TO FIND THE CAUSE.

How to find causes of diseases or where a hindrance is located that stops blood is a great mental worry to the Osteopath when he is called to treat a patient. The patient tells him "where he hurts," how much "he hurts," how long "he has hurt," how hot or cold he is. The doctor puts this symptom and that symptom in a column, adds them up according to the latest books on symptomatology, finally he is able to guess at some name to call the disease. Then he proceeds and treats as his pap's father heard his granny say their old family doctor treated "them sort of diseases in North Carolina." An Osteopath feels bad to have to hunt cause for diseases, and not know how to start out to find the mechanical cause. He feels that the people expect more than guessing of an Osteopath. He feels that he must put his hand on the cause and prove what he says by what he does, that he will not get off by the feeble minded trash of stale habits that go with doctors of medicine, and by his knowledge he must show his ability to go beyond the musty bread of symptomatology and water his patients made, from the cider of the ripe apples from the tree of knowledge.

MUST BE HONEST.

An Osteopath should be a clear-headed, conscientious, truth loving man, and never speak until he knows he has found and can demonstrate the truth he claims to know.

FOLLOWING ARTERIES AND NERVES.

I understand anatomy and physiology after fifty years casual and close attention, the last twenty years being very continued and close attention to what has been said, by all the best writers whom I have perused, many of whom are considered standard guides for the student and practitioner to be governed by. I have dissected and witnessed the very best anatomists that the world affords dissect. I have followed the knife after arteries through the whole distribution of blood of arterial systems, to the great and small vessels, until the lenses of the most powerful microscopes seemed to exhaust their ability to perceive the termination of the artery; with the same care following the knife and microscope from nerve center to terminals of the large to the infinitely small fibers around which those fine nerve vines entwine. First like a bean entwining by way of the right around and up continuing to the right, and then turn my microscope to the entwining of another set of nerves which is to the left universally as the hop. Those nerves are solid, cylindrical and stratified in form, with many leading from the lymphatics to the artery, and to the red and white muscles, fascia, cellular-membrane, striated and unstriated organs, all connecting to and traveling with the artery, and continuing with it through its whole circuit from start to terminals.

FEEDING THE NERVES.

Like a thirsty herd of camels, the whole nerve system, sensory, motor, nutrient, voluntary and involuntary; this herd of sappers or hungry nerves seems to be in sufficient quantities and numbers to consume all blood and cause the philosopher to ask the question: "Is not the labor of the artery complete when it has fed the hungry nerves?" Is he not justified in the conclusion that the nerves do gestate and send forth all substances that are applied by nature in the construction of man? If this philosophy be true, then he who arms himself for the battles of Osteopathy when combating diseases, has a guide and a light whereby he can land safely in port from every voyage.

THE BLOOD ON ITS JOURNEY.

Turn the eye of reason to the heart and observe the blood start on its journey. It leaves in great haste and never stops even in the smaller arteries. It is all in motion and very quick and powerful at all places. Its motion indicates no evidence of construction even supposable during such time, but we can find in the lymphatics, cells or pockets, motion slow enough to suppose that in such cells, living beings can be formed and carried to their places by the lymphatics for the purposes they must fill, as bone, or muscle. Let us reason that blood has a great and universal duty to perform, if it constructs, nourishes, and keeps the whole nerve system normal in form and function.

POWERS NECESSARY TO MOVE BLOOD.

As blood and other fluids of life are ponderable bodies of different consistences, and are moved through the system to construct, purify, vitalize and furnish power necessary to keep the machinery in action, we must reason on the different powers necessary to move those bodies through arteries, veins, ducts, over nerves, spongy membranes, fascia, muscles, ligaments, glands and skin; and judge from their unequal density, and adjust force to meet the demand according to kinds, to be sent to and from all parts.

VENOUS BLOOD SUSPENDED.

Suppose venous blood to be suspended by cold or other causes in the lungs to the amount of oedema of the fascia, another mental look would see the nerves of the fascia of the lungs in a high state of excitement, cramping fascia on veins which is bound to stop flow of blood to heart. No blood can pass through a vein that is closed by resistance, nor can it ever do it until resistance is suspended. Thus the cause of nerve irritation must be found and removed before the channels can relax and open sufficiently to admit the passage of the fluids being obstructed. And in order to remove this obstructing cause, we must go to the nerve supply of the lungs, or any other part of the body, and direct our attention to the cause of the nerve excitement, and that only; and prosecute the investigation to a finish. If the breathing be too fast and hurried, address your attention to the motor nerves, then to the sensory, for through them you regulate and reduce the excitement of the motor nerves of the arteries. As soon as sensation is reduced the motor and sensory circuit is completed and the labor of the artery is less, because of venous resistance having been removed. The circuit of electricity is complete as proven by the completed arterial and venous circuit for the reduction of motor irritation. The high temperature disappears because distress gives place to the normal, and recovery is the result.



CHAPTER X.

THE FASCIA.

Where Is Disease Sown?—An Illustration of Conception—The Greatest Problem—A Fountain of Supply—Fascia Omnipresent—Connection with Spinal Cord—Goes With and Covers All Muscles—Proofs in Contagion—Study of Nerves and Fascia—Tumefy—Tumefaction.

WHERE DISEASE IS SOWN.

Disease is evidently sown as atoms of gas fluids, or solids. A suitable place is necessary first to deposit the active principle of life, be that what it may. Then a responsive kind of nourishment must be obtained by the being to be developed. Thus we must find in animals that part of the body that can assist by action and by qualified food to develop the being in foetal life. Reason calls the mind to the rule of man's gestative life first, and as a basis of thought, we look at the quickening atom, the coming being, when only by the aid of a powerful microscope can we see the vital germ. It looks like an atom of white fibrin or detached particle of fascia. It leaves one parent as an atom of fascia, and to live and grow, must dwell among friendly surroundings, and be fed by such food as contains albumen, fibrin and lymph; also the nerve generating power and qualities, as it then and there begins to construct a suitable form in which to live and flourish. And as the fascia is the best suited with nerves, blood, and white corpuscles, it is but reasonable to look for the part that is composed of the greatest per cent of fascia, and expect it, the germ, to dwell there for support and growth.

AN ILLUSTRATION OF CONCEPTION.

When you follow the germ from father until it has left his system of fascia, we find it flourishing in the womb, which organ is almost a complete being of itself. The center, origin, and mother of all fascias. It there dwells and grows to birth, and appears as a completed being, a product of the life giving powers of the fascia.

With this foundation established we think we prove conception, growth, and cause of all diseases to be in the fascia.

As this philosophy has chosen the fascia as a foundation on which to stand, we hope the reader will chain his patience for a few minutes on the subject of the fascia, and its relation to vitality. It stands before the philosopher as one of, if not the deepest living problems ever brought before the mind of man.

We will ask your attention in the attached effort to describe the fascia at greater length: It being that principle that sheathes, permeates, divides and sub-divides every portion of all animal bodies; surrounding and penetrating every muscle and all its fibers—every artery, and every fiber and principle thereunto belonging, and grows more wonderful as your eye is turned upon the venous system with its great company of lymphatics, which supplies the water of life, used to reduce too heavily thickened blood of the veins, as it approaches the heart on its journey, to be renewed after purification and thrown back into the arteries to patrol, nourish and supply from headquarters to the videts of this great moving army of life, the substance of which we are now speaking.

THE GREATEST PROBLEM.

The fascia is universal in man and equal in self to all other parts, and stands before the world to-day the greatest problem, the most pleasing thought. It carries to the mind of the philosopher the evidence, absolute, that it is the "material man," and the dwelling place his of spiritual being. It is the house of God, the dwelling place of the Infinite so far as man is concerned. It is the fort which the enemy of life takes by conquest through disease and winds up the combat and places thereon the black flag of "no quarters." That enemy is sure to capture all forts known as human beings at some time, although the engagement may last for many years. Procrastination of surrender can only be obtained by giving timely support to the supply of nourishment, with an unobstructed condition, kept up in favor of the nerves interested in the renewal of the human system, that powerful life force that is bequeathed to man and all other beings, and acts through the fascia of man and beast.

A FOUNTAIN OF SUPPLY.

