeated until organic changes take place. The chain of symptoms range from cold or catarrh to Bright's disease, tuberculosis, cancer, syphilis, ataxia, and other so-called diseases; all, from beginning to end, symptoms of the cumulative effects of crises of Toxemia.