My dear Dr. Page:
Your letter of February 13th, enclosing letters from Mr. and Mrs. Hinde for us to read and to make extracts from for The Laws, came duly to hand. I have read them with great interest, for they do but add to my conviction that, as yet, the divinely ordained mode of living for man on earth has received, in the minds of so-called hygienists, small conception, and in the life of the best of us comparatively poor illustration, and, therefore, just such experience as these dear people are having in their search for better methods of realizing, developing, and making serviceable spiritual power are of great interest to me. They always have been.
It has been a matter of great regret with me, that being an incurably diseased man, and being shut up to the necessity of working up, to the best degree possible for me, a revolution in the thought and conduct of people at large, in matters pertaining to their life on earth, I have not been able physically nor circumstantially to carry out my life as I have wanted to do. I have done some things, but always under circumstances that
endangered my available power to live and work, while making such transitions as I was determined to make.
I have settled several principles which enter as constituent elements into the philosophy of life of the human organism. Among them I may mention two: One is, the changes from bad to good, or from worse to better, can never be made reconstructively, except under the policy which governs construction. Now, as all growth of any living organism, or any part of it, is, relatively speaking, slow, so all reparation of any injured part in such organism relatively has to be slow. Reconstruction, therefore, is slow if according to law. This of itself speaks condemningly of the system of drug medication, because everywhere do drug doctors seek to produce changes from bad to good, or from worse to better, rapidly. This is unphilosophical, and, therefore, can be, on the whole, only open to criticism as being bad practice.
Another is, that where morbid conditions have existed until they have become chronic, and the organism has become adjusted thereto, changes from the abnormal to the normal can not be made without aggravation of those conditions. I have never known a person to go from chronic derangements of any organ in his body to normal conditions of it, without passing through an acute stage,[81] and this acute stage is critical in its nature, subjecting the organ to added liability for the time, may be subjecting the whole organism to it. Thousands of persons die every day under medical treatment in this country from badly-managed critical changes through which they have to pass.
[81] This was illustrated in the case of Mrs. Hinde, who says of her first experience: “I fully expected suffering as a consequence, and so there was for a time; but it proved a blessing in disguise.”—Author.
Thirdly, I am satisfied that of all the diseases with which doctors have to deal, and of which persons die, ninety-five per cent. of them have their origin in bad dietetic indulgence, and in deviations from right way of living, caused directly by, and to be attributed to, bad habits of eating and drinking. If
you take a hundred diseases, as they are called, and study the predisposing and the provoking causes to their production, you will find that at least ninety-five per cent. have their origin in derangements of the stomach and the organs that are in direct sympathy with it.
I take it upon me to say on my platform very frequently, and I repeat the same as I would repeat it from any public platform if I were talking to a public audience: Give me the right and the power, by and with the consent of any given population, whether one thousand or one million, to control their dietetic conditions, and I will take care of their diseases, and, in less than the life of a generation, will banish from their midst seven-eighths of all the diseases now common to physicians in their practice; will stop the diseases, and deaths that grow out of a prevalence of these diseases and their methods of treatment; will put an end to the vices and the crimes everywhere extant, and which it is so difficult for society and government to manage, and thoroughly revolutionize the physical and moral status of such people.