Another common disease of childhood is adenoids. To talk of these maladies as diseases is rather misleading, for they are merely symptoms of perverted nutrition, but we are compelled to make the best of our medical language.
Adenoids are due to indigestion. The indigestion is due to overeating. This is how it comes about: A child eats more than can be digested, generally bolting the food, which is often of a mushy character. The excessive amount of food can not be digested, and as the intestines and the stomach are moist and have a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, fermentation soon takes place. Some of the results of fermentation in the alimentary tract are acids, gases and bacterial poisons. These deleterious substances are absorbed into the blood stream and go to all parts of the body, acting as irritants. We do not know why they cause adenoids in one child and catarrh in another. It is easy enough to say that children are predisposed that way, which is no information at all. It seems that all of us have some weak point, and here disease has a tendency to localize. What part the sympathetic nervous system plays, we do not know. Glandular tissue is rather unstable and therefore it becomes diseased easily and adenoids are therefore quite frequent.
A coated tongue, or an irritated tongue, both due to indigestion, is a concomitant of adenoids. Such diseases do not merely happen. There are good reasons for their appearance. They are not reflections on the child, but they are on the parents who should have the right knowledge and should take time and pains enough to educate and train the child into health.
Tuberculosis is one of the results of ruined nutrition. First there is overeating. This causes indigestion. The irritating products of food fermenting in the alimentary tract are taken up by the blood. The blood goes to the lungs where it irritates the delicate mucous membrane. In self-protection it begins to secrete an excess of mucus and if the irritation is great enough, pus. The various bacteria are incidental. The tubercular bacillus is never able to gain a foothold in healthy lungs, but after degeneration of lung-tissue has taken place the lungs furnish a splendid home for this bacillus. The tubercular bacillus is a scavenger and therefore does not thrive in healthy bodies. It is the result of disease, not the cause.
Tubercular subjects never have healthy digestive organs. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are persuaded to eat many times more food than they can digest, and thus they have no opportunity to recover, for the overfeeding ruins the digestive and assimilative powers beyond recuperative ability. A large per cent. of the human race perish miserably from this disease, which results principally from the ingestion of too much food. The liberal use of such devitalized foods as sterilized milk, refined sugar and finely bolted wheat flour is doubtless a great factor in so reducing bodily resistance that the system falls an easy prey to disease. Too little breathing and poor, devitalized air are also important factors.
There are many causes of rheumatism, but overeating is the chief and it is very doubtful if a case of rheumatism can develop without this main cause. Exposure is often given as the cause, but a healthy man with a clean body does not become rheumatic.
Rheumatism is due to internal filth. A filthy alimentary tract makes filthy blood. Some say that the poison in rheumatism is uric acid, and perhaps it is, but there are no uric acid deposits in the body of a prudent eater. The elimination in this disease is imperfect. The skin, the kidneys, the bowels and the lungs do not throw out the debris as they should. Perhaps only one or two of these organs are acting inadequately. The debris is stored up in the system.
Why do the organs of elimination fail to act? Because so much work is thrust upon them that they grow weary and worn; also, a part of the material furnished them is the product of decay in the alimentary tract, and they can not thrive on poor material. Too much food is eaten. An excess of nutritive material, poorly digested, is absorbed. And so we come back to the principal cause, overeating.
When the eliminative organs fail to perform their function, the waste is deposited in those parts of the body which are weakened. The irritation from these foreign substances causes inflammation and the result is pain. The extent to which this depositing of material will go is well illustrated in some cases of multiple articular rheumatism, or arthritis deformans, where the deposits are so great that many of the joints become fixed (anchylosed).
We could review all the diseases, and nearly every time we would come back to disturbed nutrition as the principal factor, and this is true of not only physical ills, but the mental ones as well.