Personal book of the Ralston Health Club : introducing its "personal system".

Front matter

V

COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS

I

Dedication

TO

E. R. E.

r J 7 HE deeds that make earth better are imperishable flowers

Chapter One. “VITAL LIFE ”

The living fire that feeds the body is born within its nervous centers and may be wonderfully Increased.

ONSTANT reference is made in this book to that power which is ever present in all things that live, and which holds the secret of health or illness. What it is, no one knows. What it does, is a matter of com¬ mon knowledge. The same elements that make np a living body, may be brought together by the chemist, but they will not become life. Something is lacking, and the chemist cannot give it.

A plant cannot be fed on food that is wholly artificial. If potash and lime are added to the soil, they must be drawn into the life of the soil before they can nourish the plant. They thus become life, and are then said to be organized into living con¬ ditions. A live plant placed in soil that is rich but wholly arti¬ ficial, would not grow. Nor must more matter be added to any soil than the soil can take up into its own life and make natural; for such excess will destroy the plant.

All food of the human body is of plant growth.

It may come in the form of meat, but always from an animal that has fed on plant life in some way. A person who eats meat from a meat-fed animal, cannot long remain healthy; for such food is too far removed from the source of natural energy which is plant growth.

The kind of food that the plant thrives on is well known; and the same kind of food is necessary for the human body. The plant performs the duty of organizing lifeless material into living material. No other agency on earth can perform this duty. What is good for the plant is good for man; but man is not able to organize lifeless material into living matter.

Nature is so anxious to keep her supply of life abundant that she breaks out everywhere into plant existence. If man will not cultivate the soil, nature will till it with weeds or any chance growth that she has at hand. The neglected farm, if not in grass, will run to a wonderful luxuriance of weeds for a few years; after which coarse brush will follow; and finally a forest will occupy the soil. If you set out a vegetable garden and leave it to itself, in a few weeks you will find a host of weeds for each and every plant you have induced to grow there. No place escapes this purpose of nature to keep her fund alive.

She is merely converting all lifeless material of the soil into living matter. When the time comes that she will cease to do this, the earth will become a dead planet.

Man is able to get together the lifeless material. He has tried for ages to bring life into it. But the one thing essential is lacking, and that is Uital mfe.

This double term may seem to contain a repetition of mean¬ ing; but there is a distinction between life that is vital and life that is not vital. Thus the soil may be filled with live food ready for the plant; yet it does not become Uit&l ICtfp until it enters the plant and puts forth an energy that gives increasing power to that plant.

In the human body another slightly different distinction is made, and it is this: The parts of the body that are not under the sway of the energy of nature, are said to contain life ; while the one part that is at any one time swayed by such energy is said to possess the dominant force known in this system as

Uital Htfr.

This energy is movable.

In a healthy person it is present at the stomach during di¬ gestion. If it is absent then, there can be no real good in the meal itself. . The habit of eating when the Uxtal Htfe is some¬ where else, is one of the common causes of bad health arising from indigestion. The food will pass into a sour or fermented condition which will give rise to gases and to poisons that affect the heart, the liver and the kidneys, resulting in poor blood and loss of tone in the system.

Httal IGtfe follows the source of greatest demand. It is mov¬ able and travels about the body. If you worry, your Utfai Slife will cling to your brain, and, being thus absent from your stomach, you cannot digest your food. Excessive joy does the same thing. Many a person is unable to digest a meal when good fortune has taken complete possession of the mind. It has always been sup¬ posed that worry alone would stop digestion; but the fact is that whatever will absorb the attention, whether excess of good or bad news, will draw the Uttal ICtfp from the stomach and thus leave that organ without the means of carrying on successful digestion. This fact is today well known, although it is new to the world at large.

Many experiments have been made with this power, and some of these will be given attention in this system.

To begin with, nature supplies each and every child at birth

with its Itital Stiff.

The parentage has much to do with the character of the supply to start with. But conditions may improve or lessen the first gift; as a daily change is going on all the time, year in and year out. What was weak to begin with may be made strong; and what was strong to begin with, may be made weak by the kind of treatment received. Many strong children come into the world, only to grow sickly by the diet and habits thrust upon them. Many others are weak when they come into the world, and grow strong by reason of receiving good food and care from the very start. The spark of life is often snuffed out by innocent igno¬ rance; or it is lessened by neglect and bad methods; or it is made to flame up out of almost nothing into a great power. It is like the fire on the hearth stone; almost gone out; but capable of being fanned into a new vigor if some one will only try.

Grown persons are slowly dying because of this lack of knowl¬ edge and painstaking care. Their Uttal ICtf? is becoming weaker every day. Countless causes are at work; the foremost of which are errors in the selection and preparation of food. The rush and friction of modem life play their part as well. There is no rule of nature that has so few exceptions as that which declares that simplicity of food and habits is necessary to a strong vitality.

