Disease is that condition of the body where there is any departure from the normal, in function, or structure. It may be local or general, and may tend to recovery, death or life-long suffering.
Many so-called forms of dyspepsia are brought about by improper eating, or by eating when not hungry or when tired. In such cases, a regulated life and the right selection, combination and preparation of foods is the only means to correct it.
Causes: After effects from acute diseases, worry, envy, excesses of eating or drinking, bony displacements, anemia and overwork. The patient should consult a physician at once. If certain areas of the glandular structure of stomach or intestine have been destroyed once, the normal structure cannot be restored; but with good care and proper dietetic measures great improvement can take place. Excess of starchy foods is always harmful. Particles of food not well masticated can cause much disturbance. The presence of fats in large amounts or wrongly combined with other foods will also retard digestion; they cause the pyloric orifice to contract more, and leave the food contents in the stomach for a long time, and in this way cause fermentation and putrefaction.
Dyspepsia and indigestion are the beginnings of a disordered metabolism and if neglected the results are: Nervous prostration, insanity, consumption, pelvic disorders, difficult child-birth, weak offspring, different forms of tumors and cancers and a multitude of fashionable and epidemic diseases.
The recognized rule is that the bowels should be evacuated once per day. Nevertheless, there are a number of people whose bowels act only every second or third day, and whose health is not impaired thereby. Healthy people who live on natural foods, such as raw fruits, nuts and grains, or on simple cooked foods with a moderate amount of meat, as a rule will not find it necessary to resort to artificial means for evacuation of the bowels.
People, whose diet consists mainly of meats, cooked vegetables and potatoes mixed with fermentable substances, or those who mix meat with milk and sweets or soft puddings will find it absolutely necessary to have a daily evacuation of the bowels, in order to retain perfect health.
Different habits of diet have a great effect upon evacuations. People who suffer from chronic constipation without any particular ailment or disease may often be greatly benefited by adding a greater amount of fruits or vegetables to their diet. Others find it necessary to discard cooked fruits for a while and take oily substances. Some people are constipated from insufficient protein elements in their food. The original cause may have been mechanical obstruction. Morbid anatomy and morbid physiology go hand in hand. Therefore, if proper hygiene and diet does not correct the condition, the patient should consult a physician for special treatment.
Malaria is a germ disease, but like many other germ diseases, the primary cause is lowered resistance, caused by poisoned air and adulterated food stuffs. Protection against adulterated food stuffs depends upon enforcement of pure-food laws, and the training of every housekeeper in the art of domestic science. Impure milk, whether poisoned by the milkmen or handled carelessly by the housekeeper, cannot be turned into good blood. The same is true of other food stuffs.
Dry, pure air is absolutely necessary for the patient who suffers with malaria. Dwelling places near which are stagnant pools, rain barrels, marsh land or stores where decayed fruits and vegetables are housed, are dangerous to people who are afflicted with malaria or any other germ disease. Mosquitoes are held responsible for both malaria and yellow fever. They breed in warm weather, wherever stagnant water is found. To prevent a disease that is spread by animal or vegetable parasites we must direct our effort against the breeding places of these disease carriers. Coal oil, poured upon the surface of stagnant water on streets, or near our homes, is a great help in preventing the multiplication of mosquitoes. Screens on dwelling houses, dry basements, plenty of sunshine in the home and the prevention of accumulation of vegetable refuse can do much toward protection from these parasites.
People who are afflicted with partial congestion of the portal circulation have stagnant and poisoned blood, and are more liable to contract malaria than those whose liver is in good working order. Many people are under the impression that they have liver trouble if they put more work upon this organ than it is able to do. Overtaxing of any part of the body will finally result in congestion and disease.
If mechanical obstructions are responsible for sluggish conditions of the liver, they should be remedied by anatomical and physiological adjustment. Deep breathing is of the greatest importance in all diseases affecting the abdominal organs. Fresh air at night is as important as during the day. During rainy weather have a fire going during the night in order to keep the air dry. Protect the body with warmer clothing after sunset, and wear light woolen underwear if necessary to avoid chills during sleep.
The diet should be light and nutritious. Avoid all rich condiments, spices, soft puddings containing milk and eggs, yeast breads and cakes. Some cases should avoid milk, cheese, shell-fish and other foods rich in protein.
1. Spend at least four hours per day out of doors.
2. Take short walks before and after dinner and before and after supper. Take deep breathing exercises by open windows before breakfast, and exercise the lower limbs while in bed.
