You Don’t Have to Be Sick

Trop, Jack. (1961). You Don’t Have to Be Sick. New York: Julian Press. https://www.healthscience.org/product/you-dont-have-be-sick/

 A step-by-step guide for returning to good health through the way of living called Natural Hygiene by NHA co-founder Jack Dunn Trop.

Pg 114

What not to eat

Beneficial, however, as has been my strictly farinaceous, fruit and vegetable food upon my physical and bodily health, and gratifying to me as my improvement in this respect has been, I count it but small compared with the increased intellectual and moral efficiency which has resulted therefrom. More than this, I declare that my spiritual faculties have been wonderfully energized; that I have grown into a better, truer, and more advanced knowledge of Christ and of the wants of humanity. I appreciate principles and forces, motives and plans for the amelioration of my fellowmen vastly better than when I lived under the old regime. I keep my passions, propensities, and appetites within my own handling. Every quality of my nature relates itself to normal expression much more readily and effectually; and I do most heartily commend abstinence from flesh of animals as food to every human creature under the sun who wishes to put away from himself the lusts of the flesh and put on the grace of the Spirit.

During these years I have been able, under God’s good providence, to give back health and strength and hope and heart and home to very many of my fellows, who, like myself, had been living in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity, by inducing them to forego substantially the use of the flesh of animals as their staple food. I am sure that there is a divine philosophy underlying the question how men shall eat and how they shall drink, and that it is very desirable to all who would rise to a higher plane of consciousness that they should do as I have tried to do—to eat and to drink to the glory of God.

JAMES C. JACKSON, M.D.,

How to Treat the Sick Without Drugs, 1869

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Health for the Millions

Shelton, H. (1968). Health for the Millions. Youngstown, OH. National Health Association. 

Dr. Herbert Shelton offers an introduction to the principles of Natural Hygiene and the true way of thinking about health and life. (MOBI, EPUB and PDF formats)

Pg 171

Even as late as our grandfathers’ time, in spite of the mighty work accomplished by Graham, Trall, Jackson, Page, Oswald and a host of other crusaders for fresh air and ventilated bedrooms, most people slept with their bedrooms closed to exclude the “night air.” They seem not to have realized that “night air” and “day air” are the same air and that the air in the room at night is as much “night air” as the air outside, except that it is more foul.

But, to make sure that no “night air,” damp air and cold air ever touched them to give them colds, La Grippe, bronchitis, pneumonia and rheumatism, they closed windows and doors, used curtains, screens, night caps and other means of excluding the air. Night air was simply bad and it did not have to be either damp or cold, as they excluded the air in summer and during droughts.

Pg 184

Graham stressed the importance of sunshine in bone growth and development. Dr. Jackson emphasized its importance in muscular strength and nerve health. Both Doctors Nichols and Trall emphasized its overall importance in the process of nutrition and in the preservation of health. Trall stressed its value in rickets and scrofula (glandular tuberculosis) and anemia. Trall also stressed the importance of sunlight in the growth and development of children. But none of these men thought of sunshine as a cure.

Arnold Rikili, a “nature cure” practitioner of Germany, is commonly credited with the modern revival of sunbathing, but he had nothing to do with its early use in America. He was too late to influence Graham, Trall, Nichols, Taylor, Jackson or Lewis. While Rikili thought of sunbathing as a cure, American Hygienists thought of it as a vitally important nutritive essential. Recent experiments with sunlight have more than confirmed the importance attached to sunshine by early Hygienists. It has been demonstrated that plants will not grow and reproduce in the absence of certain elements of the sun’s rays.

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The Natural Hygiene Handbook

Lennon, J., Taylor, S. (1996). The Natural Hygiene Handbook. National Health Association, Youngstown, OH.

Pg 20

“Pioneers of Natural Hygiene”

Some of the most prominent among these physicians were: Isaac Jennings, M.D. (1788-1874); William Alcott, M.D. (1798-1859) (cousin of Louisa May Alcott); James Caleb Jackson, M.D. (1811-1895); Russell Thacker Trall, M.D.(1812-1877); Thomas Low Nichols, M.D. (1815-1901); George H. Taylor, M.D. (1821-1896); Harriet Austin, M.D. (1826-1891); Susanna Way Dodds, M.D. (1830-1911); Emmett Densmore, M.D. (1837-1911); Robert Walter, M.D. (1841-1921); Felix Oswald, M.D. (1845-1906); John Tilden, M.D. (1851-1940); George S. Weger, M.D. (1874-1935); and Herbert M. Shelton, N.D. (1895-1985).

Pg 24

But there can be no law without penalty; and pain, sickness, sorrow, deformity, decrepitude, and untimely death are the direct and legitimate results of the violation of physical law.

James C. Jackson, M.D. (1811-1895)”

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The Science and Fine Art of Fasting

The Science of the Fine Art of Fasting – Vol. III

Shelton, H. (1934). The Science and Fine Art of Fasting, Vol III. National Health Association, Youngstown, OH.

Pg 23

The same criticism may be made of The Effects of Inanition and Malnutrition upon Growth and Structure (1925), by C. M. Jackson, M.S., M.D., LL.D. In a bibliography covering 108 pages, I was unable to locate the name of any man, other than Carrington, who is in a position to speak with authority on fasting. Jackson’s is a very valuable book, crammed with technical data and detailed experimental results, but lacking in any reference to the hygienic value of the fast.

Pg 28

Jackson (1925) says the term starvation “is more frequently used to indicate the extreme stages of inanition, leading to death” (p. xi). Unfortunately, this is too often not the case. Too often, the term starvation is applied to the whole period of abstinence from food from the first day to the end of death.

Pg 110

Jackson (1925) says: “During human inanition, the erythrocyte [red cell] count is often within normal limits, but sometimes increased (especially in total inanition and earlier stages), or decreased (especially in chronic and late stages). In animals, the red cell count appears more frequently increased in the earlier stages of total inanition, often decreasing later. In hibernation, the erythrocyte count is variable” (p. 239).

Normal blood contains from 4,500,000 to 5,000,000 and as high as 6,000,000 in healthy young men, red cells per cu. mm. and 3,000 to 10,500, with a probable average of 5,000 to 7,000 white cells per cu. mm. Dr. Eales’ blood was examined June 20, 1907, the first day of his fast, by Dr. P.G. Hurford, House Physician to Washington University Hospital, St. Louis. It showed the following:

Leucocytes 5,300 per cubic millimeter.

Erethrocytes 4,900,000 per cubic millimeter.

Hemoglobin 90%.

A blood test was again made on July 3, the 14th day of his fast, by Dr. S. B. Strong, House Physician, Cook County Hospital, which showed:

Leucocytes 7,000 per cu. mm.

