X. DEGENERATION OF THE GELATIGENOUS TISSUE.
Another group of organ's of vast importance is the one which consists of gelatigenous tissue. In fact all blood and lymphatic vessels, air alveoli of the lungs, tendons and cords of the whole system, the digestive tract from the mouth to the anus, the stomach, the bladder, and indeed every organ or tissue which has the function of expansion and contraction, must be made of gelatigenous (rubber-like) tissue. Otherwise it cannot perform its duties in the organism and must needs become degenerate.
While there are not many special forms of disease of the gelatigenous tissue itself, many diseased conditions occur in connection with its degeneration. This in turn is caused by the lack of gelatigenous food, which the blood must convey to this tissue wherever it exists in the body.
It is obvious that any degeneration which may affect the intestinal duct, the bladder or other organs which contain gelatine in their composition will require gelatigenous regeneration.
The principal forms of disease which may affect the organs in question are those which have been discussed under catarrhal diseases (Section VI). The acute and chronic forms of stomach and intestinal disease, especially, belong to this group, and have consequently received special attention. The treatment of this question in my work, "Regeneration" or "Dare To Be Healthy," Chapter X, A and B, will answer, in detail the questions of those who desire more enlightenment on this most vital and intricate subject.
Therapy.
Diet: These forms include all catarrhal disease mentioned under VI. A, also all inflammatory conditions of the stomach and intestines, in their acute form. As far as the latter are concerned, the suitable lists of diet will be found under Forms II, III, IV, V and VI. Regarding the same diseases in the chronic form, the special diet lists are given under Forms IV, V and VI. In addition the following suggestions will be helpful:
Diseases of the Stomach and Intestines.
These prescriptions of diet serve especially for the diseases of the stomach and intestines. In most cases a prescription for the rational preparation of food is such as only the hygienic physician is able to give. Food for persons suffering from diseases of the stomach, must be selected individually according to their idiosyncrasies. In one case the stomach must be prevented from doing too much; in another case it must be stimulated. In one case the object is to fatten; in another, to remove fat. In some cases the physician prescribes food which will retard the movement of the bowels, in other instances, the patient requires food that will promote such movement. The diet for patients with fever must be different from the diet for convalescing patients. People suffering from diabetes require a peculiar preparation of their food. Not everything that is good for an adult will be beneficial to a child. The digestibility of many foods depends upon their preparation. The value of food for patients can be judged rightly from but one standpoint, that of digestibility.
The fundamental principles governing the nourishment for patients are digestibility, great variety, abolition of all strong spices, nutritive and well selected material.
The temperature of drinks must be in strict accordance with the prescription of the physician. The patient must be urged to thoroughly masticate the food, so that it will be properly salivated and thus facilitate digestion. Patients seriously ill, should receive their food mashed or minced, so that they can partake of it more easily. All waste parts, such as skin, fat, sinews, bones, must be removed from the food, even for convalescents. Warmed up food and fibrous vegetables must be banished from the patient's diet. It must not be a question as to what the patient wants; the prescription of the physician only must govern. The patient's food must be prepared carefully, absolutely correctly and in a cleanly manner. In case of strong thirst, great care must be exercised in regard to drinks, depending on the physician's directions. The thirsty feeling of the patient may be alleviated by putting glyzerine on his lips and small pieces of ice on his tongue, without, however, permitting him to swallow the water as the ice melts.
Normal Diet for Stomach Diseases.
Milk, sweet and sour, buttermilk, yoghurt, kefir, albumen cacao, cereals in the form of mush, strained legumes, cooked in soup or milk, all sorts of glutinous soups, farinose dishes prepared from stale rolls, biscuits, zwieback, tender and easily, digestible meats, mashed game meat, chicken, raw beef, ham, meat jelly, young vegetables, preserved fruit.