3. Have breakfast at 9 a. m. and supper between 4 and 5 p. m.
4. Never work or eat when the hands and feet are cold.
5. Relax and breathe deeply with face down for 20 minutes, three times per day before meals.
6. During damp or rainy weather rest more, eat more greens, citrus fruits and fatty foods, and little or none of those foods which are rich in protein, such as cheese, whites of eggs, lean meats, nuts, beans, canned corn and milk foods, and select protein foods for the noon meal in the form of green pea or lentil soup, with or without tomatoes, or fat cold pork, fish or bacon in combination with apples, mashed beets, carrots or yellow turnips with lemon, hard yolks of eggs and fried bacon. Rice with tomato sauce and cold fat meat is also good. Black stale bread is best.
7. For breakfast use fats in the form of mayonnaise dressing with raw apples and tomatoes and plenty of onions, also fat meat if desired, and corn meal mush with eggs and cranberry sauce and celery; or the above mentioned green leaf vegetables. Celery roots, raw or cooked, with lemon and toasted bread and butter or fried bacon is also good. Use raw carrots, cranberries and beets with greens and French dressing. Raw cabbage is also good.
8. For supper select your food according to your appetite. If you are warm, active and energetic, take some raw fresh milk with zwieback and tomato or cranberry juice, or suck the juice of one-half or one-fourth of a lemon or grapefruit with it, white and yellow skin and all, expectorate the residue. Bran tea, barley or oatmeal water with one-fourth sterilized cream is good. If you are cold and chilly eat a plate of warm soup made of tomatoes or plums, huckleberries, string beans or asparagus (treated with lemon), or potato soup, or eat green cooked leaf vegetables with lemon and fried bacon, toasted or puffed wheat, and butter.
9. During the dry, frosty season, when the sun is bright during the middle of the day, eat a moderate amount of those foods forbidden under No. 6, combine them rightly, and take walks in the sunshine after dinner.
10. Mornings and evenings eat about the same foods as suggested in the foregoing.
11. Dress the body according to the changes of temperature.
12. Avoid over-heated rooms, and stay in bed until the sun rises, if necessary.
13. Keep the bowels in good order by enemas.
14. Black malt coffee prepared with a few whole or crushed coffee beans is of medicinal value if taken in small quantities after meals, especially after the noon meal; it acts as a tonic to the liver. Raw cranberries may be substituted if desired.
The above mentioned suggestions are for extreme cases of liver degeneration. They also apply to many chronic, so-called incurable diseases where the protein and starches of the diet should be limited in quantity to the minimum, compatible with the requirements of the individual.
There are cases of liver trouble where there is no interference with the glycogenic and oxidizing action of the liver, and where an entirely different diet is required. Therefore, no patient should attempt to treat a disease by a book, without having his case diagnosed by a physician and receiving advice as to the special diet required.
It is one of the most fatal diseases that affects men and animals. It is due to a germ called the bacillus of tuberculosis. This germ, however, is not the primary cause for the development of the disease. Wrong environment, unclean air and food are the causes that multiply these germs. Hereditary weaknesses play an important part, but the disease itself is never inherited. Lowered vitality, infection through milk and meat, and careless spitting are in a large measure responsible.
Children of parents who suffer from tuberculosis may grow up into healthy and strong individuals, if the proper conditions are furnished. Tendencies to disease are universally manifest in the weaker structures, and this weaker resisting power is the exact measure of the power inherent in heredity.
Tuberculosis may affect the lungs or manifest itself in different parts of the body, and is known under the following names: Potts disease or curvature of the spine; hip joint disease, when it affects the hip joint; white swelling or knee joint disease; ankle joint disease; lupus or skin disease; scrofula, when it affects the glands of the neck; tuberculous ulceration, when it affects the inside of the intestine; tuberculous peritonitis, when it affects the outside of the intestine; and consumption, when the lungs are involved.
Sunlight is the best known disinfectant. The direct rays of the sun destroy tubercular germs and the majority of other micro-organisms. Plants cannot grow without sunshine. Human beings cannot enjoy health in dark dwelling places, without sunlight. The houses we live in should contain a large number of windows and glass doors, so as to permit all rooms to be permeated with sunlight. It is a pity that modern houses, with all their conveniences and sanitary arrangements, have so little provision for proper sterilization by sunlight.
Many new modern houses are provided with a lot of unnecessary closet room, pantries and double stairways, halls and other accessories, which shut up impure air and prevent proper ventilation. Instead of living in large, luxurious houses, our health and comfort could be greatly improved by the investment of more space in artistically constructed gardens. Smaller houses, long and narrow in form, or wide and short, according to the location and size of the lot, could be daily disinfected and sterilized from cellar to attic by the rays of the glorious sun. A building of this kind may consist of two, four, eight, ten or more rooms, with one or three floors, and can offer comfort for one family, or be divided into apartments or flats. A house should be built on porous ground.
A lower floor, with parlor and spare bedrooms, is more easily ventilated and kept clean than a high basement with poor flooring, and no provision for proper airing or the admission of sunlight.