Erethrocytes 5,528,000 per cu. mm.

Hemoglobin 90%.

It will be noted that the blood has materially improved on the fast.

A third examination of Dr. Eales’ blood made by Dr. R. A. Jettis, of Centralia, Ill., on August 2, showed:

Leucocytes 7,328 per cu. mm.

Erethrocytes 5,870,000 per cu. mm.

Hemoglobin 90%.

A further improvement in the condition of his blood is here seen.

Pg 114

Jackson (1925) says: “Like the skeleton, the teeth appear very resistant to inanition…. In total inanition, or on water alone, the teeth in adults show no appreciable change in weight or structure” (p. 156).

There is simply no truth in the notion that fasting injures the teeth. On the contrary, repeated tests and experiments in the laboratory have shown that the bones and teeth are uninjured by prolonged fasting. I have conducted thousands of fasts and I have never seen any injury accrue to the teeth therefrom. No one makes a trip to the dentist after a fast who would not have gone there had the fast not been taken. Mr. Pearson records that at the end of his fast, “teeth with black cavities became white and clear, all decay seemed to be arrested by the fast, and there was no more tooth-ache.

Pg 115

THE LUNGS

Jackson says: “In uncomplicated cases of total inanition, or on water only, the lungs are usually normal in appearance. The loss in weight of the lungs in such cases is usually relatively less than that in the body as a whole, though sometimes equal to, or even relatively greater than, that of the entire body. In the young, the lungs usually appear more resistant to loss in weight” (p. 361). That the lungs are greatly benefitted by fasting is shown by their recovery from “disease,” even tuberculosis, during a period of abstinence. Shorter fasts are usually required in lung “diseases,” than in “disease” of other organs and Carrington thinks this is due to the fact that lung tissue “possesses the inherent power of healing itself in a far shorter time, and more effectually, than any other organ which may be diseased.

Pg 118

Jackson says “that in the early stages of inanition” in young guinea pigs “the pancreas (like the other viscera) appears in general more resistant to loss in weight” and that “the pancreatic losses in the early stages of inanition” are “relatively slight,” while in “advanced stages” of inanition the “pancreatic atrophy is extreme, being as a rule relatively greater than that of the entire body” (p. 345). He also says: “Upon refeeding after inanition, the pancreas recuperates rapidly and is soon restored to normal size and structure” (p. 346). In humans the pancreas becomes small and firm during inanition. Cases are reported in which the pancreas appeared normal after death by starvation. Other cases are reported with considerable pancreatic destruction. Probably there were other causes than starvation at work in these latter cases.

Pg 167

The effects of fasting upon the sexual functions are so variable that no generalization is possible. The examples of the salmon and the Alaskan fur seal bull were given in a previous chapter. These are not typical. In dealing with the effects of fasting on the higher invertebrates, Jackson (1925) tells us that “the gonads themselves are usually very resistant to starvation, being (like the nervous system) as a rule among the last of the organs to undergo involution. There are, however, evident variations in different species and individuals” (p. 28).

Pg 170

Fasting accelerates the normal process of metamorphosis in tadpoles—indeed, the tadpoles of some frogs normally cease to eat at a certain stage in their development, and develop their legs at the expense of their tails. A similar “physiological inanition” is seen at certain stages of the metamorphosis of insects. These present numerous examples of dystrophic growth changes during fasting. Jackson found an increase of 22 per cent in the ovaries of adult albino rats subjected to acute inanition until they had lost 33 per cent in body weight.

Jackson (1925) says: “Morgulis, Howe and Hawk found no apparent abnormality in the ovaries of a dog as a result of protracted inanition. Ova were present in all stages of normal development” (p. 395).

Pg 193

Jackson (1925) points out that the teeth are “especially susceptible to rickets and scurvy” and that in adults, there are “slight changes in chemical composition, especially in chronic (incomplete) inanition. In the young, such inanition may delay the process of dentition, but persistent growth and development of the teeth (as of the skeleton) occur in young rabbits held at a constant body weight by underfeeding.

“The effects of partial inanition have been studied chiefly in rickets and scurvy. In both human and animal rickets there is delayed and abnormal dentition. Both enamel and dentine may be defective and imperfectly calcified” (p. 156).

Without additional quotations about the effects of deficient diets (partial inanition) upon the teeth in rickets and in scurvy, let us point out that dentists who have studied the effects of inadequate and deficient diets upon the teeth and do not know that fasting does not produce the same results as such diets are likely to conclude that fasting injures the teeth. Indeed, there is a tendency in all who study the effects of dietary inadequacies and deficiencies to run away from fasting; for, they reason, “if a defective diet produces such undesirable results, no food at all should produce much worse results.” They are blissfully unaware that fasting not only does not produce any of the so-called deficiency “diseases,” but that it is actually beneficial in everyone of them.

“Jackson says that: “In scurvy, the gums are markedly congested and swollen in about 80 per cent of adult human cases…. The alveolar bone and peridental membrane undergoes necrosis, with consequent loosening of the teeth, and ulcerations or pyorrhea may occur” (p. 156). In pyorrhea we see inflammation and ulceration of the gums, pus formation, loosening of the teeth, necrosis of the jaw, and even falling out of the teeth. In numerous cases of pyorrhea that we have cared for, the gum inflammation has subsided, the ulcers have healed, pus formation has ceased and the loosened teeth have become firmly fixed in their sockets, and all of this has occurred while the patient was fasting. The effects of fasting must not be confused with the effects of a white flour lard pie pasteurized milk mashed potato died. Not only do such conditions not develop during even a prolonged fast, but they are improved and many of their symptoms completely removed by a fast. This remarkable evidence of the value of fasting is explained by the fact that there is a disproportionate loss of the various constituent elements of the body during the fast and a redistribution of some of these, which results in a near approach to normal body chemistry.

Pg 368

AFTER-CARE OF THE ADDICT

It seems necessary to point out that any return to the prior mode of living, after the fast, will reproduce a state of enervation and toxemia, thus giving the rise to more suffering, which may tempt the “relief” seeker to again resort to the old “relief” measure. If he does this, he may again find himself in the grip of addiction. Only by first-class habits of living can any man guarantee himself against evils of all kinds. The eating habits of the former addict are of special importance.