Avoid the following: all indigestible fats, meat which requires more than 4 to 5 hours for its digestion, hot salads, gas-producing vegetables, gravy, fruits which abound in cellulose, such as apricots and peaches, hard stems, xylocarp ribs of leaves, the strong smelling and sharp tasting parts of some kinds of vegetables, as for instance, new potatoes, cabbage (in the cooking of which the first water must be poured off), hot soups and spicy herbs, spices of all kinds, high game, sausages, bacon, yeast pastry, drinks too hot or too cold, strong coffee (in the place of which fruit coffee is recommended), stale raisins and almonds, nuts, too much candy, much liquid with meats, and excitement of all kinds while eating.
General Hints for a nourishing treatment.
The patient who is to gain in flesh must adhere strictly to the prescribed diet as well as to the prescribed rest, if the treatment is to take effect.
The following articles are very nourishing: yolks of eggs prepared in any style, milk, cream, kefir, rich cheese, beef marrow on toast (cooked in soup), all kinds of noodles and dumplings, puddings, cocoa and chocolate, white bread, rich thick soups, gravy, potatoes and oats prepared in various ways, sweet beer, malt beer, sweet wines and puddings with preserved fruits, fruit juices, meat from well-fed animals only. All meals must be served in small portions, so as not to create distaste for food.
7 A.M.—250 grams of fresh, boiled, unskimmed milk, or ¼ quart cocoa prepared with milk or Knorr's oat-cocoa, or ⅛ quart cream with tea added, one roll, butter and honey.
9 A.M.—1 cup bouillon, 20 grams hot or cold roast meat, 30 grams Graham or gluten bread, 10 grams butter. Then ¼ quart milk, butter and Graham bread.
11 A.M.—¼ quart milk with the yolk of one egg.
1 P.M.—100 grams soup (oat, barley, vegetable soup), green corn, sago soup, 100 grams potatoes, 100 grams tender vegetables, such as spinach, mashed peas, mashed carrots, mashed artichokes, asparagus tips strained, 20 grams easily digestable rice, 50 grams preserved fruit; or, no soup, but, instead meat, vegetables, apple sauce, dishes made from milk or flour, such as noodles, fruit, ⅛ quart cream.
4 P.M.—Light tea or milk, with malt or cocoa added, two crackers, ½ quart milk.
6 P.M.—20 grams meat (hot or cold roast meat), raw meat or 10 grams Graham bread, 10 grams butter, milk chocolate, Graham bread, butter, honey.
8 P.M.—1 cup soup with 10 grams butter and one yolk, barley, oats, etc., eggs or meat, vegetables, preserved fruits, Graham bread, butter, mild cream cheese.
9.30 P.M.—¼ quart milk, with a spoonful of malt extract, ⅛ quart cream.
As a special breakfast, for a thin patient, the following drink is recommended: To a cup of unskimmed hot milk add one yolk and one spoonful of pure bee-honey. This must be taken in the morning on an empty stomach for several weeks.
In case of Constipation.
If constipation is due to nervousness or sluggishness of the bowels, the best means to overcome the trouble is mixed coarse food, using various mineral waters, and little meat, but plenty of vegetables, especially sauerkraut, cabbage, comfrey, cauliflower, pumpkin, tomatoes, cucumbers, various salads and fruits, jellies. Among beverages sour milk, buttermilk, kefir No. I and II, yoghurt, various new wines, fruit juices, different mineral waters, such as Apollinaris, Karlsbad waters, Hunyady; coarse bread, such as Graham, avoiding fine white bread. In extremely chronic cases use my Laxagen Tea in case of emergency.
Dech-Manna-Compositions: Gelatinogen, Plasmogen, Mucogen, Eubiogen.
Physical: Abdominal packs, with vinegar and water.
Acute—warm.
Chronic—cold.
XI. DEGENERATION OF THE CARTILAGINOUS TISSUE.
Cartilage in the human body is the material which must cover the end of each bone so as to prevent its destruction by friction. It is the important part in all joints. It is obvious that any degeneration of this particular tissue will cause friction, which is combined with severe pains, called Ankylosis, Gout.