It comes down to the point of choice between two leading high¬ ways: one avoiding the excitement of fast living for the sake of good health; the other choosing to take chances of breaking down the constitution in the eagerness to live at a faster clip than ever before.

The following statements are for study only, and

MAY BE OMITTED BY THE GENERAL READER IF TOO UNINTERESTING.

1. The power to throw off disease depends always in the first place on the amount of Uttal Sltf? present in the body.

2. If the supply is abundant, it is never possible for a person to take any malady that is contagious. No matter how great may be the exposure to the germs of consumption, small pox, typhoid, meningitis, pneumonia, grippe, diphtheria, or any of the other dreaded diseases, no impression is made on the health of the person so exposed. This is not a theory; it has been proved many times, and is being proved today in all parts of the world.

3. It is positively know that a man or woman whose Uttal iCtfc has been increased beyond a certain point, needs no other protection against sickness. The rules of hygiene never apply to such a person. It makes no difference how much germ-laden dust may be floating in at the windows or rising from the floor. The germs of tuberculosis die in attacking such a constitution. Im¬ pure milk, and typhoid drinking water from wells poisoned by surface drainage cannot bring harm. Every law of cleanliness may be broken with impunity. It is true that others who are less fortunate might suffer from such habits of carelessness; but, by the fiat of the survival of the fittest, the individual who makes his body vital in its life, is sure to go unscarred.

4. The proneness to a common cold is merely the sign of a low state of the'Uxtal ICtfo as a vigorous degree of health is sure to ward off all colds. One person is careful every minute of the night and day; another is careless. Yet the former is subject to a cold many times in the year; while the latter never has one. It is not because of the hardening process that colds are kept away. Many a person has gone into fatal pneumonia by trying to make the body hard by lack of care. It all depends on the amount of Uxtttl IGtfp present. Nothing else determines the fact.

5. Much of the prevailing illness of the human race is due to the use of things as foods that are not foods; and an increase of Uital Safe will not bring immunity against such maladies. Thus appendicitis is due to adulterations in foods, baking powders and meats; and no person’s vitality can withstand poison; although some succumb to it more easily than others. Rheumatism also is the result of long persistence in eating too many non-food ele¬ ments, and vitality will not keep it away. All food elements that the body needs and uses are free from this influence; but, as those elements that are not food or that contain parts that are not food, are regarded as poisons, the use of them is an act of poisoning the body; and this explains rheumatism. Certain fruits at all times, and all fruits under certain conditions, contain poisons that result in rheumatism. A plain example of this fact is seen in the common tomato. It contains oxalic acid, which is a poison to the body; and a person who is easily subject to rheu¬ matism, will invite a severe attack by eating tomatoes in any form; while people who do not become rheumatic will find no harm in them. It all depends on how much poison the blood has already accumulated; a little more may be carried in some cases; in others a greater quantity will be safely absorbed.

6. But, omitting such maladies as appendicitis and rheuma¬ tism which are due to poisons that are almost harmless in foods, other forms of sickness depend on the Uttttl ICtfe present in the body. You may become immune against contagious and against every germ disease; but you cannot become immune against poi¬ sons unless you stop taking them. Vitality is never able to defy such enemies. If therefore you would increase your Uital iEtfe you must make up your mind to lessen all poison foods that you are now in the habit of taking. Having taken this step, then you may successfully build up an enormous power that will protect you against everything in this world except violence or accident; and these may be lessened by the greater degree or precaution that will follow your advent into the ranks of the immunes.

7. The child that hovers between life and death, will live if its vitality is not too low. There the turning point is met in all such cases.

8. A man of iron will lay on a bed of sickness. He pos¬ sessed enough will power to save a thousand men; but his Utfctl

was at low ebb. He had been losing it for years; and now.

when he was ill and needed it, he did not have it, and so he died. After the awful attack of pneumonia many a great man whose life would have been of great value to the nation, has faded away because the vital spark was too weak. In fact of all the deaths from pneumonia, nine in every ten come when the vitality has diminished below the mark where life can be sustained. The same fact is found in typhoid. If the patients had acquired a fair degree of vitality during the years of freedom from ill health, they would be able to survive the crisis in the fever. If they had acquired a large amount of'JJital they could never have been felled by this malady or any other contagious disease; in fact, they would never have been made ill.

9. Except for the poisons that give rise to appendicitis and rheumatism, sickness is impossible in any human being who has built up the Uital Htfr.

10. To this act of building up such life in the body, add a sensible selection of foods from day to day, and you will have solved the whole problem of health and longevity.

11. A double duty is therefore taught herein:

First, the building of Uiial IStfe Second, the avoiding of poisons in food.