The fascia gives one of, if not the greatest problems to solve as to the part it takes in life and death. It belts each muscle, vein, nerve, and all organs of the body. It is almost a network of nerves, cells and tubes, running to and from it; it is crossed and filled with, no doubt, millions of nerve centers and fibers to carry on the work of secreting and excreting fluid vital and destructive. By its action we live, and by its failure we shrink, or swell, and die. Each muscle plays its part in active life. Each fiber of all muscles owes its pliability to that yielding septum-washer, that gives all muscles help to glide over and around all adjacent muscles and ligaments, without friction or jar. It not only lubricates the fibers but gives nourishment to all parts of the body. Its nerves are so abundant that no atom of flesh fails to get nerve and fluid supply therefrom.

FASCIA OMNIPRESENT.

This life is surely too short to solve the uses of the fascia in animal forms. It penetrates even its own finest fibers to supply and assist its gliding elasticity. Just a thought of the completeness and universality in all parts, even though you turn the visions of your mind to follow the infinitely fine nerves. There you see the fascia, and in your wonder and surprise, you exclaim, "Omnipresent in man and all other living beings of the land and sea."

Other great questions come to haunt the mind with joy and admiration, and we can see all the beauties of life on exhibition by that great power with which the fascia is endowed. The soul of man with all the streams of pure living water seems to dwell in the fascia of his body.

Does it not throw hot shot and shells of thought into man's famishing chamber of reason; to feel that he has seen by thought the frame work of life the dwelling place on which life sojourns? He feels that he can find all disturbing causes of life, the place that diseases germinate and grow, the seeds of disease and death.

CONNECTION WITH THE SPINAL CORD.

As life finds its general nutrient law in the fascia and its nerves, we must connect them to the great source of supply by a cord running the length of the spine, by which all nerves are supplied by the brain. The cord throws out and supplies millions of nerves by which all organs and parts are supplied with the elements of motion, all go to and terminate in that great system, the fascia.

As we dip our cups deeper and deeper into the ocean of thought we feel that the solution of life and health is close to the field of the telescope of our mental search lights, and soon we will find the road to health so plainly written that the wayfaring man cannot err though he be a fool.

GOES WITH AND COVERS ALL MUSCLES.

As the student of anatomy explores the subject under his knife and microscope he easily finds this membrane goes with and covers all muscles, tendons and fibers, and separates them even to the least fiber. All organs have a covering of this substance, though they may have names to suit the organs, surfaces or parts spoken of.

We write much of the universality of the fascia to impress the reader with the idea that this connecting substance must be free at all parts to receive and discharge all fluids, if healthy to appropriate and use in sustaining animal life, and eject all impurities that health may not be impaired by the dead and poisoning fluids. Thus a knowledge of the universal extent of the fascia is almost imperative, and is one of the greatest aids to the person who seeks cause of disease. He of all men should know more of the fascia, and when disease is local or general. That the fascia and its nerves demand his attention first, and on his knowledge of the same, much of his success, and the life of his patients do depend.

Will the student of Osteopathy stop just a moment and see his medical cotemporary plow the skin with the needle of his hypodermic syringe. He drives it into and unloads his morphine and other poisonous drugs under the skin, and into the very center of the nerves of the superficial fascia. He produces paralysis of all nerves by this method, just as certainly as if he had put his poison in the cerebellum, but not so certain to produce instantaneous death as to unload in the brain. But if he is faithfully ignorant, he will kill just as certainly at one place as the other, because the poisonous effects can be easily taken to every fiber of the whole body by the nerves and fibers of the fascia.

When you deal with the fascia you deal and do business with the branch offices of the brain, and under the general corporation law, the same as the brain itself, and why not treat it with the same degree of respect?

The doctor of medicine does effectual work through the medium of the fascia. Why not you relax, contract, stimulate and clean the whole system of all diseases by that willing and sufficient power to renovate all parts of the system, from deadly compounds that generate through delay and stagnation of fluids while in the fascia.

Our school is young, but the laws that govern life are as old as the hours of all ages. We may find much that has never been written nor practiced before, but all such discoveries are truths born with the birth of eternity, old as God and as true as life.

The difference between a philosopher and a less powerful thinker is one observes alone, and depends on his own powers of mind to arrive at truth. Another lacks self confidence and mental energy.

PROOFS IN CONTAGION.

If disease is so highly attenuated, so etherial, and penetrable in quality, and multiple in atoms; and a breath of air two quarts or more taken into the lungs fully charged with contagion, how many thousand air cells could be impregnated by one single breath? Say we take a case of measles into a schoolroom of sixty pupils, in a warm and poorly oxygenized atmosphere all day, would not the living gas thrown off from active measles enter and irritate the air cells and close the most irritable cells with the poisonous gas retained for active development in those womb-like departments in the lungs.

Now you have the seeds in thousands of cells, which are as vital and well supplied by nerves and blood as the womb itself. Would not reason see the development of millions more of the vital beings who get their nourishment from the vitality found in the human fascia, which comes nearer to the surface in the lungs than in any part of the system, except it be the womb.

In proof of the certainty of measles being taken up by the lungs at one breath and caught by the secretions and conveyed to the universal system of fascia to develop the contagion, I will give the case of one of my boys who was sick with cold as I supposed; watering of eyes, cough, fever and headache. He was in the country about eight miles from home, and on our return stopped to get his books at a small school house. He ran in, picked up his books that were lying upon the desk, walked the length of the room which was about forty feet, was not there over one-half minute and in just nine days forty-two children broke out with measles. So certain is contagion to be taken up by the nerves and vitalizing fluids of the fascia.

It seems that all the fascia needs to develop anything is to have the seed planted in its arms for construction, the work will be done, labeled, and handed out for inspection by the inspectors of all works.

STUDY OF NERVES AND FASCIA.

We must remember as we reason on the power of life which is located in the fascia, that it occupies the whole body, and should we find a local region that is disordered and wish to, we can relieve that part through that local plexus of nerves which controls that organ and division. Thus your attention should be directed to all nerves of that part. Sensory, to modify sensation, blood must not be let run to the part by wild motion, its flow must be gentle to suit the demands of nutrition, otherwise weakness takes the place of strength, then we lose the benefits of the nerves of nutrition, by which strength of all systems of force are kept in action during life.

Suppose the nerves that supply the lungs with motion should stop, the lungs would stop also; suppose they should half stop, the lungs would surely half stop. Now we must reason, if we succeed in relieving lungs, that all kinds of nerves are found in them. The lungs move, thus you find motor; they have feeling, thus the sensory; they grow by nutrition, (thus the nutrient nerves;) they move by will, or without it; they have a voluntary and involuntary system; they move in sleep by the involuntary system.

The blood supply comes under the motor system of nerves, and delivers at proper places for the convenience of the nerves of nutrition. The sensory nerves limit the supply of arterial blood to the quantity necessary, as the construction is going on by each successive stroke of the heart. They limit the action of the lungs, receive and expel air in quantities sufficient to keep up purity of the blood, etc. With this foundation we observe if too great action of the motor nerves, shows by breathing too often to be normal, we are admonished to reduce breathing by addressing attention to the sensory nerves of lungs, in order that the blood may pass through the veins, whose irritability has refused to receive the blood, farther than arterial terminals. So soon as sensation is reduced relaxation of nerve fibers of veins tolerates the passage of venous blood, which is deposited in the spongy portions of the lungs in such quantities as to overcome the activity of the nerves of renovation that accompanies the fascia in its process of ejection of all fluids that have been detained an abnormal time, first in the region of the fascia, then in the arterial and venous circulation. Thus you see what must be done. The veins as channels must carry away all blood as soon as it has deposited its nutrient supplies to the places for which it is constructed, otherwise, by delay vitality by asphyxia is lost to the blood which calls a greater force of the arterial pumps to drive the blood through the parts, ruptures its capillaries and deposits the blood in the mucous membrane; until nerves of the fascia becomes powerless by surrounding pressure, which causes through the sensory nerves an irritability at the heart, which puts in force all its powers of motion.

TUMEFY, TUMEFACTION.

Webster's definition of tumefaction is to swell by any fluids or solids being detained abnormally at any place in the body.

