True science of living : the new gospel of health; practical and physiological. Story of an evolution of natural law in the cure of disease for physicians and layman. How the sick get well; how the well get sick; alcoholics freshly considered

Front matter

Ip '

> V

M

Introduction

The beloved apostle, writing to his well-beloved Gaius (3 John ii.), whom he loves in the truth, greets him thus :

“ Beloved , I wish cihove all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul pros-

Spiritual prosperity and health, which John takes for granted in his salutation to his beloved Gaius, is certainly the highest blessing attainable in this earth ; but John prays that this great blessing may be matched by another, namely, the prosperity and health of the body. It is with the sincerest desire that the readers of this book may improve their health and increase their prosperity in body, soul, and spirit that I have most willingly set my hand to write a brief introduction to the pages of Dr. Dewey’s book.

Bodily health is certainly desired by all men and women, especially by those who have suffered from any loss of health or impairment of physical strength. For the most part bodily health is desired as a principal factor in our earthly enjoyment, and for the sake of earthly gain and prosperity. But the Christian ought to desire health of body for the higher reason that so he can serve God the more efficiently. The body is the

Lord’s as well as the soul and spirit. “ He is the

INTRODUCTION.

Saviour of the body also.” “ Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?” To defile the body with sin, or to voluntarily neglect the body in anywise as to cause it to suffer in health or strength, is an offence against our salvation and the honor of God. To deliberately undermine the health and strength of the body by persisting in an injurious, because false, way of living, is a sin of great enormity. Drunkenness or gluttony are offences against both body and soul which no self-respecting person, not to say Christian, ought for a moment to allow. Nevertheless, there are no doubt hundreds and thousands of good men and women who are guilty of both excess and bad methods in their eating and drinking that border upon these two disgusting and harmful sins.

The object of this book, as I understand it, is to put before the reader a “ better way of living” than that which characterizes the great majority of people. It relates to the habit of eating and drinking, and sets forth from the point of view of sound physiology the relation of food to the human system, and so to disease and health.

If the author of this book is right in his premise and conclusion, he has set before the world a theory of living which ought to, and I believe will, revolutionize the habits of a multitude of right-thinking men and women. If he is right in supposing the coursing through our veins of pure, rich blood goes not only to preserve the health of the body and prolong life, but also that it makes for righteousness, both in clearing the mind and purifying the body of those humors which make fuel for unholy desires and unrighteous dispositions, then we must give attention to what lie says. “ Pure and rich blood (the life is in the blood) contributes to the moral, intellectual, and spiritual growth as well as to the bodily health.” This proposition is almost self-evident and needs no argument. We should hail, then, with gladness, any discovery that will enable us to purify and enrich our blood.

Of the two principal matters recommended as the practical outcome of the theory of health developed in this book, the first is that fasting, or the abstinence from food until natural hunger calls for it, is the best way to bring about recovery from disease. Take away food from a sick man’s stomach and you have begun, not to starve the sick man, but the disease. We have all of us heard that fevers are more difficult to subdue in large and full-habited people than in the “ lean kind.” I have often had my physician tell me that if ever typhoid or pneumonia got hold of me it would “go hard with me,” for the reason that there was so much material for the disease to feed upon. A conflagration is great or small in proportion to the quantity of easily-inflammable fuel the fire has to feed upon.

The second is that digestion is best promoted and food so assimilated as to afford the largest amount of nourishment and the greatest quantity of rich blood, by giving the stomach a long rest from all work during each twenty-four hours. That is to say that we shall all be the better by giving the stomach rest from the evening till the noon of the next day. In other words, Dr. Dewey recommends that we should give up our breakfasts, and by so doing we are certain to improve our health if we are well ; prevent the incoming pf

INTRODUCTION.

disease ; assist nature to recover from any unavoidable attack of sickness; strengthen the whole body, and thus build up the soul and the spirit which are so intimately connected with the body.

The only right I have to commend the book is the right which one man has who has tried the “ better way of living ” and has found that “it works well.”

