chance to develop normally, such as other young animals have—i.e., give them freedom from holding, tending, baby-carting, and the like, except in the smallest measure; dress them lightly, keep them free from foul air, by sufficient ventilation of all living rooms; give them the utmost freedom of the lawns or the ground—outdoor exercise—give them this sort of treatment, and not five per cent. would die under five years of age, nor, with fair regard for the known laws of life, would many fail to reach old age in health. The at present supposably-inevitable “diseases of infancy and childhood” could not exist. The influence of the constant tending and holding to which all infants are subjected is disastrous in a twofold degree: (1) for many months they are prevented from taking much voluntary exercise, and (2) this makes the involuntary cramming relatively more excessive; hence they grow fat and disordered in every way, and predisposed to all manner of sicknesses. Children scarcely ever have occasion to use their teeth. The food in use requires no chewing. Little demand is made upon the salivary glands (for food is hot, moist, and “goes down itself”); hence these glands, which consequently fail to develop normally, become at some time acutely diseased, or finally almost if not entirely useless. Hollow, sunken cheeks result from this cause. It was never designed to remedy this defect with fat. The parotid glands and the cheek muscles should be developed and maintained by physiological eating. The teeth for want of use fail, as the muscular system declines through
indolence. Unnatural food, fast eating, overeating, poor teeth, dentists, “mumps,” plethora, and febrile diseases, or chronic dyspepsia, and all manner of ailments—this is the present order of things (see advertisement of “How to Feed the Baby”).
[95] This treatment restores the flinty grain (wheat, rye, barley, maize, sweet corn) to its natural plumpness and masticability. There should be little or no liquid to turn off.
6. TIRED FROM INACTION: TOO MUCH “REST.”
The person who works to-day and gets tired, perhaps almost exhausted, feels sure from former experiences that he will rise next morning well able to work again; and providing he does not overdraw the account continually, the more he does the more he can do. It is upon this principle that our athletes acquire and maintain condition.
But the consumptive, the delicate person, who, as is the case generally, has grown weaker and weaker from doing less and less (and this is in accordance with natural law), becomes at last “tired” in such a manner, that without an entire change—a right about face—there is no such thing as getting rested this side the grave. This exhaustion from indolence must be changed for the tiredness resulting from physical exertion, or there is no hope of “cure.” Friends must learn the error of their ways; they must cease the eternal discouragement of the loved one; there must be no more of the incessant, “Now, Jenny, sit right down—you will get too tired”; “There, now, let me do that—you know how little it takes to tire you”; “You are crazy to think of going outdoors such a day as this,” etc., etc. (see page [85]). However kindly
meant all this is, it is, in practice, “hitting a man when he is down”; while the usual encouragement to eat (digestion or no digestion)—to eat (appetite or no appetite—the inaction often forbidding all desire for food) is, to use a sporting phrase, a companion “slugger” that finally knocks the weakling off the stage. This is what produces the phlegm as fast as the poor victim can cough it up. Because he has nothing to do—because he does nothing—but ponder over his condition, eat, manufacture phlegm and “raise” it, he lowers himself more and more, until he gets to the bottom. He has “raised” about everything; only the frame, the skeleton, is left to bury (see pp. 72, 78, 92, 97, 104).
A FEW OF THE MANY NOTES FROM READERS OF THE FIRST
EDITION OF “NATURAL CURE.”
J. Russ, Jr., Haverhill, Mass., says: “Dr. Page’s explanation of the ‘colds’ question is alone worth the price of a hundred copies of the book—it is, in fact, invaluable, going to the very root of the cause of sickness.”