The location may be in, or on any part of the system. No part is exempt; even the brain, heart, lungs, liver, stomach and bowels, bladder, kidneys, uterus, lymphatics, glands, nerves, veins, arteries, skin and all membranes are subject to swellings locally or generally, and with equal certainty they perish and shrink away. If either condition should exist death to the parts or all of the body will occur from want of nutrition. Instance, in lung fever which begins when swelling is established in lymphatics of lungs, trachea, nostrils, throat and face. At once you see the pressure on the nerve fibers compressed to such degree that they cannot operate excretories of lungs or any part of the pulmonary, system. Veins, suspended by irritation of the nerves, arteries are excited to fever heat in action with increase of tumefaction. A tumefying condition undoubtedly marks the beginning of all catarrhal diseases. Its ravages extend to the diseases of the fall and winter seasons. They are so marked on examination that the most skeptical cannot dispute or doubt the truth of this position. In fact he is already committed to a belief that there is something in the fluids that he must purify by the chemical process of drugs.

MEDICAL DOCTOR'S TREATMENT.

He looks on, and treats winter diseases with powerful purgatives, sweats, blisters, hot and cold applications with a view to remove congesting fluids. He is not very certain which team of medical power he can depend on. He hitches up many kinds of drugs hoping that a few of them may be able to carry the burden. He bridles his horses with opium, loads them down with purgative powders, and whips them through with castor oil, and for fear they will not travel fast enough he uses as a spur a delicately formed instrument known as the hypodermic syringe. He punches and prods until his horses fall exhausted. Disease and death should give him a large pension for the assistance he has rendered in their service. All is guess work whose father and mother are "Tradition and Ignorance." Ignorance of the kind that is wholly inexcusable to anyone but a medical doctor. An Osteopath who does not understand the general law of tumefaction of the whole system is not excusable from the fact that tumefaction, disease and death are so plainly written on the face of all diseases that the blind need not have eyes to see, nor the philosopher any brain to enable him to know this foundation is the highest known truth of all man's intellectual possessions. Thus by the law of tumefaction, death can and does succumb to its indomitable will. Observations without record will show any fair minded person that tumefaction does cause death in the majority of cases. But another power is equally as effective in destruction of life which is just the reverse of tumefaction. It destroys by withholding nutrition and all of the fluids; the effect is starvation, shrinkage and death. Thus you see it is equally certain in results. In the one case death ensues from an overplus of unappropriated fluids of nutrition, in the other there is no appropriation to sustain animal life and the patient dies from starvation. The same law holds good in the parts as well as in the whole body.



CHAPTER XI.

FEVERS.

Be Armed With Facts—Union of Human Gases With Oxygen—Fever and Nettle-rash. Nature Constructs for a Wise Purpose—Processes of Life Must be Kept in Motion—No Satisfaction from Authors—Animal Heat—Semeiology—Symptomatology—Definition of Fever—Fevers only Effects—Result of Stoppages of Vein or Artery—Aneurisms.

BE ARMED WITH FACTS.

When we reason for causes we must begin with facts, and hold them constantly in line for action, and use, all the time. It would be good advice never to enter a contest without your saber is of the purest steel of reason. By such only can you cut your way to the magazine of truth.

As we line up to learn something of the cause of fever, we are met by heat, a living fact. Does that put the machinery of your mind in motion? If not, what will arouse your mental energy? You see that heat is not like cold. It is not a horse with eyes, head, neck, body, limbs and tail; but it is as much of a being as the horse; it is a being of heat. If cause made the horse, and cause made the heat, why not devote all energy in seeking for cause in all disturbances of life?

UNION OF HUMAN GASES WITH OXYGEN.

Who says heat is not a union of the human gases with oxygen and other substances as they pass out of the excretory system. By what force do parts of the engine of life move? If by the motor power of electricity, how fast must the heart or life current run to ignite the gasolene of the body and set a person on fire and burn to fever heat?

If we know anything of the laws of electricity, we must know velocity modulates its temperature. Thus heat and cold are the effect.

If we understand anatomy as we should, we know man is the greatest engine ever produced, complete in form, an electro-magnet, a motor, and would be incomplete if it could not burn its own gases.

When man, is said to have fever, he is only on "fire," to burn out the deadly gases, which a perverted, dirty, abnormal, laboratory, has allowed to accumulate by friction of the journals of his body, or in the supply of vital fluids. We are only complete when normal in all parts,—a true compass points to the normal only.

When reasoning on the fever subject would it not be strictly in line to suppose that the lowest perceptible grade of fever requires a less additional physical energy to remove some foreign body from the person, that at first would naturally show a very light effect upon the human system, which would be the effect of itchy sensation.

FEVER AND NETTLE-RASH.

Let us stop and reason. Might this effect (itching) not come from obstructed gases that flow through and from the skin? If gas should be detained in the system by the excretory ducts the substance closing the porous system would cause irritation of nerves, and increase the heart's action to such degree that the temperature is raised to fever heat, by the velocity with which electricity is brought into action. Electricity being the force that is naturally required to contract muscles and force gases from the body.

Let us advance higher in the scale of foreign bodies until we arrive to the condition of steam, which is more dense than gas. Would it not take more force to discharge it? By the same rule of reasoning we find water to be much thicker as an element than either gas or steam.

Then we have lymph as another element, albumen, fibrin, with all the elements found in arterial and venous blood, all of which forces required to circulate, pass through and out of the system, must be increased to suit. Therefore we are brought to this conclusion, that the different degrees of temperature do mark the density of the fluids with which the motor engine has to contend.

If gas produces an itching sensation, would it not be reasonable to suppose that the consistence of lymph would cause elevations on the skin, such as nettle-rash.

If this method of reasoning sustains us thus far, why not argue that albumen obstructed while in the system of the fascia would require a much greater force to put it through the skin. The excretions of the body would cause a much greater heat to even throw the albumen as far as the cuticle.

If a greater, with a greater velocity, why not grant to this as cause of the disturbance of motor energy equal to measles. Let us add to this albumen a quantity of fibrin, have we not cause to expect the energy hereby required to be equal to that nerve and blood energy found in smallpox?

If this be true, have we not a foundation in truth on which to base our conclusions? That the difference in forces manifested is the resistance offered by the difference in the consistence of devitalized fluids which the nerves and fibers of the fascia labor to excrete.

NATURE CONSTRUCTS TO SUIT A WISE PURPOSE.

By close observation the philosopher who is hunting to acquaint himself with the laws of cause and effect, finds upon his voyages as an explorer, that nature as cause does construct for wise purposes; and shows as much wisdom in the construction and preparation of all bodies, beings and worlds, as the workings of those beings show when in action.

As life, the highest known principle sent forth by nature to vivify, construct and govern all beings, it is expected to be the indweller and operator, and one of the greatest perceivable and universal laws of nature. And when it becomes necessary to break the friendly relation between life and matter, nature closes up the channels of supply.

It may begin its work near the heart, at the origin of the greatest blood vessels, or do its work at any point. It may begin its closing process at the extremities of the veins or anywhere where exhausted vital fluids may enter for return to the heart for renewal by union with new material.

As nature is never satisfied with incompleteness in anything, all interferences from whatsoever cause are sufficient for nature to call a halt and begin the work of excavation by bringing the necessary fluids, already prepared in the chemical laboratory, to dissolve and wash away all obstructing deposits previous to beginning the work of reconstruction, which is to repair all injured parts of the machinery if disabled by atmospheric cause, poisons, or otherwise.

When nature renovates it is never satisfied to leave any obstruction in any part of the body. All the powers of its battery force are brought in line to do duty, and never stop short of completeness which ends in perfection.

All seasons of the year come and go, and we see year in and out the perpetual processes of construction of one class of bodies, and the passing away of others.

Vegetation builds forests, and cold builds mountains of ice to be dissolved and sent into the ocean to purify the water, and keep the brines from drying to powder, as salt.

PROCESSES OF LIFE MUST BE KEPT IN MOTION.

All the processes of earth-life, must be kept in perpetual motion to cultivate and be kept in healthy condition, or the world would wither and die, and go to the tombs of space, to join the funeral procession of other dead worlds. Thus you see all nature comes and goes by the fiat of wisely adjusted laws.