The medical profession now says that drunkenness is a disease. They have not considered it so for any great length of time. On the other hand, the fact that it is a disease has long been recognized in Hygienic circles. Forward (1898) says that a “remarkable instance of success in the treatment of intemperance by means of a vegetarian diet was that of Dr. James C. Jackson, of Dansville, N. Y. Writing in ‘The Laws of Life,’ Dr. Jackson stated that ‘It is now twenty-five years since I took the position that drunkenness is a disease arising out of waste of the nerve tissue, oftentimes finding the centre of its expression in the solar plexus or network of nerves that lies behind the stomach, and reflecting itself to the brain and spinal column by means of the great sympathetic. Since that time there have been under my care not less than a hundred habitual drunkards, some of them with such a desire for liquor that if they could get it they would keep drunk all the time; others having periodic turns of drunkenness, during the paroxysms of which they would remain drunk for a week or a fortnight at a time. Everyone of these persons was so far gone as to have lost all self-respect, character, and position, and many of them fine estates. In only two instances have I failed to give back good health and sobriety where these individuals have been under my personal management and direction; and of all the agencies that have been brought to bear upon them, save the psychological, none have proved themselves so effective as those of diet and bathing. It is morally and physically impossible for any man to remain a drunkard who can be induced to forego the use of tobacco, tea, coffee, spicy condiments, common salt, flesh meats, and medicinal drugs. If his diet consists of grains, fruits and vegetables, simply cooked, and he keeps his skin clean, he cannot, for any length of time, retain an appetite for strong drinks. The desire dies out of him, and in its stead comes up a disgust. This disgust is as decidedly moral as it is physical. His better nature revolts at the thought of drinking, and the power in him to resist is strengthened thereby. The proof of this can be seen at any time in our institution, where we have always persons under treatment for inebriety. The testimony is ample, is uniform, is incontrovertible.’ And further on, Dr. Jackson declared, ‘I have found it impossible to cure drunkards while I allowed them the use of flesh-meats. I regard animal flesh as lying right across the way of restoration. Aside from its nutrition, it contains some element or substance which so excites the nervous system as in the long run to exhaust it, to wear out its tissues, and to render it incapable of normal action’ “ (pp. 66-68).

Note that he taught that both flesh and alcohol and other “stimulants” produce enervation—”waste of nervous tissue.” Enervation is the basic fact in all addiction and to avoid re-cultivation of a drug addiction, it is essential that the individual so live that he does not enervate himself. While Dr. Jackson, in the foregoing, emphasizes addiction to alcohol, what he says is applicable to any drug addiction. It should also be stated that flesh eating is far from being the only or the greatest enervating factor in the lives of our people. All sources of enervation should be studiously avoided. A well-nourished body, the energies of which are conserved by first-class habits, will not feel the “need” for stimulants and will not “need” to be “relieved” of discomforts and pains.

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The Greatest Health Discovery
Graham, S., Trall. R., Shelton, H. (2009) The Greatest Health Discovery. Youngstown, OH. National Health Association. 

Pg 17

It is because the world stands so much in need of this knowledge that we are determined to make it available to those who might come within the sphere of our influence. And though we have had to suffer as almost all persons do who undertake the promulgation of new truths, we have been enabled to endure, and that is what always wins victories. It is not so much a matter how much one has to suffer for the truth, if he can only endure the suffering, because by it there is a double influence for good wrought out. The truth is made to come home to the consciousness of persons and the reflex effects of it are good upon persons who have to suffer for it.

Pg 22

It was common during this period for patients to be bled, blistered, purged, puked, narcotized, mercurialized and alcoholized into chronic invalidism or into the grave. The death rate was high and the sick man who recovered without sequelae was so rare as to be negligible.

Writing in the Water Cure Journal, January 1862, Dr. James C. Jackson says that the practices of burning, blistering and cauterizing had fallen off. Blistering had been almost as universally practiced as bleeding and for as wide a variety of conditions. “But a few years ago”, he says, “if a man had a pain in his neck and sought medical advice, the physician was sure to put on a blister. If he had a pain in the side and escaped blood-letting, he was sure to have a blister as a substitute. If he had a violent headache and his physician could not readily determine what caused it, more likely than not he would apply a blister to some part of the head; or if he desired to appear very skillful, he would put it upon some remote part of his body, intending thereby, as common folks would say, ‘to draw the pain away’. Blistering was a common method of treating the following diseases: congestion of the brain, inflammation of the brain, sore eyes, sore throat, inflammation of the stomach and lungs, of the liver, of the spleen, spinal irritation, bilious, typhus and typhoid fevers and a great many other diseases.

For at least a century, strychnine was the best remedy the profession had for palsy, paralysis and paralytic affections. It was used to kill cats and dogs; it was deadly to hogs and cattle and, when given as a poison, slaughtered human beings. But when given as a medicine, it was considered a tonic, a nervine, a remedy for the palsied. Another favorite tonic of the period, one which was administered in all cases of fever and came to be regarded as a specific in malaria, was the protoplasmic poison quinine.

Pg 24

Writing of “Great Changes in Medical Practice”, January, 1862, James C. Jackson, M.D. said: “Take for instance the subject of blood-letting. Since I have grown to manhood, I can recollect the practice to have been such that there was scarcely a morbid condition to induce relief from which some physician could not be found to advocate the practice of blood-letting. Physicians used to bleed for congestion of the brain, sore eyes, spinal disease, sore throat or swelled tonsils, asthma, inflammation of the lungs, pulmonary consumption, diseases of the heart, dyspepsia, liver complaint, enlargement of the spleen, inflammation of the bowels, piles, genital diseases, rheumatism, neuralgia, and all cases of fever, and in fact, for every particular and morbid condition which could be found. To such an extent did venesection run, that it was not only practiced in the treatment of human disease, but it was almost universally practiced in the treatment of disease of domestic animals. The horse-doctor bled, the cow-doctor bled, the dog-doctor bled, the hog-doctor bled, the sheep-doctor bled. Whoever had any domesticated animal—saving and excepting always the cat—which showed symptoms of sickness, proceeded to bleed it. Horses were bled in the mouth and in the neck, chickens were bled under the tongue, cattle were bled in the neck and in the end of the tail, pigs were bled in the leg, sheep in the ears and in the tail, dogs in the forelegs, and so on through the whole range of domesticated animals; whoever owned them, whenever they were sick, sought relief for them by the aid of the fleam and the knife.

Pg 32

Among professional men of his time, Dr. Jennings seems to have made but one convert. Dr. William Alcott of Boston became an advocate of the Jennings’ theories and practices and rejected those of the hydropaths. Jennings’ work did greatly influence such professional men as Drs. Trall, James Jackson and successors in the field of natural hygiene such as Robert Walter, Charles Page, Felix Oswald. Dr. Jennings, unfortunately, was not a crusader, a fact that was very harmful to the early days of the Hygienic Movement. Had he promulgated his views and practices with greater ardor and attacked the water cure system with more force, many mistakes of the early Hygienists may have conceivably been avoided.

