“Hear, hear!” “Y-o-u-reka!” “Down with homœopathy,” and other spontaneous applause greeted me from all sides, and encouraged me to continue talking.
“But there is another class of cases and another kind of treatment, viz., the passive or starvation treatment, which is homœopathy carried to its true and logical end and aim.
“It consists in going to bed and eating nothing and drinking water from a teaspoon until the boat has given up plunging, or arrives at its destination. If the patient is still able to do so he then arises and assumes the activities and indulgences of life, and temporarily recovers. This is the fat man’s remedy. His stomach is relieved of its fat and of its fullness. It gives him the prolonged fast that his burdened system needs and which he has not the self-denial and fortitude to take on shore. It constitutes the benefit of a sea voyage upon his health, and is the only obesity cure worthy of trial, except the one employed by Panama cabdrivers upon their horses.
“We have an illustration of the efficacy of the passive treatment in Doctor Frank. He stays in bed and rests his stomach. He neither eats nor drinks, yet not one of you is improving in health as he is. It is the repudiation of our food and the ridicule of our remedies, since the patient has nothing to do but not to eat and drink. If his patients knew of this and had common sense instead of blind faith, Doctor Frank would not have to go to sea to starve. Our patients should therefore know what we do, but not what we do not do. For a lot of doctors to embark in a boat and have everything their own way, and learn nothing and do nothing about boat-sickness, except to get it, is a reproach to our profession. You talk knowingly, but you must remember that boat-sickness is not a mere postprandial-ephemera. You ought to know that one should not only fast on board but also on land before boarding. How not to eat is an oriental delicacy——”
Here I was interrupted with such long-continued applause and discussion and such frivolous interrogations that I concluded that they were unfit to be reformed, and did not wish to learn how not to eat. How not to eat is one of the lost arts. In keeping with the development of the culinary art, man’s longevity has diminished in 6,000 years from 969 down to 70 years, and his teeth and appendix have been steadily dwindling and will soon fall out. In a few thousand more years another zero will be dropped from his age and the world will contain babes only. But as my audience was unprepared for such a revelation, I closed with the following short summary of my views:
“Therefore, seasickness is not a disease to be avoided, but a remedy to be taken. You have much to learn, but much more to unlearn before you can tell the world anything about it. You must become as babes, and be unborn and born again before you can unlearn and learn again.”
“Every man to his berth,” shouted Morrow, who was entirely devoid of a sense of humor. He regarded my lecture as a joke.
A vote of thanks was passed with the request that, if I should talk again, I take up the subject she-sickness, which they considered more interesting and more in my line. They were still harping on women, and I resolved to cast no more pearls, remembering that all big D’s do not stand for doctor.
CHAPTER VI
The Last Day at Sea and the First on Land