NO SATISFACTION FROM AUTHORS.

Read all the authors from AEsculapius to this date, and all combined leave the inquirers without a single fact as to the cause or causes of fever.

One says fever may come from too much carbon. Another says chemical defects may be the cause.

I would like to agree with some of the good men of our date or the ancient theorists if I could, but they, both dead and alive, are a blank except the tons of paper they have covered all over with conjectures, and closed out by the words "Perhaps so's and howevers" spoken in all tongues and languages on earth.

All have explored for centuries for the cause of fevers, and on return from their multiple voyages say, we hope some day to find the cause. We have killed many dogs experimenting, but have failed to find the cause of fever.

ANIMAL HEAT.

To think of fever, we think of animal heat. By habit we want to know how great the heat is. We measure by a yard stick till we find we have 100 deg., 102 deg., 104 deg., to 106 deg., at this point we stop as we find too many yards of red calico to suit the size of the purse of life. Which we think cannot consume more than 106 yards of heat. We begin to ask for the substances that are more powerful than fire. We try all known fire compounds and fail. The fire department had done faithful work, and all it could bring to bear on the fire. It had put on hose and steam, knocked shingles off and windows out, but not until the fire had ruined the house with all its inside and outside usefulness and beauties. Another and another house gets on fire and burns just as the first did. All are content to see the ruins and say it is the will of the Lord; never thinking for a moment that it was with the aid of the heart that the brain burned up the body.

Of what use is a knowledge of anatomy to man if he overlooks cause and effect in the results obtained by the machinery that anatomy should teach? He finds each part connected to all others with the wisdom that has given a set of plans and specifications that are without a flaw or omission. The body generates its own heat and modulates to suit climate and season. It can generate through its electro-motor system far beyond the kindly normal, to the highest known fever heat, and is capable of modulations far above or below normal. A knowledge of Osteopathy will prepare you to bring the system under the rulings of the physical laws of life. Fever is electric heat only.

SEMEIOLOGY.

(Med.) The science of the signs or symptoms of disease.

SYMPTOMATOLOGY.

The doctrine of symptoms; that part of the science of medicine which treats of the symptoms of disease. Semeiology.

These definitions are from Webster's International Dictionary, considered by all English speaking people as a standard authority. Both words are chosen names to represent that system of guess work, which is now and has been used as a method of ascertaining what disease is or might be. It is supposed to be the best method known to date to classify or name diseases, after which guessing begins in earnest. What kinds of poisons, how much and how often to use them, and guess how much good or how much harm is being done to the sick person.

To illustrate more forcibly, to the mind of the reader that such system though honored by age is only worthy the name of guess work, as shown by the following standard authority on fevers:

POTTER'S DEFINITION OF FEVER.

"Fever is a condition in which there are present the phenomena of rise of temperature, quickened circulation, marked tissue change, and disordered secretions.

"The primary cause of the fever phenomena is still a mooted (discussed and debated) question, and is either a disorder of the sympathetic nervous system giving rise to disturbances of the vaso-motor filaments, or a derangement of the nerve centers located adjacent to the corpus striatum, which have been found, by experiment, to govern the processes of heat production, distribution, and dissipation.

"Rise of temperature is the pre-eminent feature of all fevers, and can only be positively determined by the use of the clinical thermometer. The term feverishness is used when the temperature ranges from 99 deg. to 100 deg. fahr.; slight fever if 100 deg. or 101 deg.; moderate, 102 deg. or 103 deg.; high if 104 deg. or 105 deg. and intense if it exceed the latter. The term hyperpyrexia is used when the temperature shows a tendency to remain at 106 deg. fahr. and above.

"Quickened circulation is the rule in fevers, the frequency usually maintaining a fair ratio with the increase of the temperature. A rise of one degree fahr. is usually attended with an increase of eight to ten beats of the pulse per minute.

"The following table gives a fair comparison between temperature and pulse:—

TABLE OF DEGREES.

A temperature of 98 deg. corresponds to a pulse of 60 deg. " 99 deg. " " " 70 deg. " 100 deg.F " " " 80 deg. " 101 deg.F " " " 90 deg. " 102 deg.F " " " 100 deg. " 103 deg.F " " " 110 deg. " 104 deg.F " " " 120 deg. " 105 deg.F " " " 130 deg. " 106 deg.F " " " 140 deg.

"The tissue waste is marked in proportion to the severity and duration of the febrile phenomena, being slight or (nil) in febricula, and excessive in typhoid fever.

"The disordered secretions are manifested by the deficiency in the salivary, gastric, intestinal, and nephritic secretions, the tongue being furred, the mouth clammy, and there occurring anorexia, thirst, constipation, and scanty, high-colored acid urine."[6]

[Footnote 6: What has the student gained by reading the above definition of this standard author and representative of present medical attainment but a labored effort to explain what he does not know.]

FEVERS ONLY EFFECTS.

Fevers are effects only. The cause may be far from mental conclusions. If we have a house with one bell, and ten wires each fastened to a door running to the center, all having wire connection and so arranged that to pull any one wire will set the bell in motion, and without an indicator you cannot tell which wire is disturbed, producing the effect or ringing of the bell at the center. An electrician would know at once the cause, but to discriminate and locate the wire disturbed is the study.

Before a bell can be heard from any door, the general battery must be charged. Thus you see but one source of supply. To better illustrate—we will take a house with eight rooms, and all supplied by one battery—one is a reception room, one a parlor, one a sitting room, one bed room, one cloak room, one dining room, one a kitchen, and one a basement room, all having wires and bells running to one bell in the clerk's office, which has an indicator for each room by numbers on its face. If the machinery is in good order he can call and answer correctly all the time and never make a mistake. But should he ring to call the cook and her bell keep on ringing and she and clerk could not stop it, and they summon an electrician, what would you think if he began at the parlor bell to adjust a trouble of the kitchen bell? Surely you would not have him treat the parlor bell first, because you know the cook could only answer by the effect, or rattling of the office bell. Hers is cause, sound at office, effect. Now to apply this illustration, we will say a system of bells and connecting wires run to all parts or rooms of the body, from the battery of power or the brain, conveyed by the strings of wires or nerves, that are put up and run to all active or vital parts of the body. Thus arranged we see how blood is driven to any part of the system, by the power that is sent over the nerves from the brain to the spinal cord, and from there to all nerves of each and all divisions of the body. Then your blood that has done its work in constructing parts or all of the system, entering veins to be returned to the heart for renewal. Each vein, great and small, has nerves with them as servants of power, to force blood back to heart through the different sets of tubes known as veins, and made to suit the duties they have to perform in the process of life. As it travels to the heart with blood too thick to suit the lungs, the great system of lymphatics pour in water to suit demands, preparatory to entering the lungs to be purified and renewed. Thus you see nature has amply prepared all the machinery and power to prepare material and construct all parts, and when in normal condition the mind and wisdom of God is satisfied that the machine will go on and build and run according to the plan and specification. If this be true as nature proves at every point and principle, what can man do farther than plumb, line up, and trust to nature to get results desired, "life and health?" Can we add or suggest any improvement? If not, what is left for us to do is to keep bells, batteries and wires in normal place and trust to normal law as given by nature.

RESULT OF STOPPAGE OF VEIN OR ARTERY.

But few questions remain to be asked by the philosophical navigator when he sets sail to go to the cause of flux. Would he go to blood supply? Certainly, there must be supply previous to deposit. Reason would cause us to combine the fact that blood must be in perpetual motion from and to the heart during life, and that law is the fiat of all nature which is indispensable and absolute. Blood must not stop its motion nor be allowed to unduly deposit, as the heart's action is perpetual in motion. The work is complete of the heart if it delivers blood into the exploring arteries. Each division must to do its part fully as a normal heart does, or can in the greatest measure of health; and a normally formed heart is just as much interested in the blood that is running constantly for repairs and additions, as the whole system is on the arteries for supply. Thus you must have perfection in shape first, and from it to all parts as far as an artery reaches. All hindrances must be kept away from the arteries great and small. Health permits of no stopping of blood in either the vein or artery. If an artery cannot unload its consents a strain follows, and as an artery must have room to deposit its supplies it proceeds to build other vessels adjacent to the points of obstruction.