Pg 57

James Caleb Jackson, M.D., was born March 28, 1811, in Manlius, New York. He received his degree in medicine from Syracuse College. While only a youth he entered ardently into politics and was a staunch advocate of abolition. When his health broke down in 1847, he became the patient of Dr. S. O. Gleason, a hydro-hygienist of Cuba, New York. After four months under this care, Dr. Jackson entered into partnership with Dr. Gleason and Theodosia Gilbert, and they established a Hygienic Institute at the head of the Skaneteles Lake, which became widely known as the Glen Haven Water Cure. Gleason sold his interest to his two partners in 1849 and they continued to conduct the Institute until 1858 when Jackson left for Dansville, N.Y. where he opened Our Home Hygienic Institute. The name was changed in 1890 to the Jackson Sanitarium, which was once the largest Hygienic Institution in the world.

During the early part of the 1860’s, Mrs. Ellen G. White, founder of the Seventh Day Adventist Movement, and her husband, James, visited Dr. Jackson’s institution. There she saw first hand the Natural Hygiene principles at work.

Pg 62

In 1872, The Health Reformer of Battle Creek, Michigan, published a small work by Dr. Trall under the title The Hygienic System, in which he defined the Hygienic System as the “treatment of disease by Hygienic agencies”. It should be noted that The Health Reformer was a publication of Ellen G. White, the Seventh Day Adventist. Dr. Trall’s books were advertised in the magazine and he conducted a column in it. Mrs. White bought all of the books written by Drs. Trall, Jackson and Sylvester Graham and finding them in harmony with her teachings, quoted generously from them in her own numerous writings. Much of the material in her famous book How to Live, consists of material from the natural hygiene pioneers.

Pg 64

Other evidences of the emphasis upon Hygiene and the trek away from hydropathy are found in the titles as well as the subject matter of other Hygienic magazines of the time. Dr. Jackson called his magazine The Laws of Life. Mrs. White, leader of the Seventh Day Adventists, who embraced Hygiene and propagated it among her religious followers, entitled her magazine Health Reform.

Pg 73

Almost as active in the demand for women’s rights and in the dress reform movement as Mary Gove, was Harriet Austin, M.D., adopted daughter and associate of Dr. James C. Jackson, who was born in Connecticut in 1826. Dr. Austin, who edited The Laws of Life for a number of years, was one of the early graduates of the American Physiological and Hydropathic College. She was among the first women in the world to receive the degree Doctor of medicine, having received it a few years before the women’s medical college was established.

Pg 76

Dr. Jackson declared that the changes in medical practice that occurred during his lifetime had been due “clearly and wholly to the promulgation of the principles” of Hygiene, and had come about during the period that he and Dr. Trall had been “recognized as Hygienic practitioners”.

Pg 96

“Natural Hygiene has always advocated that everyone should have a sound understanding of his body and its functions. The early Hygienists such as Graham, Trail, Jennings, Shew, Jackson, and later, Tilden and Shelton produced many fine works and publications for the education of the layman, so that he could care for himself in health and disease, with particular emphasis on brushing away the cobwebs of ignorance and prejudice. The sexual function was treated with the same respect and reverence that was held for the entire body. Habits which served the body required discipline and the restraint helped to make it beautiful.

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Natural Hygiene: The Pristine Way of Life

Shelton, H. (1968). Health for the Millions. Natural Hygiene: The Pristine Way of Life Youngstown, OH. National Health Association. 

Pg 21

How is a man who is already sick to be made less so by swallowing a substance that would sicken, even kill him if he were to take it in a state of health? Whoever has had his bowels moved into convulsions by cathartics, his teeth rotted by mercurials, his liver enlarged and impaired by tartar emetic knows that the effects of drugging are many and varied, but always evil. In the days of which we write, patients were bled, blistered, purged, puked, narcotized, mercurialized and alcoholized into chronic invalidism or into the grave. The death rate was high and the sick man who recovered without sequelae was so rare as to be negligible. It is certain that if well persons had been put to bed and subjected to the same treatment to which the sick were subjected, they would have inevitably been made very sick and some of them would have been killed. Writing in the Journal, January 1862, Dr. Jackson says that the practices of burning, blistering and cauterizing had fallen off. Blistering had been almost as universally practiced as bleeding and for as wide a variety of conditions. “But a few years ago,” he says, “if a man had a pain in the neck and sought medical advice, the physician was sure to put on a blister. If he had a pain in the side and escaped blood-letting, he was sure to have a blister as a substitute. If he had a violent headache, and the physician could not readily determine what caused it, more likely than not he would apply a blister to some part of the head; or if he desired to appear very skillful, he would put it upon some remote part of the body, intending thereby, as common folks would say, ‘to draw the pain away.’ Blistering was a common method of treating the following diseases: congestion of the brain, inflammation of the brain, sore eyes, sore throat, inflammation of the stomach and lungs, of the liver, of the spleen, spinal irritation, bilious, typhus and typhoid fevers, and a great many other diseases too numerous to mention. Now the day of blistering has nearly gone by.

Dr. Jackson was a bit optimistic. Blistering was still being practiced when the present author was a young lad. Not only did drug stores handle blistering plasters in the early part of this century, but physicians prescribed them and patients were tortured by them. In Jackson’s day and prior thereto, physicians would bleed for palpitation, puke for bitter stomach, purge for a torpid state of the bowels, blister for pains in the side, put plasters on the chest for pains in the chest; but they would never think of removing causes. Treatment grounded upon erroneous diagnosis and indefensible in the light of later developments has always been scientific practice while in vogue. Prof. N. Chapman, M.D., while professor of medicine in a Philadelphia medical college, said to his class that by giving calomel to their patients, they could in the course of one tolerably successful season lay the foundation of the business of a lifetime, as they would ever after have as much as they could do to patch up the broken constitutions they would make during that one season. Calomel in large and frequent doses was, at that time, the chief anchor of practice among the allopaths. An old couplet has it: “Their souls were sent to heaven or hell by doctor’s dose of calomel.