Having taken these two steps, you will find yourself absolutely and forever immune against sickness in every from.

You will never have a sick day.

You will never know what pain is.

Chapter Two LIFE CENTERS

The human body is a machine that is fed by life electricty generated In the nervous centers and stored in countless batteries

HETHER a man is awake or asleep, his body is at work as long as he lives. The vital life is attracted to whatever part is most in use. If the stomach is doing its work it holds the vital host aronnd its region. If the mind is busy, it retains the vital host. As this host or mass of traveling vitality cannot sustain two operations at the same time and do both well, it is best to separate them.

You cannot carry on digestion when your mind is intensely engaged in any task. If a hard problem is there, then the mind holds the vital host, and the stomach will wait. It has been proved that a meal eaten just before a five-hour business meeting of the greatest importance, remained for all this time in the stomach in just the condition as when it entered.

Dogs who have started on a hard run immediately after a meal, and been killed in the chase, have shown that digestion had not even been commenced. This proves that vigorous physical effort demands the vital host, just as vigorous mental effort re¬ quires it. So worry of the mind will attract the vital host, and the stomach will have to wait; or rather the food will ferment.

An effective experiment has been made by hundreds of thou¬ sands of Ralstonites with the vital host. When it was found that the mind would indulge in thinking as soon as a person got in bed for the night’s slumber, it was suggested that the vital host, havihg no other call, took its place in the brain and compelled the mind to work. The thinking delayed and often destroyed the night’s sleep. They then tried the experiment of taking a bowl of hot bouillon soup as soon as they had got in bed. This was an attraction to the stomach, enough to keep it active, and not a nitrogenous meal that would cause distress in digestion. Being in the stomach, the soup at once drew the vital host from the brain, and sleep intervened long before the bouillon was digested. This experiment has been tried so many thousands of times that doctors have now adopted it as one of the means of inducing sleep when it is lightly interfered with.

As the vital host cannot be in the brain and the stomach at the same time, and as it is the cause of sleeplessness in light cases, the attraction to the stomach relieved the brain of its presence.

The counter irritant used so much in medical practice pro¬ ceeds on the same law. The soaking of the feet in hot water and mustard is still a good remedy to draw the clogged and sluggish blood from the chest and head.

When you suffer from indigestion and an inactive liver, un¬ dress, get in a bath tub, and bathe one side of the body from the hip bone to the armpit; then wipe it dry; using warm, and then hot water in the bathing; and cool water in the rinsing. Wipe it vigorously until very dry. Then wet the head and bathe the other side of the body from the hip bone to the armpit with cool water, and no hot water; and keep making it colder; then wipe dry. But just before it is wiped, note the extraordinary vitality of the side that was first bathed, provided you have not splashed any water on the first side when bathing the second side.

This shows how the vital host travels about. It is an in¬ teresting and important experiment.

The next night, reverse the sides, but bathe in like manner, and note that the vital host has gone to the second side. Its presence is so distinct that it is a source of wonder.

Suppose your chest and lungs are weak, or the circulation is sluggish; all you need do is to invite the vital host to the weak part. This is done by undressing and getting in a bath tub, in a room where the temperature is eighty or more, or not much under eighty. Be careful not to get water on any part of the body except the chest, just where you wish the vital host to appear. Bathe that first in tepid water, then in hot water, then in hotter water, and finally rinse in cool, but not cold water. If no part of the body has been made wet but the front chest, or the whole girth of the chest around the body front and back, then you will be ready for the next step in the test, which is to wet the head and bathe the body from the hip bones dowm to the feet in mildly warm water, then in cool water, and finally in cold water.

Avoid rush of blood to the head.

Between the act of bathing the chest in the manner stated and the act of bathing the lower body, the chest should be wiped dry, not a particle of moisture remaining there.

As soon as the chest is dry, and the cool water is put on the legs, the vital host will go to the chest in great volumes and there invigorate it for a while. You will notice the exhilarating effect of the presence of so much vitality.

The oftener these experiments are made, provided the diet is plain and nutritious, the more the vital host will grow. Some persons have given it so much increase of volume that it has nearly taken the place of the elaborate natural system known as Life Electricity which is described in the final pages of this book.

If your head is dry and you go into the ocean for a bath, the vital host will travel to the head, and may cause over-pressure. As all bathers are presumed to know this, they first wet the head in cool water and then go in with the whole body. As the head dries it must be again wet.

An arm that was shriveled and that no doctor could restore, was brought back to its full size by this use of the vital host; it would be bathed in warm water which was gradually made hotter; then it would be cooled in mildly temperate water and wiped dry; after which the legs from the hip bones down to the feet were bathed in cool and then cold water; during which time the arm would receive the vital host and be nourished. Many repetitions brought it back to health.