ANEURISMS.

Some are builded to enormous sizes. We call them aneurisms or accommodation chambers, builded by nature's constructing ability of the arteries as deposits for blood. The artery should pass farther on, thus you by reason must know an obstruction has limited the flow of blood, and the tumor is only an effect, and obstruction is the cause of all abnormal deposits, either from vein or artery. Unobstructed blood cannot form a tumor, nor allow inharmony to dwell in any part of the system. Flux is an effect, blood supply and circulation both at variation from normal. An artery finds veins of bowels irritated and contracted to such degree that arterial blood cannot enter veins with cargo of blood at all, and deposits its blood at terminal points in mucous membrane of bowels, and when membrane fails to hold all blood so delivered, then the first blood which dies of asphyxia finds an outlet into the bowels to be carried off and out by peristaltic actions. Thus you have a continuous deposit and discharge for arterial blood until death stops the supply.



CHAPTER XII.

SCARLET FEVER AND SMALLPOX.

As defined by Allopathy—Scarlet Fever as Defined by Osteopathy—Smallpox—Power to Drive Greater Than in Measles.

AS DEFINED BY ALLOPATHY.

"Scarlet fever begins with a short period of tired feeling. A short period of chilly sensation, fullness of eyes and sore throat. In a few hours fever begins with great heat of back of head. It soon extends all over the body, sick stomach and vomiting generally accompany the disease. Rash of a red color beginning on back, and extends to throat and limbs. About the second or third day, the fever is very high, from 100 deg. to 104 deg. and generally lasts to fifth and seventh day, at which time fever begins to diminish, with itching over the body. The skin at this time throws off all of the dead scales that had been red rash in the fore-part of the disease. Often the lining membranes of the mouth, throat and tonsils slough and bleed. Also pus is often formed just under the skin in front of the throat. Such cases usually die.[7]

ALLOPATHY."

[Footnote 7: Very true, if treated by the medicine man.]

SCARLET FEVER AS DEFINED BY OSTEOPATHY.

Is a disease generally of the early spring and late fall seasons. Generally comes with cold and damp weathers during east winds. It begins with sore throat, chilly and tired feelings, followed with headache and vomiting. In a few hours chilly feeling leaves and fever sets in very high, burns your hands. The patient is rounded in chest, abdomen, face and limbs by congestion of the fascia and all of the lymphatic glands. This stagnation will soon begin its work of fermentation of the fluids of fascia, then you see the rash. If you do not want to see the rash and sloughing of throat, with a dead patient, I would advise you to train your guns on the blood, nerves, and lymphatics of the fascia and stop the cause at once, or quit.

OSTEOPATHY.

SMALLPOX.

If we give a thought to the action of the electro-motor force, we would be constrained to believe that a power that could drive gas through a body of great density, would be much less than one that could force lymph through the same density. The same of albumen.

POWER TO DRIVE GREATER THAN IN MEASLES.

Thus in smallpox the motor energy must be equal to the force that would convey albumen through all tissues. Measles would be less, and so on according to the thickness of the fluids present. Thus you see the power to drive dead fluids from fascia must be much greater in smallpox than in cases of measles. Then we must see why the pulse of smallpox is so powerful during development of the pox. After killing the fluids by retention in the fascia of the skin, a greater force yet is created by hurting nerve fibers of fascia; then the motor energy appears and all the powers of life go to help the arteries force fluids through the skin and push to and leave them in the fascia of the skin to be eliminated as best it can. In some parts elimination fails, such places are called pox. They supurate and drop out leaving a pit (the pox mark). Now had the nerves of the skin and fascia not been irritated to contract the skin against the fascia passing its dead fluids through the excretory ducts of the skin, we probably would have no eruption. It is not quite reasonable to conclude that after the heart overloads the fascia and the nerves lose their control by pressure of fluids, that all that is left is chemical action to the production of pus, which throws it out of fascia in intervening spaces? Then should the fascia have greater death of its substances, we have one spot to run into others, and we have "confluent smallpox."



CHAPTER XIII.

A CHAPTER OF WONDERS AND SOME VALUABLE QUESTIONS.

Wonders on the Increase—What Is Life?—How Is Action Produced—Acquaint Yourself With the Machinery—Duty of the Osteopath—Formation of Sacrum—The Pelvis—Appearance of OEdema—Do All Diseases Have Appearance in OEdema.

WONDERS ON THE INCREASE.

Wonders are daily callers, and seem greatly on the increase during the Eighteenth century. As we read history we learn that no one hundred years of the past has produced wonders in such number and variety. Stupid systems of government have given place to better and wiser. Voyages of the ocean have had months by sail reduced to days by steam. Journeys over land that would require six months by horse and ox, are now accomplished in six days by rail. Our law, medical and other schools of five and seven years, are now but two or three; and the graduates of such schools are far superior in useful knowledge to those of the five and seven. And no wonder at that, for the facilities for giving the pupil an education are so far superior that the knowledge sought, can be obtained in less time. Our schools are not intended to use the greatest number of days that are allotted to man. But at this day schooling and learning mean, to obtain useful knowledge in the quickest way that a thoroughness can be obtained. If there is any method by which arithmetic can be taught so as to master it in thirty days instead of thirty months let us have it. We want knowledge, we are willing to pay for it, we want all we pay for, and we want our heads kept out of the sausage-mill of time wasting.

A great question now stands before us: What are the possibilities of mind to improve our methods of gaining knowledge, shorten time, and getting greater and better results? I am free to say the question is too momentous to form an answer, as each day brings a new wonder, to the man or woman who reasons on cause, and gives demonstrations by effects.

WHAT IS LIFE?

The philosopher who first asked that question no one knows. But all intelligent persons are interested in the solution of this problem, at least to know some tangible reason why it is called life; whether life is personal or so arranged that it might be called an individualized principle of nature.

I wish to think for a time on this line, because we should make a wise handling of the machinery of the body.

If life in man has been formed to suit the size and duties of the being; if life has a living and separate personage, then we should be governed by such reasons as would give it the greatest chance to go on with its labors in the bodies of man and beast.

We know by experience that a spark of fire will start the principles of powder into motion, which, were it not stimulated by the positive principle of father nature, which finds this germ lying quietly in the womb of space, would be silently inactive for all ages, without being able to move or help itself, save for the motor principle of life given by the father of all motion.

HOW IS ACTION PRODUCED.

Right here we could and should ask the question: Is this action produced by electricity put in motion, or is it the active principle that comes as a spiritual man? If so, it is useless to try, or hope to know what life is in its minutia. But we do know that life can only display its natural forces by the visible action of the forms it produces.

If we inspect man as a machine, we find a complete building, a machine that courts inspection and criticism. It demands a full exploration of all its parts with their uses. Then the mind is asked to see or find the connection between the physical, and the spiritual. By nature you can reason on the roads that the powers of life are arranged to suit its system of motion.

If life is an individualized personage, as we might express that mysterious something, and it must have definite arrangements by which it can be united and act with matter; then we are admonished to acquaint ourselves with the arrangements of those natural connections, the one or many, as they are connected to all parts of the completed being.

As motion is the first and only evidence of life, by this thought we are conducted to the machinery through which life works to accomplish these results.

ACQUAINT YOURSELF WITH THE MACHINERY.

If the brain be that division in which force is generated or stored, you must at all hazards acquaint yourself with that structure of this machine; trace the connection from brain to heart, from heart to lungs, and other organs that can be acted upon by the brain, whose duty may be to construct the fleshy and bony parts of the body. Trace from the brain to the chemical laboratories, and note their action as they unite and prepare blood and other fluids, that are used in the economy of this vital, self-constructing and self-moving wonder, commonly known as man; wherein life and matter do unite, and express their friendly relation one with the other; and while this relation exists we have the living man only, expressing and proving the relation that can exist between life and matter, from the lowest living atom, to the greatest worlds. They can only express form and action by this law. Harmony only dwells where obstructions do not exist.

DUTY OF THE OSTEOPATH.

