Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene

by Upton Sinclair; Michael Williams

Dr. Kellogg publishes a big magazine of large circulation named Good Health; and in this he teaches that health is not a mere negation of ailments—a state of being free from rheumatism, or consumption, or biliousness, or any other of the “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”—but that it is being wholesome, happy, sane, complete, a unit—a man or woman eating, drinking, sleeping, working, playing, functioning in all parts as naturally, as inevitably, as easily and as unconsciously, as a flower grows.

One of the writers has told of his experience many years ago, when he went to a physician and requested to be helped in keeping well. He went to Battle Creek Sanitarium on account of the illness of his wife, and when one of the physicians proposed to him that he himself undergo the treatments, he answered (having in mind this earlier experience, and of the doubts it had bred in him), “There is nothing the matter with me at present that I know of.” The answer of the Sanitarium physician was, “The less there is the matter with you the better, from our point of view.” And so he realized that at last he had found a place where his own idea of health-preservation was understood.

He accepted joyfully the offer to assist him in getting a scientific understanding of his own bodily condition. A drop of his blood was taken and analyzed, microscopically and chemically. He went to the diet table, and for three days ate precisely measured quantities of specified foods; during the period all his excretions were weighed and analyzed and examined under the microscope. A thorough physical examination was made, and also a series of tests, upon a machine invented by Dr. Kellogg, to register the strength of each group of muscles of the body. The results of all these examinations were presented to him in an elaborate set of reports and charts, together with a prescription for treatments, diet and exercise. He had stated that there was nothing the matter with him, so far as he knew. He found that anaerobes—the dangerous bacterial inhabitants of the intestinal tract—numbered something over four billion to the gram of intestinal contents—a gram being about a thirtieth part of an ounce. During the six weeks of his stay at the Sanitarium the more important of these tests were repeated weekly; and when he left, the number of anaerobes had been reduced nearly ninety per cent.

Dr. Kellogg terms the system of treatment employed by the Sanitarium the Physiologic Method, and he writes of it as follows:

“The Physiologic Method consists in the treatment of the sick by natural, physical, or physiologic means scientifically applied.

“The haphazard or empirical use of water, electricity, Swedish movements, and allied measures is not the Physiologic Method. It is no method at all. It is empiricism, at best; at its worst, it is quackery. The application of the Physiologic Method requires much more than simply a knowledge of the technique of baths, electricity, movements, etc. It requires a thorough knowledge of physiology, and an intelligent grasp of all the resources of modern medical science. For, while the Physiologic Method depends for its curative effects upon those natural agencies which are the means of preserving health, and which may be relied upon to prevent disease as well as to cure, it recognizes and employs as supplementary remedies, all rational means which have by experience been proved to be effective.

“The Physiologic Method concerns itself first of all with causes. In the case of chronic maladies, these will generally be found in erroneous habits of life, which, through long operation, have resulted in depreciating the vital forces of the body and so deranging the bodily functions that the natural defenses have been finally broken down and morbid conditions have been established.

“Chronic disease is like a fire in the walls of a house which has slowly worked its way from the foundation upward, until the flames have burst out through the roof. The appearance of the flame is the first outward indication of the mischief which has been going on; but it is not the beginning. It is rather the end of the destructive process.

“The Physiologic Method does not undertake to cure disease, but people who are diseased. It recognizes the disease process as an effort on the part of the body to recover normal conditions,—a struggle on the part of the vital forces to maintain life under abnormal conditions and to restore vital equilibrium.

“At the outset of his course of treatment, the patient is instructed that his recovery will depend very largely upon himself; that the curative power does not reside in the doctor or in the treatment, but is a vital force operating within the patient himself. The Physiologic Method is based upon this fact.