I am not personally acquainted with Dr. Dewey, the author of this book, but I have had the pleasure of some correspondence with him, and have experienced the benefit of greatly improved health by following out the simple rule of “ right living ” which he lays down in his pages. I am therefore quite ready to put my hand to an unconventional introduction, if by so doing I shall be enabled to induce any one to read these pages carefully, and, so far forth as the things therein contained applies to him, to follow the advice given faithfully.

When the blind man was asked by the Pharisees how Jesus opened his eyes, he related the fact of the process bv which the miracle was wrought without attempting to explain the mystery of power underlying it. He answered and said, that “ A man that is called Jesus made clay and anointed mine eyes and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam and wash ; and I went and washed, and I received sight.”

And a grain when the Pharisees cross-examined him he repeated his simple testimony,

“ He put clay upon mine eyes and I washed and I do see.”

I am but a layman in the medical science and so do not pretend to discuss the subject professionally, but,

INTRODUCTION.

i as “ a grateful patient,” I am desirous of testifying to the benefits I have received from following Dr. Dewey’s method of “ right living.”

This I know, that for forty years I have been a miserable victim of sick headache, induced by a a kind of indigestion,” by “a torpid liver,” by this and that, as I have been told by many physicians. I have tried every remedy and expedient that has in turn been recommended to me by physicians and friends. In many of them I have found temporary relief ; but the cause of the trouble has ever remained, and the bilious sick headache, with its excruciating pain, would return and a total collapse of my power to work would supervene for from one to three or four days. I have tried dieting, that is not eating so heartily, not eating certain kinds of foods, not drinking coffee, etc. I have tried exercise of various kinds. I have tried preventive remedies, in the form of sodas of various kinds, antipyrins, antifebrins, blue pills, bromides of various kinds, etc. I have tried Turkish baths, and massage. All these things have given me more or less temporary relief, but I have always known that it was but temporary ; that the real trouble was un touched. In addition to this bilious habit with its dread accompaniment of headaches, I have been steadily gaining in weight for twenty years past, until I had reached the great weight, for a man of my height (5 feet, 9 inches) of two hundred and fifty pounds. This has of course inconvenienced me, and brought on a certain shortness of breath upon the most moderate exertion either in walking or running, especially in running and going upstairs. I would

INTRODUCTION.

not like to give the idea to any reader that I have been in any wise a sick man, for I have never, with the exception of the times when for a day or two I have been laid aside with sick headaches, been in bed a week in my life of fifty years, with any kind of sickness or disease according to the ordinary acceptation of these words. Indeed I have been all my life a man of extraordinary health and strength, doing tremendous work in the line of my calling, preaching daily for months or years together to great crowds of people in every part of the world. At the same time I have always been conscious of the fact that there was serious trouble behind this great store of health and strength, and especially has the steady accumulation of fat in my system been a source of anxiety as well as discomfort to me. The tendency to vertigo and a flushed face, and at times great lassitude which I could only overcome by great effort of will, has also caused me anxietv. I have been warned more than once by my doctors that I ought to be very careful not to make any great or violent exertion, as I was liable to suffer at any time from suffusion of blood upon the brain.

Well, some months ago, I chanced through a friend, whom I had known to be an invalid for years, and whom I then saAv in seeming perfect health, to hear of Dr. Dewey and his method of “ right living.” I found that not only my friend, but every member of his family, including an invalid wife, a delicate daughter, two splendid young collegians, and a young boy of twelve had all given up eating their breakfasts ) and that they were all greatly improved in

INTRODUCTION.

health and strengthened mentally as well as physically. I was introduced by my friends to several other persons in his city who had adopted the “ right-living: ” method, and with one accord they all testified to the same great benefits experienced. I called on one or two business-men of my acquaintance who had adopted this method of living, and being men of my own type, they testified that they had, one and all, lost their tormenting sick headaches, lost a great deal of superficial fat and tissue, and were in every way greatly improved in health, in spirits, and in their capacity for work. I called upon an eminent physician whom I had known and who had on one or two occasions prescribed for me. I asked him if he knew of Dr. Dewey’s method of treatment and living. He said he did, and strongly recommended me to a adopt the anti-breakfast regime and confessed, sub rosa , that he himself had adopted it, and was greatly the better for it. I learned of friends in my own calling who had suffered for years on Monday with fearful headaches as a result of physical and nervous exhaustion incident on their Sunday’s work, who, having given up their breakfasts, had recovered entirely from the dreadful Monday prostrations and were enabled to do more and better work than ever before both in their studies and in their pulpits.