The Osteopath finds here the field in which he can dwell forever. His duties as a philosopher admonish him, that life and matter can be united, and that union cannot continue with any hindrance to the free and absolute motion. Therefore his duty is to keep away from the track all that will hinder the complete passage of the forces of the nervous system, that by that power the blood may be delivered and adjusted, to keep the system in normal condition. Here is your duty; do it well, if you wish to succeed.

FORMATION OF SACRUM.

We believe only when we do not know. Belief and doubt are equal terms. If we believe the sacrum is formed by a local system, then we can or will have cause to believe that the rectum and colon appear after the outer skin is in process of forming. For want of the truths we are left in speculative doubt. I believe the lower bowels are formed by local machinery that receives and appropriates to the purpose of construction of such parts or organs as nature designs to be used there. If we dissect a chicken as soon as hatched we will find the colon beginning at rectum and complete in form, but not connected to the small intestines.

THE PELVIS.

To get more directly at the point I want to make I will say I have some reasons to believe that the lower bowels are builded from rectum to the vermiform appendix, by acts of pelvis. It may be well to state that I have seen formation of rectum and colon in the chicken, before the small intestines were visible at all. Then in same chicken I saw, liver, lung, crop and gizzard, and only one artery in the region of the small intestines. From this I was led to believe that the pelvis did much of the forming of the viscera. If so, then we could look for much relief through the system of the pelvis.

APPEARANCE OF OEDEMA.

OEdema is the one word that appears to be at the first showing of life and death in animal forms. Previous to death by general swelling of system, a watery swelling of fascia and lymphatics, even to those of nerve fibers. If a disease should destroy life by withholding all fluids, we can trace such cause in the beginning to a time when there was watery swelling of the centers of nerves of nutrition, to such amount as to cut off nerve supply until sensation ceased to renovate and keep off accumulating fluids so long that fermentation did the work of heating till all fluids had dried up, and the channels of supply closed by adhesive inflammation, and death follows by the law of general atrophy.

DO ALL DISEASES HAVE BEGINNING IN OEDEMA?

To assert that all diseases have their beginning in oedema may be wide in range, but we often find one principle to rule over much territory. "Instance:" Mind is the supreme ruler of all beings, from the mites of life to the monsters of the land and sea. Thus we see a ruling principle is without limit. The same of numbers. By heat all metals melt to fluidity; acids must have oxygen to begin as solvents in most metals. We only speak imperfectly of some common laws to prepare the student to think on the line of probabilities as I hold them out for consideration. Suppose we begin at the atoms of fluids such as enter to construct animal or vegetable forms, and pen up till decomposition begins. By such delay does not nature call a halt and refuse to obey the laws of construction and let all other supplies pile up even to death? Is not all this the result of oedema? OEdema surely begins with the first tardy atom of matter.

Pneumonia begins by its oedematous accumulations of dead atoms, even to the death of the whole body, all having found a start in atoms only.

QUESTIONS FOR THE OSTEOPATH.

We will close this chapter by propounding a few questions which the Osteopath should keep in mind.

Are the human and animal forms complete as working machines?

Has nature furnished man with powers to make his bones; give them the needed shapes of durable material, strong in kind?

Does a section in nature's law provide fastenings to hold these to one another?

Then another question arises: How will this body move, and where and how is the force applied?

Where and how is this force obtained?

How is it generated and supplied to these parts of motion?

What makes these muscles, ligaments, nerves, veins, arteries?

Are they self-forming, or has nature prepared machinery to make them?

Does animal life contain knowledge and force to construct all of the parts of man?

Can it run the machine after it has finished it?

By what power does it move?

Is there a blood vessel running to all parts of this body to supply all these demands?

If it has a battery of force, where is it?

What does it use for force?

Is it electricity? If so how does it collect and use this substance?

How does it convey its powers to any or all places?

How does the man keep warm without fire?

How does he build and lose flesh all the time?

Where and how is the supply made and delivered to proper places?

How is it applied and what holds it to its place when adjusted?

What makes it build the house of life?

Do demand and supply govern the work? If not, what does?

Are the laws of animal life sufficient to do all this work of building and repairing wastes and keep it in running condition?

If it does, what can man do or suggest to help it?

Is this machine capable of being run fast or slow if need be?

Does man have in him some kind of chemical laboratory that can turn out such products as he needs to fill all his physical demands?

If by heat, exercise, or any other cause he gets warm, can that chemistry cool him to normal?

If too cold can it warm him? Can it adjust him to heat and cold?

If so, how is it done? Is the law of life and longevity fully vindicated in man's make up?



CHAPTER XIV.

HAS MAN DEGENERATED?

The Advent of Man—Care of the Stock Raiser—Mental Degeneration Makes It Unpleasant for an Original Thinker—Original Thinkers of the Ancients—Methods of Healing—Failure of Allopathy—Primitive Man—Evidences of Prehistoric Man—Mental Dwarfage.

THE ADVENT OF MAN.

The exact time when man's foot appeared on the earth, no record shows. A knowledge of his advent might be profitable. The unwritten history of the human races with the genius or lack of genius, might to us be an open book of knowledge. As it is not supposable that the mind of man has just become observingly active in the last few centuries, absolute evidence of purer and deeper reason than we have been able to present, stand recorded on the faces of many valuable "lost arts" which we have never been able to equal. Is it not very reasonable to suppose that the powers of mind have wonderfully degenerated from some cause?

CARE OF THE STOCK RAISER.

The stock raiser carefully preserves the best and most healthy of the males and females of his flocks and herds for breeding purposes, that their offspring might be healthy and well developed, for the purposes for which he raises them. As a result he raises stock from the poultry house up, with marked improvement in form, strength and usefulness. Should he be foolish enough to kill off all the healthy and well developed males as they appear in his herds of cattle and other stock, for one or two centuries, would any one with average intelligence suppose that the standard of animals would or could be kept up, by breeding from the unfortunate stock, that had been pierced through the lungs while fighting with more powerful animals. If for breeding purposes he would save calves, colts, lambs, pigs, goats or any other young males to breed from, that had had a leg frozen off, one or both eyes plucked out, necks and ears torn by panthers, what would you think of the man's sanity?

On this line we would ask what has been the procedure of all nations? Has it not been to select the strong and healthy males, drive them out to the field of battle, destroy a million or more of the strongest men, as our war of the sixties shows. Since that war closed the fathers of our children are mainly the crippled, worn out, and degenerated physical wrecks, with the assistance of the refused, who for lack of physical ability were barred from entering the United States' service. Such physical and mental wrecks are the fathers of the children born during the last thirty years. Every healthy young lady who married and became a mother after the early sixties, had to select a husband from a war or hereditary wreck. From that degenerated stock of human beings our asylums are filled, and the beams of the gallows pulled down by the weight of the bodies of those mental dwarfs. Run this train of reason back for a few hundred or thousand of years,—this degenerating force, bearing upon the offspring, and is it a wonder that we have physical and mental wrecks all over the country?

MENTAL DEGENERATION MAKES IT UNPLEASANT FOR THE ORIGINAL THINKER.

Now if we have been mentally degenerating, killing our best men back for a few thousand years time, and still have a few left who are fairly good reasoners, what was their mental powers then, compared with now? They could think from native ability; we only through acquired ability by our methods of education. Should an original thinker occasionally appear from the crippled and maimed, he will have much that is unpleasant to contend with, unless he is generous enough to credit the cause to an effect produced by the lack of mental and physical forces in the sires just described. A man or woman who is able to reason, cannot afford to wear out his or her physical and mental forces by spending time in tiresome discussions with such blank masses, who are very fortunate to have intelligence enough to make a living under the methods that require the least mental action.

It would not be manly nor lady like to allow a feeling of combattiveness to arise and spend your forces on such persons. Pre-natal causes have dropped them where they are, and a philosopher knows he must submit to the conditions, and he is sorrowful in place of vengeful and vindicative, and all that is left for him to do is to trim his lamps and let the lights defend themselves.

ORIGINAL THINKERS OF THE ANCIENTS.

On this line we have much to think of. Anciently they did think: Great minds existed then, as is evidenced by the architecture displayed in constructing temples and pyramids. As in philosophy, chemistry, and mathematics, they stand to-day as living facts of their intelligence. In some ways we are equal and even surpass the ancients. Before the establishment of religious and political governments, national and tribal creeds, to sustain which the powerful minds and bodies of thousands and millions have been slain and their wise councils prohibited by death. Reason says under the circumstances we must kindly make and do the best we can in our day and time. No doubt their religion was better than ours, before they began to fight about their gods and governments.