Pg 24

According to the legend, Robin Hood was bled to death by a man to whom he had resorted for relief from an inflammatory disease. The physician or bleeder is said to have seized the opportunity to rid the country of the noted marauder. Whether the legend is true or not, the bleeding practice accounted for many thousands of deaths. There is an old story in British medical literature of a renowned physician, who, when one of his patients succumbed to exhaustion from repeated bleedings and an autopsy showed the deceased’s blood vessels to be quite empty, gloried, nevertheless, in the fact that by withdrawing the blood he had conquered the inflammation. He had too! He had so reduced his patient that he was incapable of producing either fever or inflammation. Writing of “Great Changes in Medical Practice,” January 1862, James C. Jackson, M.D., said: “Take for instance the subject of blood-letting. Since I have grown to manhood, I can recollect the practice to have been such that there was scarcely a morbid condition to induce relief from which some physician could not be found to advocate the practice of blood-letting. Physicians used to bleed for congestion of the brain, sore eyes, spinal disease, sore throat or swelled tonsils, asthma, inflammation of the lungs, pulmonary consumption, diseases of the heart, dyspepsia, liver complaint, enlargement of the spleen, inflammation of the bowels, piles, genital diseases, rheumatism, neuralgia, in all cases of fever, such as intermittent fever, remittant fever, typhoid fever, typhus fever, yellow fever, ship fever, black tongue, dysentery, dengue and, in fact, for every particular and special morbid condition which could be found. To such an extent did venesection run, that it was not only practiced in the treatment of human disease, but it was almost universally practiced in the treatment of diseases of domestic animals. The horse-doctor bled, the cow-doctor bled, the dog-doctor bled, the hog-doctor bled, the sheep-doctor bled. Whoever had any domesticated animal–saving and excepting always the cat–which showed symptoms of sickness, proceeded to bleed it. Horses were bled in the mouth and in the neck, chickens were bled under the tongue, cattle were bled in the neck and in the end of the tail, pigs were bled in the leg, sheep in the ears and in the tail, dogs in the fore-legs; and so on through the whole range of domesticated animals; whoever owned them, whenever they were sick, sought relief for them from such sickness by the aid of the fleam and the knife.

Pg 30

As evidence of the influence exerted by the American movement upon European thought and practice, American Hygienic journals and books had a wide distribution in England. Trall, Nichols and Gove lectured in England, while Nichols and Gove published in England a magazine entitled, the Herald of Health. An abridged edition of Graham’s Science of Human Life was also published in that country. Theobald Grieben of Berlin published in the German language the following translations of books by American Hygienists: Tea and Coffee, by Alcott; Chastity, Science of Human Life and Fruits and Vegetables, by Graham; Science of Love, by Fowler; Diseases of the Sexual Organs, by Jackson; and Sexual Abuses, by Trall. A German translation of The Curse Removed by Nichols (a book on painless childbirth) was translated by a German physician and published in Germany. The physician played fast and loose with the translation and made Nichols recommend drugs in the German edition.

Pg 35

The movement initiated by Graham and Alcott and measurably contributed to by Mary Gove, and which was early joined by Dr. Jennings, represents the beginning of the Hygienic movement. The American Physiological Society numbered among its members in the various cities several medical men, but it would carry us too far afield to list the names of these and it is not known how many of them actually abandoned the drugging practice and confined themselves in the care of the sick to Hygiene. This was only the beginning and many subsequent men, especially Trall, Taylor, Nichols and Jackson, added their weight and thought and their experience to the evolution of the new but old way of life.

Pg 38

The first annual meeting of the National Health Association was held in Caneserage Hall in Dansville, New York, in the evenings of the two days of September the 14th and 15th, 1859. Arrangements were under the immediate auspices of Dr. James C. Jackson and his associates. Dr. Trall served as chairman and proceeded immediately, upon taking the chair, to explain the fundamental and radical differences between the Hygienic System and the systems of drug medication. The convention unanimously elected Dr. Trall as president of the Association for the ensuing year and elected 29 vice presidents from states as far apart as Maine and Texas, Vermont and Utah, New Hampshire and Mississippi.

Jackson declared that the changes in medical practices that occurred during his lifetime had been due “clearly and wholly to the promulgation of the principles” of Hygiene. They had come about, he said, during the period that he and Dr. Trall had been “recognized as Hygienic practitioners.” “For half of a life time of an entire “generation,” he said, “has this Journal (the Water-Cure Journal) been the advocate of the Hygienic theory of treating disease.”

Let it not be said that medical schools were quick to adopt the principles and practices of Hygiene. In The Science of Health, March 1873, Trall quotes the following statement from an article on “Medical Schools” which appeared in the New York Medical Record: “The principles of Hygiene, too, with sanitary laws, should have appropriate places in our systems of education.” Then referring to the importance of Hygiene and sanitation and pointing out that medical men in general were ignorant of them, Trall asked: “Where, among the one hundred and fifty medical colleges of the civilized world, is there a chair of Hygiene or a professorship of sanitary laws?

Pg 42

There was considerable controversy at the time between hydropathists over the matter of which water, soft or hard (mineral laden), was best for use in hydropathic practice. Some insisted upon soft water, while others credited the minerals in hard water with remarkable curative efficacy. Dr. Jackson castigated hydropathists who used hard water, saying he did not know one of them who did not also use drugs. He indicated also that they gave very little attention to diet, did not serve plain fare and fed condiments. Also, he said that they fed stall-fed meats to their patients. On the other hand, those devotees of hydropathy who mixed drugs with their hydriatic practices called all who rejected drugs “radicals,” “ultra,” etc.

Pg 43

Once raised in the mind, one has no more power to lay down or lay aside an awakening doubt than a frightened girl has to dismiss a ghost. The doubt simply will not down; it is ever present with us. When a man begins to doubt the drug system, it is difficult to stop. Strange, is it not, how a new idea, interpenetrating one’s brain and getting within the range of one’s consciousness, quickens his whole sensibility and forces his intellect to act in spite of his prejudices and desires to the contrary. An example of the transforming power of a new idea is supplied us by Dr. Jackson’s conversion to hydropathy.

He explains in an article in the October 1861 issue of the Journal that he had just as much faith in the dogmas and postulates of the allopathic school of medicine in which he had been educated as he had in the creed of the church of which he was a member, and that he had no more desire to disbelieve his allopathic education than he had to become an infidel in religion; but he had come face to face with a group of facts that varied in their character and which had been presented to his consideration from different angles and under different forms and that challenged his attention and demanded of him an account of them, upon any acknowledged and well-settled philosophy within the sphere of that school of medicine whose pupil he was, and the averments in which he had always cherished the most implicit reliance and faith. He tells us that he tried to set them aside, an act for which he was ashamed. “For one ought always to be ashamed to be compelled to say that he was ever disposed to set aside his reason and be governed by his prejudices. But, he had the old faith and the old love and the fervor of affection for old things was upon him; he had not learned that no man has the right to set aside truth or to call it common. He struggled to dismiss the issue and to force himself to ignore the plenitude and power of the facts and remain uninterested and uninquiring.

And what were these facts? He had seen a number of patients recover health from apparently hopeless conditions without drugs; within a few months these so-called incurables were walking about quite vigorously and ultimately returned home in good health. He reasoned to himself: “What power is it that has done this work?” He answers: “One naturally would, under such a glimmer of light as I had, be disposed to ascribe the result to some specific agent. I jumped, as many people have since done when thinking this subject over, to the conclusion that water was entitled to the credit of it. In other words, I reasoned about it just as persons generally do, and as you do about the efficacy of medicinal agents.

