CARE IN TREATING THE SPINAL CORD.
I want to offer you the facts, not advice, but pure and well sustained facts, the only witnesses that ever enter the courts of truth. A spinal cord is a fact; you see it—thus a fact. That which you can see, feel, hear, smell or taste is a fact, and the knowledge of the ability of any one fact to accomplish any one thing, how it accomplishes it and for what purpose, is a truth sought for in philosophy. The spinal cord is the present fact for consideration. You see it, you feel it, thus you have two facts with which you can start to obtain a knowledge of the use of this spinal cord. In it you have one common straight cylinder which is filled with an unknown substance, and by an unknown power wisely directed. It is wisely formed, located, and protected. It throws off branches which are wisely located. They have bundles, many and few; they are connected to their support, which is the brain, by a continuous cord in length and form to suit. After it has concluded throwing off branches at local places for special purposes, then like a flashlight, it throws off a bundle of branches called horse-tail plexus, caudae equinae, which simply signifies the many branches that convey fluids and influences to the extremities, to execute the vital work for which they are formed and located. While the laws of life and their procedure to execute and accomplish the work designed by nature for them to do, is mysterious and to the finite mind incomprehensible, you can only see what they do or perform, after the work is done and ready for your inspection.
HOW TO TREAT THE SPINAL COLUMN.
Now as we are dealing with the omnipresent nerve principle of animal life, I will tell you this one serious truth, and support it by the fact of observation. To treat the spine, and thereby irritate the spinal cord oftener than once or twice a week will cause the vital assimilation to be perverted, and become the death-producing excretor, by producing the abortion of the living molecules of life, before fully matured, while in the cellular system, which lies immediately under the lymphatics.
Your patients will linger long from the change of the nutrient ducts to throw off their dead matter into the excretories, which death was caused by the undue, or too many treatments of the spinal cord. If you will allow yourself to think for a moment, or think at all of the spinal cord being irritated, and what effect it will have on the uterus you will realize that I have told you a truth, and produced an array of facts to stand by that truth. Many of your patients are well six months before they are discharged. They are kept on hands because they are weak, and they are weak, because you keep them so from irritating the spinal cord. Throw off your goggles and receive the rays of the sunlight which forever stand in the bosom of reason.
MOST IMPORTANT CHAPTER OF ALL.
This is the most important chapter of this book, because at this point the engine of life is turned over to you as an engineer and by you it is expected to be wisely conducted on its journey.
Your responsibility here is doubled. Your first position is that of a master mechanic, who is capable of drawing plans and writing minutely a specification whereby the engineer may know what a well constructed machine is in every particular. He knows the parts and relations of both as constructor and operator, and you are supposed to be the foreman in the shop of repairs. The living person is the engine, nature the engineer, and you the master mechanic.
This being your position it is expected that you will carefully inspect all parts of the engines run into your repair shop, note all variations from the truly normal, and adjust from those variations as nearly as possible to the conditions of the true specimen that stands in the shop.