METHODS OF HEALING.

Some evidence crops out now and then that their methods of healing were natural and wisely applied, and crowned with good results. As far as history speaks of the ancient healing arts they were logical, philosophical, good in results and harmless. It is true enough that we have great systems of chemistry that are useful in the mechanical arts, but very limited in their uses in the healing arts. In fact, a very great per cent of the gray-haired philosophers of all medical schools, unhesitatingly assert that the world would be better off without them. These conclusions are sent forth by competent and honest investigators, who have tested all known methods and medicines, and carefully observed the results from a quarter to a half a century. Let us call it "a trade," as the use of drugs is not a science.

The author will now say, the health hunter in a majority of cases, when he administers drugs, gives one dose for health and nine for the dollar.

As it becomes necessary to throw off oppressive governments, it becomes just as necessary to throw off other useless customs, without which no substitute has ever been received.

FAILURE OF ALLOPATHY.

Allopathy, a school of medicine known and fostered by all nations, drove on with its exploring teams; gave up the search, went into camp and builded temples to the god who purged, puked, perspired, opiated, drank whiskey and other stimulants; destroyed its thousands, ruined nations, established whiskey saloons, opium dens, insane asylums, naked mothers and hungry babies, and still cries aloud, and says: "Come unto me and I will give you rest. I have opium, morphine, and whiskey by the barrel. I am the god of all healing knowledge, and want to be so recognized by people and statute. I do not wish to be annoyed by Eclecticism, Homoeopathy, Christian science, massage, Swedish movements, nor Osteopathy. I do not like Osteopathy any better than I do a tiger. It scratches me and tears away all my disciples. I cannot destroy it. It uses neither opium nor whiskey, and it is impossible to catch it asleep. It scratches us, and has scratched our power out of four states during the last twelve months, with no telling where it will scratch next time. We must prepare for more war, I have heard from my scouts that on its flag the inscription reads thus: 'No quarters for allopathy in particular and none at all for any schools of medicine farther than surgery, and war to the hilt on three-fourths of that as practiced in the present day. The use of the knife in everything and for everything must be stopped; not by statute law, but through a higher education of the masses, which will give them more confidence in nature's ability to heal.'"

PRIMITIVE MAN.

It is reasonable to suppose that the mind that constructed man was fully competent to undertake and complete the being to suit the purpose for which he was designed. After giving him physical perfection in every limb, organ, or part of his body, it is reasonable to suppose, that at that time, he gave him all the mental powers needed for all purposes during the life of his race, and with that perfection in the physical, it is supposable he approached very nearly to intellectual perfection. He was a mathematician, not by collegiate process, but by native ability. He did not have to take a course in a university to study chemistry, because of the fact that he was a chemist when he was born. Possibly he could speak or understand all languages spoken by the human tongue, from the powers of his mind, which occupied a pure and healthy physique. In a word he was well made and fully endowed with all the physical and mental forces necessary to the whole journey of his life. Now a question arises: "When did he begin to degenerate physically and mentally?" Let us reason some on this line, which seems to be a rather solid foundation, and as history is young itself, and has imperfectly recorded only such events as have transpired during a few centuries, with records imperfectly preserved.

EVIDENCES OF PREHISTORIC MAN.

We see evidences all along the journey of prehistoric man's life, though the being and his bones have been mostly obliterated; we see close to his bony remains the stone axe, the flint-dart. We find acres of ground in many places close to mounds and caves, with countless millions of slivers that have been scaled from flints and formed to suit war purposes; while the many bones that are found in caves, heaps and piles, indicate that many thousands fell in mortal combat then and there. Possibly they were old in the skilled arts of war at that day. Their great and powerful men, who should have been parents of the coming generations, were slain and destroyed and the conquered became the captives and slaves of the more powerful, with all opportunities for mental development suppressed. Other nations and tribes willingly entered the bloody fields of battle, with nothing to report but the death of the best physically formed men, and leaving the propagation of the race or races to be kept up by those who were left behind as unqualified to go into battle, for lack of strength of either body or mind.

This process of destroying the mentally and physically great has been kept up to the limits of our history's record. We have to go to schools about one-half of our time in order to cultivate and stimulate our mental energies sufficiently well, that we may follow the ordinary business pursuits of life.

MENTAL DWARFAGE.

Without worrying the patience of the reader any further, we will ask him if it is not reasonable that during all the past thousands of years, that men have fought over their gods and governments, has it not produced the mental dwarfage from the causes he has had to face? Our professional men are only imitators of one another. They must spend years in school because of a lack of native ability. This is our condition, and we must make the best we can of it. Most of our learned men, so-called, at the present day, stand upon heaps of mental rubbish. You seldom see in an editor's columns any evidence of mental greatness. He clips, quotes and sells his wisdom. He takes up some hobby, religious or scientific. He lauds his own religious views; his scientific ideas he wishes embalmed for the use of future generations. His law is the law. His medicine is God's pills, notwithstanding he is the laughing stock of all who know him. I want to be good to them. I expect to be good to them, as they are suffering from the effects of pre-natal causes, thrown upon them by their ancestors for thousands of years. By those causes they have been possibly wounded worse than I have, and I do not expect to spend any time in combats with mental dwarfs; political, religious, or scientific bigots. If I can successfully run my boat over the riffles of time, I shall credit it to good luck, not native ability, for I, too, feel what they should,—the deep plowings of mental dwarfage, that is the result of killing all the great and good men for ages.



CHAPTER XV.

OSTEOPATHIC TREATMENT.

Five Points—Visceral List—Care in Treating the Spinal Column—Most Important Chapter—Perfect Drainage—A Natural Cure.

FIVE POINTS.

The five points of observation will cover easily the whole body, and we cannot omit any one of them, and successfully examine any disease of the system. Local injuries are, however, an exception to this rule, and even a local hurt often causes general effect. Suppose a fall should jar the lumbar vertebra, and push it at some articulation, front, back, or laterally; say the lumbar, with one or two short ribs turned down against the lumbar nerves with a prolapsed and loosened diaphragm, pressing heavily on the abdominal aorta, vena cava, and thoracic duct; have you not found cause to stop or derange the circulation of blood in arteries, veins, lymphatics and all other organs below diaphragm? Then heart trouble would be the natural result. Fibroid tumors, painful monthlies, constipation, diabetis, dyspepsia or any trouble of the system that could come from bad blood would be natural results, because lymph is too old to be pure when it enters the lungs for purifying. If blood or chyle is kept too long below the diaphragm, it becomes diseased before it reaches the lungs, and after renovation, but little good blood is left. Then the dead matter is separated from blood and blown out at the lungs while in vapor. Thus nutriment is not great enough to keep up normal supply. In this stage the patient is low in flesh and feeble generally, because of trouble with blood and chyle to pass normally through the diaphragm.

VISCERAL LIST.

The failure of free action of blood produces general debility, congestion, low types of fever, dropsy, constipation, tumefaction and on to the whole list of visceral of diseases.

From this we are called to the pelvis. If the innominate bones are twisted on sacrum or are driven too high or too low, an injury to the sacral system of blood and nerves would be cause equal to congestion, inflammation of womb or bladder-diseases, with a crippled condition of all the spinal nerves. This would be cause enough to produce hysteria, and on to the whole list of diseases to spinal injuries. The Osteopath has great demands for his powers of reason when he considers the relation of diseases generally to the pelvis; and this knowledge he must have before his work can be attended with success.

As I said, five points comprise the fields in which the Osteopath must search. I have given you quite pointedly and at length, hints on spine and sacrum which cover the territory below the diaphragm. In conclusion I will simply refer you to the chest, neck and brain, and say, "let your search light ever shine bright on the brain." On it we must depend for power. About all nerves do run through the neck and branch off to supply both above and below, to do their parts in animal life, to the heart, brain and sum total of man and beast. Search faithfully for cause of diseases in head, neck, chest, spine and pelvis; for all organs, limbs and parts are directly related to and depend on these five localities to which I have just called your attention.