Jackson thus repeated an old and common mistake–that of mistaking coincidence for cause. Every so-called curative means has been established in just this same way. If it is used and the patient recovers, recovery is attributed to its use and the healing power of the body is always ignored. There is no more reason to think that water used hydropathically restores the sick to health than there is to think that drugs do so.

Pg 47

Writing to unbelievers in the October 1861 issue of the Journal, Dr. James C. Jackson differenciates between hydropathy and Hygiene in the following words: “You do not believe in Water Cure for the treatment of disease, nor do you believe in that more comprehensive system of treating human ailments which is known by the name Hygeo-Therapeutics and which embraces within its scope the use of all agents which are in their nature health-producing or health-preserving, but you do believe in the use of medicines which are poisonous, though I very much doubt that you can give a reason therefor …

Pg 50

Other evidences of the emphasis upon Hygiene and the trek away from hydropathy are found in the titles as well as the subject matter of other Hygienic magazines of the time. Dr. Jackson called his magazine The Laws of Life. Mrs. White, leader of the Seventh Day Adventists, who embraced Hygiene and propagated it among her religious followers, entitled her magazine Health Reform. Dr. Walter entitled his magazine The Laws of Health; later the title was changed to Health. Dr. Dodds published a magazine under the title of The Sanitarian. Mr. Albert Turner, who was for years with the Fowler and Wells Publishing Company and associated with Trall on the staff of The Science of Health, founded and published Health Culture Magazine, which, during the first 30 years of its existence, at least, was a Hygienic publication. Tilden’s magazine, at first known as The Stuffed Club, then changed to Philosophy of Health and later to Dr. Tilden’s Health Review and Critique, was published as a Hygienic magazine. Everywhere the trend was away from hydropathy and the emphasis was placed upon Hygiene and health.

Pg 96

Related to this very subject is a statement made by Dr. Jackson that “among the rules–organic, fundamental or vital, as you may please to call them–which nature has for the preservation of health to her subjects, is this: the removal of disease from parts or portions of the body which can ill afford to bear derangement to parts or portions which can much better afford to be diseased.” His examples are not convincing, but suggestive. He said: “General disturbance of the system is not near as likely to follow inflammation of the mucous lining of the eyelids as it is to follow inflammation of the mucous lining of the stomach. If, from any cause, there is likelihood of the appearance of inflammation of the latter, nature, unmeddled with, is sure to do one of two things: either set up direct curative action, or remove the difficulty by some organ whose derangement is comparatively of little consequence. The latter action is what physicians call metastasis, or change in the seat of the disease and is common, but salutary, where the vital or protective forces of the system produce it, and is also common, but quite otherwise than salutary, where the changes are produced by drugs.”

If disease is a remedial effort, why do not the sick recover? The answer to this perfectly logical question is: sick people do get well. They get well in all cases, except three. These are:

1. In cases where the causes of disease are overwhelming.

2. In cases where the causes of disease are maintained beyond the power of recovery.

3. In cases in which the remedial effort is suppressed or thwarted by drugs and treatments that frustrate the powers of life and render ineffectual the efforts toward restoration.

Pg 131

Dr. Jackson warned that Hygienists should be cautious in their application of Hygiene to those whom he called the “drug-smitten,” making as few mistakes as possible. This is in line with the warning given by other Hygienists about caring for those who have been damaged by much drugging. They are by no means easy patients to care for.

Not every patient who turns to Hygiene successfully applies its measures and not every practitioner who calls himself a Hygienist properly administers Hygienic care. Because miraculous recoveries do not continually result from an indiscriminate, haphazard and often injurious routine of Hygienic applications, people become discouraged with the system and its practitioners and often disgusted with its consequences. Happily, however, large numbers of people are now studying Hygiene in earnest, with the view of understanding precisely what may be expected from Hygienic means and the proper ways of securing such benefits.

Pg 138

In the August 1851 issue of the Journal, one Dr. Wilmarth stresses the value of abstinence in disease. In an article published in 1856, Dr. James C. Jackson, discussing the evils of drugging the sick, said: “What your patient wants is abstinence from food and brain quiet …” S. M. Landis, M.D., writing in the Journal, September 1857, said: “In acute and inflammatory diseases, no food should be used …”

Pg 147

Dr. James Caleb Jackson was a notable exception to this rule. He laid great stress upon crises and the need for them. In the June 1857 issue of the Journal, he not only elevates water-cure processes to top rank in the care of the sick, but stresses the need for crises in the process of recovery. He discusses this subject at some length in his controversy with the allopaths, these having severely criticized and condemned the crisis-inducing practice. Declaring crises to be “harbingers of redemption,” he proceeds to explain the why and wherefores of crises. He explained that medical men see no such crises in their practice because their modes of treatment are such that the life forces must war against them, whereas his methods of care (chiefly hydropathic) were most gratefully received by the body.

“He explains that whatever the disease of the patient, “only treat the case naturally, that is, scientifically–not artificially, that is, empirically or quackishly – and before the patient gets well a critical state will show itself, and which will be from various causes, more or less severe, but in no instance dangerous, but, on the other hand, decidedly encouraging to the patient as well as to the physician …” He thought that under “natural” or “scientific” treatment (by which was meant water-cure) the body was so invigorated that it mounted a determined resistance to accumulated impurities, while under “artificial” (drug) treatment, the body was expending its energies so prodigally in expelling the drugs that it had no energy with which to evolve a crisis.

Dr. Jackson says that: “Four out of five of my patients have crises of some sort. Ninety-nine out of each hundred who have them are benefitted by them, or, to speak perhaps more correctly, are better after them.” He also says that: “For my own part, I hail crises. They are like a finger-board at a cross-road … a crisis is like a light shining in a dark place–it makes darkness visible.”

Explaining the forms that crises take, he said: “In the treatment of chronic disease, the crisis is quite apt to be the same disease in an acute form. Thus, chronic rheumatism is quite likely to show critical action in the shape of acute rheumatism, which latter is much more easily managed than the former and when overcome, the patient puts on good, sound, vigorous health.” Boils, ringworms, rash, miliary eruption, diarrhea, diuresis, chills, fever, vomiting, headache, neuraligia, pains in the back and other such developments are listed by him as crises. The newer term for them is “reactions.

Crises were thought to be revivals of formerly suppressed acute disease–the suppression being done with drugs. In recovering from long–standing states of chronic disease, the crises were supposed to develop in inverse order of the occurrence of the development of the acute diseases with which the patient had suffered. Chiropractors will here recognize the origin of their notion of “retracing,” which they borrowed from the nature curists. Dr. Jackson presents a case to illustrate this inverse order of critical developments.

