PART II
PART II - CHAPTER I.
DISEASES AND REMEDIES; HOW TO PREVENT MOST MALADIES AND CURE ILLS POSSESSED.
Note.—If the reader is in haste to know what will cure this or that trouble, before perusing the pages of this entire pamphlet, such as cramp, colic, indigestion, constipation, headache, etc., the index found in the back part of this work will give immediate reference, and the prescriptions instant relief. If you are cured thereby of any of the many maladies that beset the human family, remember that it is only temporary; for to be cured of any disease permanently requires the removal of the cause. One of the objects of this book is to convey that information.
The great disparity between the actions and teachings of many of our principal writers must be apparent to every reader of books, pamphlets, and editorials, upon the subject of health and its allies, happiness and longevity. Many of the leading exponents of temperance have periodical spells of drunkenness, and some drink all the time. The prominent articles written upon the subject of sanitary matters and cleanliness, are generally by the editor whose office is the scene of disorder, the floor covered with tobacco quids, old rubbish and dust, and the corners filled with cobwebs. The writer upon the subject of poverty and the wrongs of the poor, has his headquarters fitted up in the most magnificent style;—he never knew what it was to want for a meal, nor did he ever darken the door of real poverty. The missionary advocate soliciting funds for the heathen and down-trodden poor of foreign lands, more than likely never crossed the borders of his own State, certainly has not taken a stroll through the dark lanes and alleys, or climbed the dingy stairways of the tenement houses of his own city. If he had done so, a more effective appeal would have gone up for the suffering poor and spiritually blind of the principal unsanitary municipalities of his own country. The physician with a bad cough and broken-down constitution is still prescribing for consumptives and patients with all manner of aches and pains, of which his own body is a perfect index.
And the minister who has not yet lost all his hatred for "that other sect," and occasionally assists in persecuting it, is still teaching the doctrine of the meek and lowly Nazarene. Having experienced a large number of diseases and their successful remedies, we have for several years been collecting the most reliable data and testimony on many—in short most—of mankind's bodily ills. In this second part we present them for your benefit.
There are about 11,000 remedies mentioned in the 15th edition of the "United States Dispensatory," by reference to which it will be seen that each affliction to which flesh is heir must be more than well drugged. It is the fault of the community at large that the necessity of such a work exists. There is no demand for any form of disease even with the improper state of society as it is to-day. Extreme old age and a limited number of accidents are all that can be necessary to record. The following is an admirable article from the St. Louis Globe Democrat, which is quite pertinent.
"Sanitation and Sanity.—The general subject of sanitation now covers our architecture and our home life; our sewerage and disposition of waste; our personal cleanliness and contact in all social relations; our food and drink, both as to quality and kind; quarantine and other preventives against contagion and infection; the purification of streams, and the cleansing of the air of smoke and foul vapors; in fact, the whole subject of health or wholeness. * * * A national board of health was as unthought of as was an Atlantic cable in 1800. But the fact that great epidemics were liable to invade us, and did invade us, led to a system of quarantine and to enforced vaccination. But the regulation by law of our social manners, so far as they bore on public health, was not undertaken to any extent until within the past decade. * * * Indeed, public sentiment is as yet so uninformed that thorough laws in the case could not be enacted or enforced. There is not a stream in the United States that can be kept entirely free from pollution. The sanitary value of this is not understood by even the intelligent populace. The drainage of swamps is neglected in the neighborhood of our larger cities." "St. Louis has tolerated inside her limits pools that have made fevers of a malarious sort, with spinal meningitis, as common as croup. Chicago has acres of rotting vegetable matter inside the corporation every autumn. The inroads of yellow fever have always been invited by the unsanitary condition of Southern towns. The reports of Surgeon-General Hamilton, last summer, showed that the pest found its first welcome in a town where sewerage was wholly neglected, and tons of rotting sawdust and refuse filled the heated air with fever conditions.