in this connection, that in plant life or animal life, the universal law is a lean, lank infancy: those creatures and those slips which thrive continuously and reach a healthy maturity are never fat or stocky during the period of growth. The human infant only is sought to be made an exception to this rule; with what success the mortality reports fully attest.]
CHAPTER VIII.
BILIOUSNESS, “HAY FEVER,” NEURALGIA, ETC.
Regarding this ridiculous (because unnecessary) disorder, Sir Lionel Beale, a recognized authority, says: “The bilious ‘habit’ seems to be due to an unusually sensitive, irritable stomach and liver, which will discharge their functions fairly in a moderate degree, but which can not be made to do more than this without getting much out of order, [unless, I would remark, the needs of the system be augmented and, consequently, the digestive powers exalted, by means of increased exercise, less pampering, more outdoor air, the use of lighter clothing, etc.] Most of the organs” he goes on to say, “taking part in the digestion and assimilation of food seem to strike work when the bilious attack comes on. [It would seem more accurate to say that the ‘strike,’ resulting from overtaxation—excessive and unwholesome alimentation—constitutes the ‘attack’]. If food be taken, the suffering becomes greater. The fact seems to be, that the digestive organs require rest for a time, and if, when an attack comes on, this rest is given, the bilious state passes off, and the patient then feels extremely well, perhaps for a considerable
time. Persons of the ‘bilious habit’ should not [who should?] eat ‘rich’ foods, fatty matters, fried dishes, etc., etc., and should shun alcohol.” He advises little or no meat; commends the vegetarian diet, fruits, and a good proportion of whole-meal bread—corn, rye, and wheat. The free use of milk promotes biliousness, in many cases. Skim-milk often “agrees” when whole milk can not be taken in any quantity without causing much disturbance. Milk can not be called a natural food for man, and, indeed, many are obliged to relinquish its use altogether; besides, as remarked elsewhere, there is much disease among cows, owing to the unnatural manner of feeding them, and in such cases the milk is impure. It is a safe rule for bilious subjects to abstain from milk altogether; while butter, cream and cheese are still more objectionable.
In the following complaints the benefit derived from temporary abstinence from food are most marked; the acute symptoms, as catarrhal discharges, feverishness, or pain, shortly disappear (when the fast may be broken), and the disorders themselves may be eradicated by a wholesome regimen such as would, in the first instance, have prevented them: acute catarrh, “rose,” or “hay” fever, influenza, feverishness, fever (one to six days, or until convalescence), neuralgia (including headache and toothache). The list might be extended somewhat, but enough has been said to illustrate the principle that “fresh air, fasting, and exercise is Nature’s triple panacea” for the pain and discomfort experienced in a wide range of disorders
where the necessity exists for excreting poisonous elements, and resting the viscera concerned in alimentation. “This exasperation of irritation in the viscera, and for the most part in the ganglionic network about the stomach and liver,” says an eminent medical author, “is an invariable concomitant and cause” [of neuralgia, and all chronic nerve aches].
HINTS AND APHORISMS.
A well-knit frame never “drops a stitch.”—A chilly person is a sick person: good health, not good clothes, nor artificial heat, keeps a man feeling warm.—A rear guard: “I shall bring him out of this all right,” says the doctor,—“if no new complication arises”; and then he prescribes a drug or a compound of drugs, which tends to provoke the complication. For hundreds of years it has been, and, in general practice, still is the aim in sickness, to excite the organism to greater exertion in this, that or the other direction, by giving it more to do; the new gospel teaches that the true theory is, to enable Nature to put forth her energies in the most life-saving manner, albeit in her own fashion, by giving her more to do with: fresh air, sunshine, cleanliness, water,—the latter pure, i.e., without the everlasting drug which constitutes the “more to do.” It is a hackneyed expression, that “a man is either a fool or his own physician at