Before proceeding further I wish it to be distinctly understood that it is no part of my scheme or intention to seek in any way to eliminate the physician.
As there are, in fact, no two human organism exactly alike, so also is there divergence, more or less, in each individual case, in disease; and however apparently similar the symptoms may be, the knowledge and experience of a physician becomes necessary in order to determine correctly what the ailment is and how general principles should be applied in each particular case.
On the contrary, I purpose to explain fully the secret causes of disease and their removal, in pursuance of the belief held in common with fair-minded physicians the world over, that a better knowledge of the human organism and hygiene on the part of the layman, would be of equal advantage alike to physician and patient.
Drawing aside the veil from professional secrecy and allowing the patient to know the why and the wherefore of things, means positive success for my hygienic-dietetic system of healing, because it is the only system which can ultimately survive in the light of general knowledge and wisdom.
No knowledge, no precautions, will always prevent disease. It is the natural incidence of the law of cause and effect that man, collectively, cannot expect to go through life unmolested by disturbances of health. From the very outset the tendency to disease is inherited; and indeed today, although we have now learned how to combat the enemy, yet opposing hosts are seen to be so vast and strongly entrenched about us that we realize to some extent the years that must elapse before mankind can be entirely set free from his hideous heritage, the harvest sown by past ignorance, deception and neglect.
But, from the malignant evil of internecine strife Universal Good is rising with an awakened nation's cry—a cry for freedom and release from the ever-lengthening chains of pernicious interests and obsolete institutions. The moment of release is at hand: That pyschological moment of which James Russell Lowell sings:
"Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood,
For the good or evil side."
And knowing what the People know—they who have borne so long, in grimly impotent silence, under the guise of Freedom, the fortunes of the slave—can we for one moment doubt what view their lawful, reasoning demand for redress will take and whether or no it will prevail? The hundred million voices of the Union sternly answer: NO!
In effecting this release, so far as the Science of Healing is concerned, my system, which I claim to be entirely original, will be found particularly efficacious, for it presents plainly and convincingly, in the light of the most recent discoveries, the truth that all constitutional diseases are but the variations of one basal deficiency; that the entire art of rational healing lies in a knowledge of the component parts of the body tissues, in a determination of the tissues involved in the process of degeneration in each specific instance, and in the subsequent treatment thereof by means of supplying to the blood the elements necessary to regenerate the tissues in question.
From this brief explanation may be judged the importance of the hygienic dietetic physician in cases of sickness. The quack and charlatan it is who persuade people to believe that they do not need the physician, and compel them to pay for this belief in money and in health. It is the obvious duty of every one to seek aid in case of sickness from some physician who is a profound and professed advocate of the only sensible, practical method of treatment; but, at the same time I would make it possible for all to acquire sufficient knowledge to enable them to judge for themselves whether the attendant summoned responds in some measure to this requirement, the simple and logical course of which contains at least some ray of hope for all who suffer.