The degeneration is usually a consequence of improper proportion of the various food ingredients consumed, omitting the material necessary for the construction of the cartilage, which, being in use, is constantly used up rapidly. Regeneration of the blood, by assisting it in its important task of feeding the cartilaginous tissues, and regulation of the diet are the only two possible remedies for this form of disease, of such frequent occurrence, the alleged cure for which attracts thousands to bathing resorts, where they derive not the slightest real benefit.
The variety of gout called arthritis (deforming gout), is the most pronounced and dangerous phase of this form of disease.
Therapy.
Diet: The diet is exactly the same as prescribed for rheumatism and gout under V, Degeneration of the Muscular Tissue.
Dech-Manna-Compositions: Cartilogen, Plasmogen, Gelatinogen, Eubiogen.
Physical: Partial packs, salt and radium, massage, oxygenator bath, half bath radium and salt.
In case of arthritis, also special packs according to the directions of the Doctor. It is impossible to give a diet for arthritic patients, peculiarities of this disease being largely individual.
XII. DEGENERATION OF THE BODY TISSUE IN GENERAL.
By "body tissue in general" is understood the body with the total sum of its cells—especially the red blood corpuscles—and their various aggregations. Consequently a special composition of nutritive salts, under the name of Eubiogen, has been composed, which is the most perfect duplication of all the chemical elements of the entire body in the correct proportion. Eubiogen, therefore, is prescribed as a secondary Dech-Manna-Composition, to be taken with all other compositions. But it also acts independently as the best means of preventing degeneration, and in this capacity should not be missing in the diet of adults as well as of children. The cost thus incurred would be recouped many times over through its prevention of disease.
Eubiogen takes a leading position in reference to the following complicated forms of disease, in the treatment of which it becomes the most important factor among the nutritive compositions: Ataxia, Basedow's Disease, Diabetes Mellitus, Obesity, Bright's Disease, Arterio-Sclerosis. I am prepared to explain to patients, this curative method and the reasons for its application; but these complicated diseases, while based on the same degenerations of blood, and consequently of the tissue and organs, as all others, offer impressions which, from the point of view of the conscientious physician, cannot be presented with but a few bare words of explanation. Nor does the space at my disposal permit me to go into the matter with due thoroughness.
All of these ailments have been described in my work: "Regeneration or Dare To Be Healthy."
The intelligent reader will readily conceive that he who has found the secret of the degenerations constituting the various forms of disease, will not hesitate before their complications. Ataxia, Basedow's Disease, Diabetes Mellitus, Obesity, Bright's Disease and Arterio-Sclerosis, can be cured. They can be cured by the same methods of which simpler examples have been already given.
No one, who in the struggle for health has surrendered to the attack of constitutional disease, the germ of which may have been implanted in him by his forefathers, needs despair. Let him seek advice before too late, and the strong probability is that in due time he will have regained his health, and will be enabled to fulfil his duties to himself and to posterity.
NOTE.—In reference to the foregoing tables of dietary "Regimen" the reader must clearly understand that the prescriptions are merely indications of diet appropriate to various phases of the complaints to the treatment of which they are attached; but the decision as to how and when these phases occur in individual cases should be left entirely to the discretion of the physician in charge of the case who will, of course, also pronounce upon the diet. Should there be no such authority present, the greatest care and common sense must be devoted to the selection from the said tables of a system of diet suitable to the various stages of disease. Any recommendations therein contained which may appear to be contradictory or conflicting must be ascribed to their complication on a progressive dietary system consistent with the prospective advancement of the case towards recovery.
INFANTILE PARALYSIS.
Amongst the forms of Degeneration of the Muscular Tissue the reader will have noticed that of Infantile Paralysis or Poliomyelitis.
The startling prominence that this complaint quite recently acquired was due to its world-wide ravages in epidemic form and the absolute and confessed inability of the combined sagacity of the whole faculty of the orthodox medical profession to cope with it or to cure it—to fathom its cause and origin or to curtail its increasing rate of mortality. I am therefore constrained, so far as space permits, to give the matter special and particular consideration.