He cited a male patient who suffered with “fever and ague” (probably malaria) seven years before coming to him. In the iterim the man had suffered with “bilious fever,” dyspepsia, liver complaint, hemorrhoids and severe chronic constipation. He consulted Dr. Jackson for debility, this affecting chiefly the reproductive system–probably impotency. He says: “I placed him under treatment and his ailments took the back track and he had every one of these diseases over again, closing up with fever and ague. It took him nine months to get well, but he has not had a sick day since and can do very hard work and do it well. It is only fair to say that the appearance of these various ailments was symptomatic, lasting but a little while, but he passed over the ground retrogressively … and he closed his sickness at the beginning.

In the October issue of the Journal, replying directly to the statements made by Dr. Jackson, Taylor lamented the fact that both patients and practitioners continued “to overlook the great fundamental principles that underlie our system and, like the allopath, continue to seek health through some formidable operation.” He pointed out that “health does not necessarily follow forced acts of elimination, however complete or long continued they may be, or by whatever means it may be effected, since this does not imply, on the part of the system, the ability of self-regulation of function.

He says that it was frequently asserted by water-cure practitioners that “all the virtues of drugs are embodied in this single substance (water), in its power to produce emetic, stimulant, anti-febrile and a host of other effects, rivaling the vaunted qualities of remedies set forth in the most approved pharmacopoias. Some argue for a verbal modification of this statement, in the distinction that one set of curative measures employs poisons while the other does not. This distinction becomes insignificant,” he says, “when effects are regarded, in which we are really to decide which is least inimical to vital welfare, rather than upon abstract chemical quality.

He further said that “it is this reliance upon the use of water to produce these manifestations, not inaptly called crises, that is the cause of much danger to the perpetuity of the system of medicine that we employ, and though the ignorant and empirical use of these means be decidedly better than any other, because based on a higher fundamental idea, yet the practice should be carefully guarded lest it degenerate into a practice no better than the theory.”

“No one will contend,” he said, “that what is called Water Cure crisis is absolute health. The effects of aloes might as well be called health. In both cases the system does the best it can under the circumstances to repel unnatural impressions. Whether drugs or water be employed, the organs may suffer a depression of their vital capacities from the inordinate tax imposed upon them and when repeated impressions upon the sensory organs be the chief means employed, abundant injury can follow, if the means are in inordinate excess.

Pg 149

Coming to direct reference to Dr. Jackson’s article, he says: “In spite then, of authority not altogether unknown to readers of the Journal, I maintain that, in the practice of Medical Hygiene, water is no ‘medicamentum,’ nor is it a ‘specific remedy for disease,’ as distinct from whatever else is appropriate to the wants of the system … To maintain the opposite faith is a stronger implication in favor of specific medication than is often claimed by the more intelligent of any school of practice. Let us cultivate a willingness to let the doctrine of crises and specifics go to the partisans that rely most on them, the vendors of pills and balsams. Though ‘four out of five get a crisis and get well after it,’ as they would in the case of drugs, many of my patients recite the tale of such a getting well with deep sorrow.

The two views of crises, as they prevailed in Hygienic and near-Hygienic circles in the last century are, perhaps, not as antagonistic as they may at first appear. The differences seem to grow more out of differences in emphasis than of principle. If we exclude the forced crises that were so common under the heroic processes of hydropathy and think only of those spontaneous crises that occasionally arise in the course of disease, whether one is being treated or not, both views are the same. We know that when enervating palliatives and forcing measures are discarded, the crises are not as common as otherwise. Thus it was that the two views of the crisis, as we have here pictured, grew directly out of the opposite modes of care of the chronic sufferer.

Pg 162

Assuming the validity of their immunizing programs, they take into consideration only a few of the symptom complexes with which man suffers and leave the great mass of human suffering outside of the reach of their preventive measures. The insufficiency of medicine’s program of prevention is admitted by medical men themselves when they say that disease is inevitable, that health is a mirage. In the words of Dr. James C. Jackson, the present author says: “I am disgusted with sickness. I am tired at the sight of it. I do not believe in its necessity, nor in its propriety. I detest the philosophy that argues that to be ill is to be natural, and I will not accept any generalizations as sound that lead to such conclusions. The world is all wrong on this matter, and I rejoice in any movement from any quarter that legitimately seeks to set the world right.

Pg 226

Almost as active in the demand for woman’s rights and in the dress reform movement as Mary Gove, was Harriet N. Austin, M.D., adopted daughter and associate of Dr. James C. Jackson. Dr. Austin, who edited The Laws of Life for a number of years, was one of the early graduates of the American Physiological and Hydropathic College. She was among the first women in the world to receive the degree, doctor of medicine, having received this degree a few years before the women’s medical college was established. Dr. Austin was a close personal friend of Clara Barton and Mrs. Barton left, in her own handwriting, a stirring tribute to the sterling qualities and professional abilities of Dr. Austin. Harriet N. Austin was born in Connecticut on August 31, 1826; she retired from active practice in 1882 and died in North Adams, Mass., April 27, 1891.

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Let us take the case of James Caleb Jackson, M.D., who founded the institution in Dansville, N.Y., and who made an international name for himself–was he a hydropath or a Hygienist? He called himself both; he employed both systems; he arrived at the point where he called his plan of care Psycho-Hygiene. In spite of this, I have never been certain where to place him.

He was an admirer of Graham and Jennings, a warm friend of Trall; his adopted daughter, Harriet Austin, graduated from Trall’s college and he had many praises for Trall–but classifying him is still difficult. I have always given him the benefit of the doubt, because he claimed to be a Hygienist and because others recognized the validity of his claim. But it is still a fact that he gave predominance to hydropathy and regarded Hygienic means as secondary and subsidiary factors in the care of the sick, while crediting “water cure” with powers that belong only to the living organism.

Writing in 1857 and addressing his remarks to allopathic physicians, he said: “I have never used any other substance as a specific remedy for disease but water. All the hygienic agencies I use–air, light, heat, food, etc., etc.–I use, but I have never made use of any of them as specialties … I produce results with water which no man has produced by any other means … as far as I have strength, the people of this land shall be led to feel and believe, and act upon the belief, that in all cases of disease which do not involve surgery, water is the best medicamentum that man can possibly have. I have said in all diseases, and I repeat it. I want you … to understand me, and I repeat the statement, that in no case of disease can you apply anything else as broadly, as successfully, as water can be applied.