With your knowledge of anatomy, I am sure you can practice and be successful, and should be in all cases over which Osteopathy is supposed to preside.

CARE IN TREATING THE SPINAL CORD.

I want to offer you the facts, not advice, but pure and well sustained facts, the only witnesses that ever enter the courts of truth. A spinal cord is a fact; you see it—thus a fact. That which you can see, feel, hear, smell or taste is a fact, and the knowledge of the ability of any one fact to accomplish any one thing, how it accomplishes it and for what purpose, is a truth sought for in philosophy. The spinal cord is the present fact for consideration. You see it, you feel it, thus you have two facts with which you can start to obtain a knowledge of the use of this spinal cord. In it you have one common straight cylinder which is filled with an unknown substance, and by an unknown power wisely directed. It is wisely formed, located, and protected. It throws off branches which are wisely located. They have bundles, many and few; they are connected to their support, which is the brain, by a continuous cord in length and form to suit. After it has concluded throwing off branches at local places for special purposes, then like a flashlight, it throws off a bundle of branches called horse-tail plexus, caudae equinae, which simply signifies the many branches that convey fluids and influences to the extremities, to execute the vital work for which they are formed and located. While the laws of life and their procedure to execute and accomplish the work designed by nature for them to do, is mysterious and to the finite mind incomprehensible, you can only see what they do or perform, after the work is done and ready for your inspection.

HOW TO TREAT THE SPINAL COLUMN.

Now as we are dealing with the omnipresent nerve principle of animal life, I will tell you this one serious truth, and support it by the fact of observation. To treat the spine, and thereby irritate the spinal cord oftener than once or twice a week will cause the vital assimilation to be perverted, and become the death-producing excretor, by producing the abortion of the living molecules of life, before fully matured, while in the cellular system, which lies immediately under the lymphatics.

Your patients will linger long from the change of the nutrient ducts to throw off their dead matter into the excretories, which death was caused by the undue, or too many treatments of the spinal cord. If you will allow yourself to think for a moment, or think at all of the spinal cord being irritated, and what effect it will have on the uterus you will realize that I have told you a truth, and produced an array of facts to stand by that truth. Many of your patients are well six months before they are discharged. They are kept on hands because they are weak, and they are weak, because you keep them so from irritating the spinal cord. Throw off your goggles and receive the rays of the sunlight which forever stand in the bosom of reason.

MOST IMPORTANT CHAPTER OF ALL.

This is the most important chapter of this book, because at this point the engine of life is turned over to you as an engineer and by you it is expected to be wisely conducted on its journey.

Your responsibility here is doubled. Your first position is that of a master mechanic, who is capable of drawing plans and writing minutely a specification whereby the engineer may know what a well constructed machine is in every particular. He knows the parts and relations of both as constructor and operator, and you are supposed to be the foreman in the shop of repairs. The living person is the engine, nature the engineer, and you the master mechanic.

This being your position it is expected that you will carefully inspect all parts of the engines run into your repair shop, note all variations from the truly normal, and adjust from those variations as nearly as possible to the conditions of the true specimen that stands in the shop.

PERFECT DRAINAGE.

At this point it will be proper to suppose a case by way of illustration. Suppose by some accident the bones of the neck should be thrown at variance from the normal to a bend or twist. We may then expect inharmony in the circulation of the blood to the head and face with all the organs and glands above the neck. We will find imperfect supply of blood and other fluids to the head. We may expect swelling of head and face with local or general misery. Thus you have a cause for headache, dizziness, blindness, enlarged tonsils, sore tongue, loss of sight, hearing, memory, and on through the list of head diseases, all because of perverted circulation of the fluids of the brain proper of any local division. It is important to have perfect drainage, for without it, the good results from a treatment cannot be expected to follow your efforts to relieve diseases above the neck.

WHAT TREATING MEANS.

Here I want to emphasize that the word treat has but one meaning, that is to know you are right, and do your work accordingly. I will only hint, and would feel embarrassed to go any farther than to hint to you, the importance of an undisturbed condition of the five known kinds of nerves, namely: sensation, motion, nutrition, voluntary and involuntary, all of which you must labor to keep in perpetual harmony while treating any disease of the head, neck, chest, abdomen, pelvis, spine and limbs.

If you would allow yourself to reason at all, you must know that sensation must be normal and always on guard to give notice by local or general misery, of unnatural accumulation of the circulating fluids. Each set of nerves must be free to act and do their part. Your duty as a master mechanic is to know that the engine kept is in so perfect a condition that there will be no functional disturbance to any nerve, vein, or artery that supplies and governs the skin, the fascia, the muscle, the blood or any fluid that should freely circulate to sustain life and renovate the system from deposits that would cause what we call disease.

A NATURAL CURE.

Your Osteopathic knowledge has surely taught you, that with an intimate acquaintance with the nerve and blood supply, you can arrive at a knowledge of the hidden cause of disease, and conduct your treatment to a successful termination. This is not by your knowledge of chemistry, but by the absolute knowledge of what is in man. What is normal, and what abnormal, what is effect and how to find the cause. Do you ever suspect renal or bladder trouble without first receiving knowledge from your patient, that there is soreness and tenderness in the region of the kidneys at some point along the spine. By this knowledge you are invited to explore the spine for the purpose of ascertaining whether it is normal or not. If by your intimate acquaintance and observance of a normal spine you should detect an abnormal form although it be small, you are then admonished to look out for disease of kidneys, bladder or both, from the discovered cause for disturbance of the renal nerves by such displacement, or some slight variation from the normal in the articulation of the spine. If this is not worthy of your attention, your mind is surely too crude to observe those fine beginnings that lead to death. Your skill would be of little use in incipient cases of Bright's disease of the kidneys. Has not your acquaintance with the human body opened your mind's eye to observe that in the laboratory of the human body, the most wonderful chemical results are being accomplished every day, minute and hour of your life? Can that laboratory be running in good order and tolerate the forming of a gall or bladder stone? Does not the body generate acids, alkalies, substances and fluids necessary to wash out all impurities? If you think an unerring God has made all those necessary preparations, why not so assert, and stand upon that stone?

You cannot do otherwise, and not betray your ignorance to the thinking world. If in the human body you can find the most wonderful chemical laboratory mind can conceive of, why not give more of your time to that subject, that you may obtain a better understanding of its workings? Can you afford to treat your patients without such qualification? Is it not ignorance of the workings of this Divine law that has given birth to the foundationless nightmare that now prevails to such an alarming extent all over civilization, that a deadly drug will prove its efficacy in warding off disease in a better way than has been prescribed by the intelligent God, who has formulated and combined life, mind and matter in such a manner that it becomes the connecting link between a world of mind, and that element known as matter? Can a deep philosopher do otherwise than conclude that nature has placed in man all the qualities for his comfort and longevity? Or will he drink that which is deadly, and cast his vote for the crucifixion of knowledge?



CHAPTER XVI.

REASONING TESTS.

The Vermiform Appendix—Operating for Appendicitis—Expelling Power of the Vermiform Appendix—Care Exercised in Making Assertions—Reasoning Tests—A List of Unexplained Diseases—Concluding Remarks.

THE VERMIFORM APPENDIX.

At the present time more than at any other period since the birth of Christ, the medical and surgical world have centralized their minds for the purpose of relieving locally inside, below the kidney of the male or female, excruciating pain, which appears in both sexes in the region above described.

From some cause, possibly justifiable, it has been decided to open the human body and explore the region just below the right kidney in search of the cause of this trouble. Such explorations have been made upon the dead first. Small seeds and other substances have been found in the vermiform appendix, which is a hollow tube over an inch in length. These discoveries, as found in the dead subject, have led to explorations in the same location in the living. In some of the cases, though very few, seeds and other substances have been found in the vermiform appendix, supposed to be the cause of local or general inflammation of the appendix. Some have been successfully removed, and permanent relief followed the operation. These explorations and successes in finding substances in the vermiform appendix, their removal, and successful recovery in some cases, have led to what may properly be termed a hasty system of diagnosis, and it has become very prevalent, and resorted to by the physicians of many schools, under the impression that the vermiform appendix is of no known use, and that the human being is just as well off without it.