Taking the theory upon which this system of living is based into account (and even to my lay mind it seemed most reasonable), and the testimony which I personally received from both men and women, delicate and biliously strong, working-men, merchants, doctors and preachers, delicate ladies for years in*

INTRODUCTION.

valicled and in a state of collapse, and some who ha6^ never been ill, but who were “an hundred per cent, better ” for living- without breakfast, I resolved to (jive up my breakfast. I pleaded at first that it might be my lunch instead, for I have all my life enjoyed my breakfast more than any other meal. But no ! it was the breakfast that must go. So on a certain fine Monday morning I bade farewell to the breakfastroom. For a day or two I suffered slight headaches from what seemed to me was the want of food ; but I soon found that they were just the dying pains of a bad habit. After a week had passed I never thought of wanting breakfast ; and though I was often present in the breakfast-rooms of friends with whom I was visiting, and every tempting luxury of the breakfast was spread before me, I did not desire food at all, feeling no suggestion of hunger. Indeed now, after a few months the thought of breakfast never occurs to me. I am ready for my lunch (or breakfast if you please) at one o’clock, but am never hungry before that hour.

As for the results of this method of living I can only relate them as I have personally experienced them.

1. I have not had the first suggestion of a sick headache since I gave up my breakfast. From my earliest boyhood I do not remember ever having gone a whole month without being down with one of these attacks, and for thirty years, during the most active part of my life, I have suffered with them oftentimes, more or less every day for a month or six weeks at a time, and hardly ever a whole fortnight passed without

INTRODUCTION.

an acute attack that lias sent me to bed or at least left me to drag through the day with intense bodily suffering and mental discouragement.

2. I have gradually lost a large portion of my surplus fat, my weight having gone down some twenty pounds, and my size being reduced by several inches at the point where corpulency was the most prominent ; and I am still losing weight and decreasing in size. The process of reduction is very gradual, but still is maintained from week to week.

3. I find that my skin is improving in texture, becoming softer, finer and more closely knit than heretofore. My complexion and eyes have cleared, and all fullness of the face and the tendency to flushness in the head has disappeared.

4. I experience no fullness and unpleasantness after eating as I so often did before. As a matter of fact, though I enjoy my meals (and I eat anything my appetite and taste call for) as never before, eating with zest, Ido not think I eat as much as I used to do ; but I am conscious of better digestion ; my food does not lie so long in my stomach, and that useful organ seems to have gone out of the gas-producing business.

5. I am conscious of a lighter step and a more elastic spring in all my limbs. I can walk with quickness and for longer distances without consciousness of a that tired feeling” I used to experience. Indeed a brisk walk now is a pleasure which I seek to gratify, whereas before the prescribed walk for the sake of exercise was a horrible bore to me.

6. I go to my study and to my pulpit on an emptv

INTRODUCTION.

iZ stomach without any sense of loss of strength mentally or physically, — on the other hand with freshness and vigor which is delightful. In this respect I am quite sure that I am in every way advantaged.

I may add, that, after seeing the manifest improvement that had taken place in my whole physical condition, my eldest daughter determined to follow in my footsteps, and she even went so far as to suggest to her little son (seven years old), that he also give up his breakfast. At first the wee chap said he wanted his breakfast and had a cry at the thought of being deprived of one of his natural and habitual rights. But his mother explained to him that she thought it would be a benefit to his health, and gave him a few simple reasons for the advice she had given him, and the little fellow pleasantly gave in to his mother. Nothing will induce him to eat his breakfast now till one o’clock, and both he and his mother are much better in health than before. When I returned to England some months ago from America, my son, a lad of twenty, asked me why I did not eat my breakfast and I explained to him as best I could the theory of the “ betterliving” system, beginning with the proposition that “ restful sleep is not a hunger-causing process,” and expounded also the advantage of a long rest for the stomach. I also pointed out to him that it is not the quantity of food which one eats that produces blood (good blood) and strength but the amount of nourishment which we get out of the food. After an hour’s talk over the matter, without any recommendation or even suggestion on my part, and much less without thought that he would adopt this better method of

INTRODUCTION.

living’ (for lie was a great devotee to liis breakfast) he said of liis own accord:

“ Father, that seems a most sensible theory of living. I shall give up my breakfast at once.”

