Confidential Chats with Boys

by William Lee Howard

As considerably more than ninety per cent. of the body is made up of water, you can realize how necessary it is that plenty of pure water should be supplied the body. Here again the sweating process aids man to replace waste water by returning to it pure water. The loss of water containing poisonous stuff makes one thirsty, and this is one way Nature has of keeping man’s body well balanced—the useless goes out and the useful goes in.

If we thoroughly understand what our body consists of and how to care for it, there would be no necessity for doctors or medicines. In fact, drugs are far more harmful than useful. Four or five simple medicines—or rather correctives—are all man needs if he has the proper understanding of himself. Of course surgeons are necessary and doctors in accidents—such as the great diseases like pneumonia or typhoid, for these are really accidents, accidental insomuch as you have taken poisonous germs into your stomach or lungs. But even in this latter disease, knowledge of how it is contracted is all that is necessary, for then we can keep our sewerage from emptying into the drinking water; flies from landing on refuse and then on the food we are to eat, and if you carefully remember all I shall tell you, those diseases which are breaking down so many of our fathers and mothers, can be avoided. Kidney troubles, as I informed you, may be avoided by commencing to see that the kidneys do not do the work that the skin is intended to do.

And the liver? Just remember what I said about it being the “clearing house” of the body.

There are many boys and young men who have a sluggish or over-active liver. These unfortunate chaps have always been misunderstood and often blamed for being slothful or willful, when in reality they were suffering from poisons in their body which were not cast off. If these conditions go on, the result is sometimes very unfortunate—destructive to any attempt to make a success in life—no matter how hard one tries.

Here is a case that came under my observation, only one of many; oh, so many misunderstood fellows.

He was twenty-seven years old when I saw him. His father and mother were heart-broken over his habits—that is what they called them.

Everything they knew had been tried; but he would drink at times. These sprees came over him at certain times and nothing the doctors, ministers or friends could do would stop him.

We know better now.

When he was a boy at school he would have severe headaches. When they first came on he would try to keep up with his studies, but day after day became more indolent and the teachers called his attitude “pure cussedness.” At the end of the attacks he would become very sick; vomit for hours, and when the poison was thrown off through his stomach he was weak for days after. The doctors who were called all said about the same thing: “Only a bilious attack; he will be all right after he has thrown the bile off.” But he never was all right. Each attack left some residue of the poison; also left him less able to fight against another attack, and so the poor chap went on suffering misery of the body and pain of soul because he was blamed for a state over which he had no control. He became useless to himself, and after he had reached full age could find nothing to do because he could not stick to anything. One day when he was feeling so badly that he could hardly hold up his head, some older man suggested a drink of whisky. He took it; it was the first and only thing which had given him relief. Of course this “relief” was only a blind one; the alcohol gave him a false impression of his condition. It also sent the poison running through his brain and this called for more whisky. When the next attack came on he, of course, took whisky again and remained practically insane until the whisky drove the poison out through his stomach AND SKIN—it sweated it out.

But by this time he had been pronounced a drunkard. He was nothing of the kind; he would have given up his life for a cure of the awful demand for whisky when these attacks came over him.