Eruptive Diseases

What I have to say concerning eruptive diseases will be more heretical, if possible, than my teachings concerning other so-called diseases. Physicians, and most lay people, will not agree with me that there are no contagious and infections, in the sense usually understood--namely, that normal people can catch disease by coming in contact with sick people; that, for example, if a normal, unvaccinated child comes in contact with one sick of smallpox or diphtheria, it will "catch" the disease. This belief rests upon the theory that came in with Jenner, and was clarified by Pasteur's discovery of the cause of fermentation.

The germ theory cleared away the mystery of divine retribution--mysterious influences, witchcraft, and the thousand-and-one imaginings of ignorance and superstition, much of which still exists, and is found in high and low places; yes, it can be found conglomerated with some of the highest gray-matter development of our day--today. The belief is contagion, in the same sense that smallpox is contagious, is a modified form of the witchcraft of one hundred years ago. Typhoid Mary is a modern witch. She is made to suffer because of medical belief in an evil influence. Everyone once believed in witches; it was a disease of the mind. Such a belief is a libel on law and order. Yes, sir, such beliefs belong to sensualism and medical commercialism. The profession commercializes on the ignorance and sensuality of the people. It is a fatalistic belief, absurdly out of keeping with law and order. If health, happiness and long life are no'' the rewards for a wellordered life, then turn Beelzebub loose, and on with the dance of perdition.

Drunkenness starts with the first indigestion in a child's life. From this first drunk, many children are scarcely over one debauch before they are plunged into another. These drunks vary in intenseness from a so-called cold, or indigestion, and different forms of simple catarrhal fevers, to varying forms of the eruptive fevers, the intensity of which is aggravated by the amount of intestinal putrescence. Every so- called disease is a form of elimination. Eruption means elimination of auto-infection.

The several forms of these intestinal crises, or drunks, follow holidays or feast-days. The lightest drunks are named colds, "flu," tonsilitis; the heaviest, diphtheria. In those who eliminate through the skin (the eruptive fevers), the lightest form is called measles; the heavier, scarlet fever; the heaviest, black smallpox. When physical environments, local or general, are depressing - enervating to animal life--holiday and feast-day debaucheries are often followed by so-called epidemics of malignant types, with heavy mortality. When great psychological depression follows a world-crisis, such as succeeded the World War, an ordinary epidemic of colds becomes an extraordinary epidemic of "flu," from which the chronic food-drunkards, with enervated hearts from Toxemia, alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea, died when medicated. Adding drug stimulation to a body already loaded down by an excess of stimulation gave the coup to thousands of "flu" victims.

Speculating on germs as a cause of humanity's acute and chronic food inebriety, and the varying types of drunks above referred to, is an illustration of how medical gray matter can be built out of ignoring common, every-day experience and pedestalizing a remodeled superstition.

All so-called diseases--pathologies--have been subjected to intensive study for the purpose of discovering their cause, which was assumed at the beginning of the study to be a germ. Failure is almost inevitable when a discovery is undertaken with a mind prejudiced by preconceptions. The mind's eye is made amblyopic by preconceived opinions. It cannot see the mountains of causes on every hand, because its vision is centered and pre-occupied in looking for one object to the exclusion of everything else. This is the only explanation why a profession with the resources of the "regular" profession is unable successfully to apply its knowledge at the bed-side. It cannot compete with the motley crowds of cults which are in league with the powers that be. Instead of overcoming them with superior skill, it must use force to hold back an opposition the virtue of which consists, wittingly or not, in combining its forces with nature's curative powers. Drugs, serums, officious nursing, and feeding have queered and will continue to queer the profession's most sanguine expectations, founded on its most scientific therapeutic data.

Typhoid Fever (more a disease of adult life) is evolved by feeding and medicating acute indigestion and the treatment should be the same as for any of the foregoing so-called infectious fevers.

How to Assist Nature in Throwing Off Disease. --Disease is a crisis of Toxemia; it is an effort to eliminate retained toxin that has failed to pass out because the body has been enervated from various influences. When a crisis is on--when a so-called disease is in activity the symptoms complained of are nature in the throes of cleaning house. If the patient should be allowed to rest without food, except water to satisfy thirst, given daily enemas of warm water to aid nature in washing out the bowels until the offending decomposition is removed, and also given a ravage daily if the tongue is coated, such aid, if not allowed to degenerate into an overworked routine, is helpful. To wash a child's stomach, however, is not always possible without creating too much excitement. When it does, it is a doctor's prerogative to conserve energy, and not waste it by officiousness. Pain, restlessness, and high fever can be relieved by warm or hot baths. The usual pain and discomfort of a beginning crisis can be overcome in a few days by the use of the above suggestions, after which perfect quiet, a daily bath, and warmth to the feet are all the nursing or doctoring necessary. Positively no food of any kind should be given until elimination is completed, which will be known by a clean, moist tongue, a cool skin, and a normal pulse in fact, until the patient looks well and feels well. Then feeding may start with fruit juice the first day; the second day, buttermilk for the noon meal, and fruit juice morning and night; the third day, fruit for breakfast, a lamb chop, egg, or cooked vegetables with a vegetable salad at noon, and buttermilk for evening.

We overlook vital causes, looking for germs. We may study eruptive disease to the crack of doom, but the cause cannot be found in the disease. We are told in medical literature in textbooks--that eruptive fevers have periods of incubation--the periods of disease between the implanting of the contagion and the development of the symptoms. In the case of measles, this period is placed at two weeks, in scarlet fever, from a few hours to a week.

Suppose you study the differential diagnosis, all the symptomatologies of all the symptom-complexes of all the so-called eruptive fevers, and you do not know how to treat them when you learn to diagnose them, are you any better off than when you began to study? No, you are not. It is better to know what to do, and what not to do for those who are sick of any so-called disease than to know how to treat names.