Since then he has eaten no breakfasts, and testifies to the fact that he feels a good fifty per cent, better all the day through, and does his (office) work much easier and with a clearer head than before. He now playfully speaks of breakfast to his friends as “ that vulgar habit.”

One by one, of their own accord, every member of my family have given up their breakfast, and I think I can safely say that all are the better for it, though with one or two of them the sacrifice of the breakfastgod has been of so recent a date that I can only say they are the better on the principle of inductive philosophy.

My friends have, almost without an exception, noted and remarked upon the great improvement in my general health and appearance; and almost invariably said something like this :

“ How well you are looking.” “ Your holiday has done you a world of good.” “ Why, what have you been doing with yourself this summer? You are looking better than I ever saw you.” “You must have been visiting the fountain of youth this summer. Tell me where it is and I will make a pilgrimage ! ”

To these and similar remarks I have simply replied : Xi Oh, I have discovered the ‘ better way o " living ’ and been following it; and to that alone I attribute my general improvement in health and appearance.” u What is it? Do tell me, for really I am so dull

INTRODUCTION.

and tired that life is sometimes a burden to me.” (This remark is literally quoted.)

“ Well, it is very simple. Just give up eating your breakfast.”

“ What, give up my breakfast ! ” “ Why ! I would

rather give up any other meal in the day.” “ Besides I could never do my work without my breakfast.” “ I should faint before ten o’clock.” “ It is quite true that I eat very little breakfast, but I am sure I could ne^er get through the morning without it.” “ Oh, that may do very well for a great healthy man like you, but I could never manage it.”

These are specimen answers, quoted literally ; to which I have replied invariably by a brief statement of the anti-breakfast theory and then expounded ; begining with “Restful sleep is not a hunger-eausingprocess,” and going on to suggest that the breakfast they eat cannot furnish strength for them to do their morning work upon, as in no case does food give strength until it is converted into blood. That we all do our work to-day largely if not entirely on the blood extracted from the food of yesterday. Then I have questioned them as to their habits and state of health, and in nine cases out of ten I have found that these friends of mine, the more healthy ones as well as the delicate ones, all suffer in some degree from some one of the many forms of indigestion. Headaches, palpitation, fullness of habit, neuralgia, accumulation of gas in the stomach, pimples on the face, or some other form of eczema arising from and due to poor blood. These conversations have always awakened interest, and even the most skeptical have again returned to the discussion

INTRODUCTION.

of the matter, as though the very mention of the matter had produced conviction.

In at least a score of cases my friends have adopted the a right-living ” method, and all testify to their great delight in it. In one or two cases where dyspepsia has been a veritable fiend, and health and strength almost gone, with depression of mind and even decay of will, the improvement has been most marked, and these friends are on the high-road to health again. I could fill pages of interesting details coming under my own observation and resulting from the adoption of the rule, on the strength of my simple expositions, which would be surprising.

I am often asked if it is possible that I preach on Sundays, that is in the morning, without any food, as though that were a feat almost incredible. To which I

o

am able not only to say, “ Yes, of course,” but more than that, “ 1 go to my pulpit fresher in body and mind, and come out of it fresher after the sermon, than I ever did in the old breakfast-eating days.”

I have come to the conclusion that the blood cannot take care of the brain and the stomach at the same time, and if a man has a breakfast to digest and a sermon to preach during the same period of time, either the breakfast or the sermon will have to suffer, and most likely both of them do. So convinced am I of this fact that I am almost prepared to believe that preachers would do better work and be stronger in body if, as a rule, they took no food at all on Sundays , but only drank what they cared for of water. A twenty-four hours’ fast from all food once a ;7eek would not only do no harm, but would give the

INTRODUCTION.