The scientific name, "Poliomyelitis," is derived from the Greek words: polios, grey and myleos, marrow; for its chief feature is a softening of the grey spinal marrow.
First noticed by the medical world no later than the year 1840, statistics show that in the last decade it has appeared in various parts of the world in epidemic form, notably in Sweden and Norway. In America, epidemics occurred in 1907 and 1908 and again in 1916. It was promptly and energetically dealt with by the Rockefeller Institute of New York where the proof was established of the possibility of transmission by a living virus taken from the spinal marrow of a victim; but whether this disseminator may be correctly termed a bacillus, or fungus or a germ, medical-science has been unable lo determine; neither has it succeeded with the most powerful microscope in discovering the individuality of this "carrier," whilst all experiments with re-agents have been bare of results. Thus the researches of science have merely brought us back to the starting point; namely, that there is a "something" which exerts a degenerating influence upon the cellular tissue of the spinal marrow and causes the morbid enlargement of its cells.
The New York Board of Health, cites eight different forms in which the disease may appear and acknowledges a startling failure to determine either any uniform period of incubation (i.e. the time between contagion and the appearance of the symptoms,) or the period of infection (i.e. how long a sick person may be a danger to others).
The New York press accepts the situation philosophically; as follows:
"Infantile Paralysis cannot be cured by means of medicines. The physician must of necessity limit his ministrations to easing the pain, providing for easy movement of the bowels and so forth, but otherwise he must let nature take its course."
Medical reference books vaguely define the disease with diverse and indefinite theories, showing that science on the subject is practically mute.
But the medically "unprofessional," random remark of the New York press-man has exactly hit the mark: "Let nature take its course."
The fact is that nothing very clear or absolute can be said about Infantile Paralysis; for observation shows that it is apparently a matter of racial conditions and environment and that only from the general application of the Laws of Nature, as taught by biology can we reasonably hope to solve the problem or cure the disease.
As the result of careful study of many cases I simply confirmed the fact that Infantile Paralysis belongs strictly to the class in which in the foregoing chapter I have placed it, and is subject to the same rules, influences and treatment. In most of the cases treated I have not failed to discover the existence of spinal trouble in one or other of the parents. This, engendering predisposition to similar complaints in the children of the opposite sex, which, acted upon by the irritants bred of poor or irrational nutriment and unhygienic environment in greater or lesser degree, results in attacks of this disease, in plain or epidemic form as the case may be, to which all children so predisposed are liable. Thus, incidentally, is my recently discovered "Law of the Cross-Transmission of Characteristics" amply verified.
As to the cause which leads to the development of this predisposition in the children, the answer, of course, is improper nourishment; and amongst the contributory causes I would specially indicate, "Pasteurized" and "sterilized" milk which has been absolutely banned by science on the basis of Physical Chemistry, according to which it was definitely proved in a report laid before the Paris Academy of Sciences, that valuable bone-forming ingredients in the milk, (a combination of carbonic and phosphoric lime,) are lost in course of Pasteurization, since at the temperature necessary for the process they are transmuted by heat into insoluble elements, (phosphate and carbonate of lime) which, precipitated by chemical action, either drop to the bottom in sediment or cling to the surface coating and, in either case, are eliminated and lost to the child to an extent which constitutes a serious deterioration in its food and one likely in any case to promote rickets. Milk also contains important constituents which change into necessary food elements in the course of natural fermentation—gelatine for instance—which being, as has been shown, so vital a factor in the building up of tissue, it needs no argument to prove the disastrous consequences its depletion must engender in the child and it may be likewise safely left to the intelligence of the reader to grasp the obvious fact that for the prevention or healing of Infantile Paralysis the one and only safeguard is Regeneration through the course already indicated of Hygienic-Dietetic treatment which will, if applied beforehand, eliminate the tendency to disease or, in the event of its occurrence, will conduct it along safe and natural lines to a quick recovery.
This brief sketch of the subject must suffice for the present purpose but a special article[C] with full and interesting details has been devoted to the subject, which will appear in my greater work, "Regeneration or Dare to be Healthy."