A child takes sick; it coughs and sneezes; its eyes water; red blotches start on the face, then appear on the body. What are you going to do about it? Give cough medicine, use borax water in the eyes, and spray the nose? No, do not do such silly things! These symptoms mean that nature is throwing out toxin. Assist her, as directed above. Have you the foolish notion that there are many distinct diseases, and that there must be distinct and specific treatments?

Disease means a toxic state, brought on from retention of the waste-products of metabolism (broken-down tissue). It is well not to confuse Toxemia with the auto-infection from gastrointestinal putrescence. As a matter of fact, few people are infected from constipation per se. The infection that is synchronous with constipation is caused by excessive eating of animal foods, including milk. When the intake of animal food exceeds digestive power, decomposition takes place; following which, putrescent poisoning, in the form of eruptive fevers, appears. Combining starch with animal foods is at the bottom of all fatal maladies; in fact, the builder of infectious diseases.

At times these so-called diseases are so light that the eruption escapes notice and is only discovered by chance. For example, the glands under the jaw or side of the neck become enlarged from a past masked or slight infectious fever; or albumin will appear in the urine, indicating a slight foregoing infectious fever. When such symptoms appear, the child should be sent to bed, with heat to the feet, and feeding suspended for a few days; then he should be fed lightly until the symptoms are overcome. This care neglected may result in suppurating glands and chronic infection of the glandular system, ending years (more or less) afterward in pulmonary tuberculosis or kidney disease. The ear trouble may end in chronic otorrhea; and the albumin in the urine may end in chronic kidney disease.

The use of names to distinguish so-called diseases (symptom complexes), is to keep from confusing readers. As a matter of fact all so-called diseases are fundamentally a unit study Toxemia Explained.

Toxemia makes it possible for a food debauch to end in eruptive fevers, and infectious complications that accompany or follow.

A hundred per cent nerve-efficiency keeps toxin in the blood down to the normal amount. This means that the body is immune to putrescent infections. When a food debauch, or an accidental ptomaine poisoning, takes place, the poison may be thrown off quickly, and the victim returned to health in a few days; but if eating is resumed before the poison is thrown off, death may be the penalty. When enervation is great and Toxemia profound, a crisis may be induced by intestinal putrescence. Under such circumstances, the system is taxed to the limit in its effort to eliminate the accumulated poison--the skin, kidneys, intestines, and lungs are taxed to the limit. All the work of the body is suspended, and all reserve power is centered on elimination. There is no digestion. To feed is equivalent to throwing a monkey-wrench into the machinery. To know how to do nothing scientifically is the most profound wisdom. What can drugs do? Shock the nervous system. The shock may throw the balance of power on the side of death. When putrescent infection runs riot, presenting malignancy, it is because resistance is low, enervation pronounced, and the blood greatly toxemic.

Unity of Disease.--All so-called diseases are one. You think infectious diseases must be treated differently from common fevers? This belief in the individuality of disease has been a stumbling-block to medical progress, and will continue to be until the unity of all disease is recognized.

Enervation, checking elimination from the blood, causes Toxemia. When the toxin accumulation rises above toleration, a crisis is established. These crises are the simple so-called diseases. When crises are complicated by infection from putrescence in the bowels, we have so-called infectious diseases.

Without gastro-intestinal putrescence in a toxemic subject, there can be no eruptive fevers. Keep the body free from infection autodeveloped, and all disease will be sidestepped.

Every child is prepared by fond, overindulgent parents for all the sickness it will have in its childhood. Health is the heritage vouchsafed by the gods for every child. If the child does not have health, stupidity reigns in the household.

Parents enervate themselves before marriage in their effort to "keep up with Lizzy"--keep pace with modern life and their children are born with low resistance. As nutrition is the most important function of child-life, the child born with lowered resistance has not the digestive power of more fortunate children. Many modern mothers cannot nurse their babies. This necessitates artificial feeding, which is simple enough to understand, but does require some knowledge and careful technique. Carelessness in care of bottles, in the quantity and quality of milk, and, too often, in general cleanliness of the body and its environments ends in sickness. Unfortunately, there is a popular belief that baby-feeding means excessive feeding, and that only fat babies are healthy babies. Everything else being equal, the fat baby is the one that gets sick, and the one that develops intestinal protein putrescence, manifesting in diphtheria or one of the eruptive types of fever. One of the greatest mistakes in child-feeding is that of feeding milk and starch in the same meal.

Elimination of putrescence by way of the skin is peculiar to overfeeding in child-life. However, we do see eruptive fevers in grown-up people. Surface elimination is a comparative measure. Mortality in eruptive fevers would be much greater if the lungs should be selected as the point of exit of intestinal infection, instead of the surface of the body. In every epidemic, those cases that develop lung complications are always seriously sick. When they do not die, disagreeable sequels may develop, such as a cough, bronchitis, bronchial asthma, nephritis, sinusitis (inflammation of a sinus), inflammation of the lymphatic glands of the neck, ear, and back of the ear--commonly called "lump"; swelling under the jaw or ear, or on the side of the neck; or grandular enlargement--mastoiditis (inflammation of the mastoid cells)--is not uncommon. For the treatment of these diseases, operations are too often performed. Parents who are as phobic as the medical profession concerning the need of feeding the sick must go the limit. If they persist in feeding when sinuses and glands are infected, pus will form, and an opening must be made for drainage. If food is withheld, infections will resolve and health return without pus forming; but I do not advise food-drunkards to wait until the eleventh hour to cut out feeding. I have seen resolution take place in antrum infection after the X- ray showed pus--that is, after a half-dozen to a dozen doctors had so interpreted the X-ray shadow.