The mother of a family who has to do her own work in a two-story house could save much time and strength by having her kitchen and dining room on the upper floor, with hall and stairway and glass door in the center of the house, which would enable her to attend to the door from above. A house so constructed could easily be provided with porches for sleeping, and a place for the children to play during the morning hours, and in this way relieve the mother of many unnecessary steps.
Large, beautiful gardens call for work which is mixed with brains, while large houses with fashionable accessories call for slavery and compel one woman to become the servant of another woman.
All human beings are born with a pair of arms, which by gradual development enable them to care for their bodies in matters of feeding, dressing, hygiene and comforts. Assistants in the home are required for the child, the sick and the helpless.
Modern inventions relieve us partly of house-cleaning and laundry work, and modern methods of simple feeding and luxurious airing will relieve us from solving the servant problem and prevent diseases that are created by wrong living.
Clinical experience with hygiene and diet have proved that they are the most important factors in the treatment of disease.
A certain class of patients who are in the early stages of this disease may be benefited by a liberal diet, but the larger percentage of sufferers really have indigestion and can only gain benefit by cutting down their diet and by living upon plain, non-stimulating food. The amount of carbo-hydrate foods should be decreased and the amount of fats increased. Olive oil in combination with raw vegetables, acid fruits and raw eggs and fat meats should be given daily. They are best taken for breakfast. The heavier protein foods should be eaten at the noon meal in combination with a small amount of cereals and raw greens. The evening meal should consist of broths with egg, cooked green vegetables, toast and bacon, or of milk foods. If extra milk is required it should be given with a keen appetite. Food eaten without relish cannot be properly oxidized and assimilated.
People who are compelled to work while sick should take some extra milk between 10 and 12 a. m. and during the afternoon. Milk may be taken raw or boiled, according to the individual requirements. The bowels should be kept in order by enemas and laxative foods.
This is a condition where there is interference with the nutrition of the bones. The bones, like other parts of the body, are injured by lack of nourishment; they become soft and yielding like wax, and are drawn by the muscles into deformity. The animal matter which enters into the composition of the skeleton is in great excess, and the earthy (or mineral matter) is deficient in proportion. Causes for such conditions are: Lack of lime and minerals in the food, before or after birth; impure or inferior milk; fermenting foods; excess of starchy foods, sweets and meats; insufficient greens, legumes and nut-foods in the mother’s food, and overwork of the mother before or after birth of the child; damp and impure air and unhealthy dwellings. The first symptoms of this disease or a tendency to it can sometimes be detected in a child during the first year by soft and flabby muscles, excess of fat, difficulty and backwardness of learning to walk, and in cutting teeth, extremely narrow chest, continual digestive disturbances with constipation or greenish looking evacuations, and catarrh of the bowels. Softening of the bones of the head is often present.
The prevention and treatment of this disease demands careful regulation of the diet, sufficient sleep, pure air, dry, sunny dwellings, warm baths, massage and salt rubs. If the child perspires much on the upper part of the body during sleep, avoid feather pillows and keep the lower limbs warm by artificial heat if necessary. Avoid pressure on the head by placing a narrow pillow about two inches in width under the neck, and no pillow under the head. Keep the child in the lying position as much as possible. Do not carry it on the arm except when necessary, and never force it to stand or walk against its own will.
The diet should consist of milk and cream with well cooked strained pearl barley and steel cut oats or bran, a moderate amount of toast, calf’s-foot jelly, eggs, strained legumes and fat meats. Raw greens, fruits and nuts should be given as soon as the child is able to digest them without difficulty. Always select the food in the right combination and never allow excesses of any kind. The bowels must be kept regular by enemas.
Obesity is a constitutional disease, due to excess of food in general or to excess of wrong food and interference with the nerve supply controlling the oxidation processes.
Thousands of people who suffer from this “fat habit” could cure themselves by proper attention to hygiene and diet. A normal individual who lives right, thinks right and is engaged in useful work, does not need to carry useless fat around with him.
Do not take the advice of a friend who promises relief with dangerous drugs and salves, or excessive steam-baths and violent exercises. A diet suitable in quality and quantity to the particular constitution, useful activity, alternated with sufficient rest and recreation, and plenty of sunlight and dry, fresh air, are the only means to bring permanent results. A change of occupation is necessary at times. The dry diet, consisting of the necessary amount of proteins, with a large amount of raw greens or fruits and fats, and abstinence from tea and coffee and foods which are rich in starch and sugar, will bring relief to the majority of people who have a tendency to grow stout.
There are special conditions which require special treatment, such as tonic baths, massage, sun-baths, osteopathic treatments and special prescribed diets and exercises which cannot be discussed here.