stomach such a rest as would enable all the other bodily functions to clear the body of unhealthy remainders. God has ordained a seventh-day fast from exhausting and secular labor. Of old He ordained a fast once in seven years for the land that it might recover and recoup itself from too constant labor of production. We know that all ship-owners and other users of machinery require their engines and boilers to have an occasional rest. Two pairs of boots will wear longer, if the use of them is alternated, than three pairs worn steadily, one pair after the other till each is worn out. Why then is it unreasonable to suppose that it is a good thing to give the stomach, that most delicate and important of all our organs, as long a rest each day as possible, and occasionally a much longer rest l

Some of my friends have charged me with having fallen into the hands of a “ quack,” and have thrown this at me :

“If this anti-breakfast theory for people who are not invalids, and the ‘ starvation theory ’ for sick people Avere true, do you suppose that it would have been left for an obscure country doctor in America to have discovered it? Have any of the great medical authorities, such as Sir A. B. and C. D. and Q. X., recommended it?” In a word, “ Have any of the rulers believed on him?” I do not pretend to argue the matter technically as I am not a technically-educated physician. Therefore my testimony is that of a layman. As such I give it for what it is worth. I cannot help, however, thinking again of the case of the blind man who was questioned by the Pharisees. They had a theory that

INTRODUCTION.

Jesus must be a bad man and a sinner because He healed on the Sabbath day, which to them was tlie most sacred thing they possessed, more sacred than God Himself. The man that was born blind and yet was restored to sight replied very wisely, as a layman :

“ Whether He be a sinner or no I know not ; one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.

It is even so in such a case as this. Here is a man with a theory for u better living,” which he is prepared to defend on scientific principles, and to demonstrate by actual experimental evidence. Here is a theory of u better livino' ” which I and scores of others have tried, so simple, so full of common sense, and withal one which we have demonstrated by a simple experimental test. The theory may not be indorsed by the medical profession, nor widely acted upon by practitioners, but since “ it works well ” with all sorts and conditions of patients, we are bound to say again with the blind man, modifying his words a little, “ Why, here is a marvelous thing, that ye know not whence this ‘better way of living’ ” comes from, yet it giveth better health and enables nature to cure innumerable diseases that have in other patients proved fatal, simply by letting her take her own course and not worrying her by over-feeding a diseased stomach and lashing it as a cabby does his tired and jaded horse.

For the benefit of my fellow-ministers, into whose hands this book I hope will fall, I pass Dr. Dewey’s prescription to me, on to them.

“ Always go into your study, your pulpit, and your bed with an empty stomach. Follow this rule as

INTRODUCTION.

nearly as yon can, and I will guarantee the largest measure of health and strength that is possible in your case.”

In any case I most seriously and heartily recommend that one and all of the readers of this book (jive up eating breakfast , and they will know in themselves in less than two months whether the doctrine he based on sound principles or whether it be the vagary of a quack. “ The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” It certainly will do no one any harm to leave off the breakfast for three months and it is equally almost certain that before that time has elapsed any one so doing will need no further argument.

George F. Pentecost.

London, England,

November 9, 1894.

Part I.— Nature In Disease. Lecture I

INTRODUCTORY. PAGE

Army Life — Eleven Years of Practice, involving a Slow Approach to Nature in Disease — Doubts as to the Efficiency of Remedies Generally Used, with resulting Abridgment of the Author’s Materia Medica, . . 23

LECTURE II.

Introductory ( Continued), 35

LECTURE III.

Nature Revealed in a New Light by a Case of Fever — Digestion in Health and Disease Compared — An Illustration by the Case of President Garfield, 47

LECTURE IV.

Illustrative Cases — La Grippe — Fever, 63

LECTURE V.

Fourth Parallel Considered — Illustrative Cases, 75

LECTURE VI.

Heredity Considered — Milk Considered as Food for the Sick — Sir William Roberts Quoted, 89

LECTURE VII.

LECTURE VIII.

Alcoholics Considered— Prof. N. S. Davis Quoted — Author’s Views as to their Effects in Disease and in Shock— Story Continued with Illustrative Case, 112

LECTURE IX.

Special Cases of Fever Considered — Diphtheria — A Case in the Author’s Family, 124

J ,» LECTURE X.

Closing Lecture on Nutrition in Disease — General Summary, . . . 135