Zone therapy; or, Relieving pain at home

by Wm. H. Fitzgerald; Edwin F. Bowers

Pressures average from one-half minute to four minutes or longer, depending upon the susceptibility of the patient.

Heat or cold waves in varying degrees, depending upon the solution or instruments used, may often be dispatched to the extremities from the mouth, nose, etc., and similar waves of heat or cold will manifest themselves in the mouth, nose and pharynx of susceptible individuals from pressure or contact on the extremities. The most susceptible patients will describe them accurately. For instance, if a cotton tipped probe be dipped in camphor solution, or alcohol, the patient will describe the sensation reflected along the particular zone pressed as “cold.” If in nitrate of silver, or trichloracetic acid, he says it is “hot.”

The majority of patients say that, while they are unable to detect these sensations—only extra-susceptible individuals have this faculty,—their pain is disappearing, or has already disappeared. Patients who are most susceptible to pressure or contact will trace heat or cold from an individual hair of the head, or an eyelash, to the margin of the finger-nail or toe-nail, and if a hair or eyelash be quickly pulled out, the sensation of numbness is often quickly registered beneath the finger-nail or toe-nail of the invaded zone. But to give these delicate results the subjects must be very responsive.

Pressure or contact upon the occlusal, or biting, edges of the teeth affect the innermost parts of practically every bone in the body. We believe that the teeth, being the most accessible, are the natural guardians of the bones throughout the body. The heat waves from the application of a fine point cautery contact on the biting edges of the teeth, are dispatched through the centers of all bones, and their therapeutic, or curative effect is disseminated through the bones and tissue in the zones treated. Naturally, the therapeutic effect is less marked as the surface of the body is approached.

Pressure or contact on the anterior surface of the teeth affects the anterior surface of the bones in the anterior sections of bones, and to a greater or less extent the tissues of the same zones in the corresponding sections. Pressure or contact on the posterior surface of the teeth affect the posterior surface of the bones in the posterior sections of zones treated, and to a greater or less extent the tissues of the same zones in the corresponding sections.

An asset not generally recognized in normal occlusion of a natural set of teeth is the ability of the patient to relax practically every part of the body through firm, biting pressure for two or three minutes on all surfaces of the upper and lower teeth. In this manner pain may frequently be relieved in any section of a zone, or group of zones, throughout the body, and occasionally even anesthesia may be induced through firm occlusion of the teeth for two or three minutes in these zones. This is at least one reason why all the teeth should be preserved, if at all possible, and why normal occlusion should be brought about if it does not already exist. If one be deprived of the third molar teeth, for instance, his ability to prevent, relieve or overcome pathological conditions in the fourth and fifth zones is restricted; and this naturally applies to the various individual zones or group of zones where teeth have been extracted.

You would hardly believe that offending corns or warts or bitten finger-nails, where inflammatory processes have been excited, may be responsible for rheumatism or neuritis, but we are daily proving such to be the case.

Toe-nails and finger-nails must be respected and as well taken care of, for health’s sake, as any other section of the individual zones. There is not a section of a finger-nail or toe-nail that may not affect (under stimulation or pressure) the most distant parts of the body.

Also, it might be of interest here to note that while enough pressure is good, too much is mild murder. This can be testified to by all who, by means of new shoes, foolishly apply constricting pressures to their toes. There ensues, after the lapse of an appreciable length of time, a condition made up of equal parts of bodily weakness and nervous irritability—an actual physical and spiritual fatigue—relieved only by removing the pressure—in other words, by relieving zone pressure inhibition.