But the electric and controlling center of the bodily machine is the electric dynamo of the brain, to which is attached the spinal column with its nerve branches reaching out to all parts of the body, along which, as on connecting wires, the brain telegraphs its wish and will and governs the whole organism. Here the mind or soul dominates the brain and the brain dynamo dominates and controls the body. Through all the vicissitudes of life, until the final dissolution of the body, the telegrams from the brain running along the wires of the nerves control the muscles, the movements and all the varied utilities of the body. In other words, the mind controls the electricity of the brain, and the electricity of the brain controls the body.
If you cut a nerve or obstruct the electric current, you cut off the electric control of the brain, and there is paralysis in the part of the body where the electric wires are disconnected. Consumption is a disease caused by a failure of the lungs to draw sufficient electricity from the air to supply the normal needs of the body. For lack of this electric energy the whole system becomes enfeebled and finally dissolved. Indigestion is a failure of the stomach to supply the necessary electric energy to assimilate the food. And all sickness, aches and pains are nature crying for electric energy necessary for her to fulfill her natural offices and functions.
Dr. Jacques Loeb, of the Chicago University, announced on February 22nd, 1903, that he had discovered that muscular and nervous diseases, such as St. Vitus' dance, paralysis, agitatus, locomotor ataxia and sleeplessness, can be cured by administering calcium salts because of their electrical effects.
He says the presence of calcium salts in the muscles prevents their twitching; that practically all nervous disease are caused by the absence of the calcium, and "therefore to restore normal conditions and effect a cure a dose of calcium salts should be administered for its electrical effects upon the parts affected."
In recent years many persons have been restored to health and strength by the direct use of electric currents, and many diseases have been cured by electric appliances.
The necessity for an ample supply of electricity, both positive and negative, to sustain and preserve the life of the bodily machine is now acknowledged by all thinking scientists.
We have seen how different kinds of medicine, by furnishing the positive or negative molecules needed by the body, restore the natural equilibrium and preserve life and health, and how the failure to obtain these needed electrical supplies of life-giving energy, either by food or medicine, results in disease and death. We have seen how toxic and varied poisons have their antidotes in opposite electrical elements and molecules, and how stimulants excite and opiates quiet the electric energy of the body, and it is unnecessary to dwell longer on this subject. The fact that all sickness and death is caused by the electrical derangement of the body I think is now so clearly proven and so generally accepted, that detail and extended argument is unnecessary.
To show that electricity builds up the body. Even at this late period in the world's history there are instances of nature returning to her primitive electric crystalline process even to the extent of converting man's body into stone. Four recent cases are reported in the medical records of man's flesh gradually turning to stone. One case is reported from North Judson, Indiana, where Eli Green is turning to stone. His muscles, skin and flesh are gradually becoming as hard as the bones of his framework. To the touch he is dead. Only the feeble action of heart, lungs and stomach and a fertile and active mind give evidence that there is any life in him whatever.
The physicians declare he is afflicted with a disease that runs its course in seven years; not a day more or less. Green has already dragged out his existence over four of these years; only three of his short span of life remain.
There is a similar case reported of Miss Stella Ewing, the ossified woman of Rome, New York, and one from Sydney, Australia, where Jacques Moritz was afflicted with the same terrible malady. Eight years ago Moritz was seized with sickness that baffled every effort by the physicians to relieve it. From the patient's feet a numbness began to creep upward. That was the first sign of the disease. The numbness steadily ascended, and seven years from the day the malady first displayed itself the sickness had eaten its way into the patient's brain and had hardened it into stone exactly as it had hardened the muscles, flesh and skin of his body. Then death relieved the sufferer. There are several recent cases of a similar kind just reported in the newspapers.