One may be excused for sensing a bit of bombast in his emphatic reiteration of his assertion of the superlative value of water applications; on the other hand, they may be but the expression of over-enthusiasm. But while he credited water with such superior curative properties, he was no less emphatic in assigning to Hygienic means inferior roles. He said: “I deny that my great success as a practitioner is to be ascribed mainly or chiefly to my dietary–the kind, the quantity, and the manner of eating food at the Glen; or to the fact that my patients live in the open air; or to the quiet seclusion of the Glen; or to their faith in me. The benefits derivable from all these I cheerfully admit, but each and all hold secondary place. They are auxiliaries which I could not well do without, but they do not constitute my right arm. It is in water as I use it that my success lies …

While you and other medical gentlemen spend your knowledge and skill in treating disease by other methods, I have been a painstaking student, concentrating all my humble abilities in the elaboration and development of the Water Cure philosophy and practice …” Then saying that he was satisfied with the results of his applications of the water cure and stressing his unlimited confidence in it when assisted by “other”Hygienic agents or forces, he assures his readers that “water as a cure for human diseases will last as long as it runs down hill … Vincent Priessnitz was not born in vain. His apotheosis is yet to come.

In the Journal for November 1859, Jackson reaffirms his abiding confidence in the curative power of water. He says: “Perhaps there is no physician in this country–now Dr. Shew is dead; perhaps none in the world, now Vincent Priessnitz is dead–who relies more upon Water as the hygienic and curative agent than myself. Certainly the generality of so-called Water-Cure physicians do not; and I know of none who does … With all due regard for any and every means at my command, I have steadily grown into a wider and larger confidence in Water as a means for overcoming the morbid conditions of the human body.

He further says in this same article: “Having had as large an opportunity as any living man to test the uses of Water, with a view to effect Specific as well as General changes of conditions of the human body, I deem it but right to let you see, the longer I practice, the larger my faith in it is.” He adds: “I do not mean to undervalue other means, but rather than rating them as highly as other hygeo-therapeutic physicians do, I rate Water much more highly than they do.”

In this same article, Jackson said: “I am sedulously and faithfully studying the influences of light, heat, air, electricity, food, etc., in gaining knowledge in respect to and effects on the human organism, (but) as yet I know of no way in which to apply one, or all of them, so as to substitute them for Water, either in keeping the body in health or in overcoming its sicknesses. They have their several and collective uses, and great and essential they are; but I know of no one of them that I can use as I can use Water to change and overcome morbid conditions…

Nobody acquainted with the history of Jackson doubts that he enjoyed a remarkable success and that he was widely patronized and very popular; but we may be permitted to doubt the correctness of his judgment when he assigns to water applications (hot and cold water) such a high rank in the work of restoring health and, at the same time, assigns inferior roles to Hygienic means. There remains always the possibility that he had the roles of these means reversed.

As the foregoing statements were made somewhat early in his long and successful career, it may be thought that he later altered his views and assigned a superior role to Hygienic factors. If he did so, I have failed to find a record of his change of mind. While his institution grew and acquired a number of European water-cure innovations, there does not seem to have been a lessening of his enthusiasm for water cure. Hence it is that, while Jackson frequently used Hygienic language and gave clear and emphatic expression to Hygienic theory, I have been doubtful about his true place in the early history of the Hygienic movement.

Pg 233

Outstanding among the pseudo-Hygienists was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek fame. Almost immediately after graduating from the Hygeio-Therapeutic College, where he also taught chemistry, Kellogg assumed editorship of the Health Reformer and became medical director of the institution founded by the Whites in Battle Creek for the Hygienic care of the sick. Mr. and Mrs. White, who also founded the Adventist Church, had learned their Hygiene from Graham, Trall and Jackson. Trall was a regular contributor to the Health Reformer. Before making it known that he had become editor of the Health Reformer, Kellogg challenged Trall to a discussion of a minor issue. Accepting the challenge, Trall threshed the daylights out of Kellogg and was repaid for his trouble by being denounced as too radical and excluded from the pages of the Health Reformer.

Pg 239

Treatments directed to the control and regulation of remedial processes are strongly in opposition to the regulations of physiology and can lay no just claim to scientific merit. This fact, together with the ill successes with which such treatment meets, should consign it to the general repository of things that are past.

In an article published in the Journal, August 1857, Dr. James C. Jackson said: “I have become so entirely convinced of the soundness of the philosophy of treating human diseases by water as a remedial agent, and of the splendid success that awaits the true water-cure physician, that I fear not in the least the most searching inquiry …” He referred to the “water-cure and its adjuncts,” thus relegating all Hygienic means to the rank of mere adjuncts of hydropathy. Although calling their practices Hygienic, many Hygienists gave elaborate instructions for the use of the various forms of water applications and only a few general instructions about correcting the mode of living. Theoretically, but not practically, they had divorced themselves from the cure superstition.

241

Religion still had a strong hold upon the imagination of the people and we should not be surprised to learn that many Hygienists, including Dr. Jackson, who was a minister, Dr. Nichols and Mary Gove, believed also in divine healing. These, with others, resorted to prayer in their care of the sick. The correct Hygienic attitude in this matter is that all things are rightly related to all things else and it is sheer folly to think that good can come from violating these relations or that God will, upon appeal from us, violate the eternal relations of nature. The intelligent man would expect an intelligent God to permit the lawful processes of nature to pursue uninterruptedly their lawful courses.

Pg 242

It was unfortunate that very frequently Hygienists continued to attempt to express Hygiene in the old medical terms–a practice that was like that of putting new wine into old bottles. Dr. Jackson, for example, continued to speak of attacks of disease. He spoke of rheumatism attacking vital organs. He also continued to use the terms cure and curability. He was not alone in this mistaken use of old medical terms. It is an unfortunate fact that when new concepts are expressed in old terms, they will be understood in the old terms and this means that they will not be correctly understood at all. New concepts require new terms in order to properly express them.

The early Hygienists were medical men, trained in medical colleges, steeped to the eyebrows in medical terminology and habituated to expressing themselves in this terminology. From the outset, they attempted to express the new conceptions and new principles in the old and familiar terms. They wrote of hygienic medication; they talked of cures and therapies, even of pathies. Only little by little was it recognized that the old terms expressed the older ideas and that they were trying to put new wine into old bottles. New concepts require new terms; new principles need new modes of expression. It is contrary to the doctrine of chance that a group of would-be thinkers, wandering in a mist and without any principle to guide them, could be fellow travelers with those who seek to maintain a truly scientific course.

Pg 243

Much of the dietetic care of the sick was of a character that we could hardly endorse today. Recounting his care of a woman patient, Dr. Jackson says: “So I kept her under the same simple diet of bread or pudding or gems or porridge and milk, with an addition of stewed dried apples …” He says that he allowed her nothing else, “not so much as a strawberry between meals.” We think that it is quite evident that, good as were the results obtained by the early Hygienists, much better results could have been obtained had they not relied too heavily on cereals. Graham had not advocated a cereal diet, but too many Hygienists were so enthused about whole wheat that they permitted this to dominate their thinking in the realm of diet.