There are scores of pretended secrets for building the bust and filling in the hollows of the upper chest, so as to give better symmetry to that part of the body; but they depend on grease and massage, unless they adopt the plan in the work on Chest Culture which belongs to Ealstonites of the tenth degree.

But the use of the vital host as a builder of any part of the body is so satisfactory that it is superseding all secret methods. It is healthy and safe, which means a great deal.

Suppose you wish to build up some thin part of the body, say the hollows of the chest; the first thing to do is to establish a plain diet in eating, according to the rules of this book; then take the vital bath. The hollows must be bathed with warm, then with hot, then with hotter water; then rinsed with cool water; allowing no water to go to other parts of the body. Wipe dry and thoroughly. Then wet the head and bathe the legs from the hip bones to the feet with warm, then with cool, then with cold, then with very cold water; and you will at once note the tremen¬ dous inflow of the vital host at the hollows of the chest, or wherever you seek to build the body.

This is called creating a new body by the vital host process.

Suppose the circulation of the heart is weak; send the vital host to that part in the same way.

Here is an oft made experiment used to cure weak stomach. As is well known, when the stomach will not digest food the vital host will not visit it. Undress; bathe the region over the stomach with warm, then with hot, then with hotter, then with very hot water; rinse with warm, then with cool, then with cold water; wipe so as to cause great friction. When the region is dry, wet the head and bathe the legs from the hip bones down to the feet with cool, then with cold water; and at this time the vital host will be at the stomach. As it is not a thin surface flow, but a thick mass occupying much of the interior of the body, it will have entered the stomach itself, and have accomplished more good than any other known treatment in the world.

Sluggish liver, and hardening of the liver, may be treated in the same way. In a large number of cases, the results have been like miracles. The circulation of the blood is of itself of great value, and this is the smallest of the effects produced; for the vitality is a still greater agent for recovery from an abnormal condition.

If tried in the manner described, the vital host will accom¬ plish wonders; and it will grow with the using, just as any faculty grows with the using.

It is well to make one experiment every time you take a bath as it does not interfere with the bathing; nor does it take longer. In the summer time some persons bathe mornings and evenings; in the winter once a day or three times a week. The oftener you generate the vital host, the healthier you will be; so bathe as often as yon please. The difference will be seen very soon in your personal appearance.

The principle is this:

There is in the atmosphere a vast fund of vitality, contain¬ ing the spark of life. No person has his full share. You can obtain more. Every time you draw the vital host to any part of the body, you catch from the general fund of the atmosphere a greater share. If your diet is plain and wholesome, it unites with the new materials and makes a better body with a New Identity.

In the generating room of an electric power house, with all doors and windows shut, the general fund of electricity that is in the air is made to give up some part of itself under the force of the inviting energy of the engines. Yet that fund is never weakened. Enough in one room can be drawn to furnish the power equal to millions of horses, yet the fund is just as strong.

So with the spark of life.

The fund is there all about you; it needs only the generating effort of the body to draw it forth and to appropriate it.

You can create a new vital body, part by part, in this way, and you can draw a new life to dwell in it.

Try it. The results will surprise you.

Storage of Vitality.

One of the most remarkable of laws in life is the simplest.

The body is all the time generating its life; but there is a fearful waste going on all the time. When this waste stops, the body accumulates an immense fund of vitality.

In the study of personal magnetism, which is nothing at all like Life Electricity, the same rule is made to work wonders in so quick a time as to seem impossible until the process is watched.

In this work now before us the following facts are our guide:

1. When the body takes enough food to supply it with its needed nutrition, it uses but little of the vital host in digesting and assimilating it; and this amount is quickly restored by the natural life of the body.

2. When the food supply is in excess of the actual needs of the body, as is the case in almost all instances where the health is not good, the vital host is called upon to digest and assimilate the needed food, and to break down and throw off the extra accumulation. When it is not able to do all this work, fever or fasting or other agency must be called in to help it. But the vital host has been weakened at every step of this hard work.

3. The art of eating enough wholesome food and no more, is the fine art of perfect health; for it leaves the vital host to its own accumulations, which means that it will build itself up when the overtax is removed from it.

How to Measure Life Energy.

The following method of making a gauge of your stored life energy, will prove interesting.

1. Take the stronger arm, which is generally the right.

2. Learn to open the fingers and thumb to the greatest spread. Anything less than the fully open digits will not do. The test rests on this one act. Each digit of the hand is directly associated with the brain, as will be seen in the book on Life Electricity.

3. Hold the arm out directly in front of the body, on a level with the shoulder, and fully extended. The palm of the extended hand must face the ceiling and be parallel with it.

4. Open the five digits to their full spread, tense and tightly apart each time. Shut them close bringing the fist together as if to crush an object in the hand. This wide open action and close shutting will make count One. When you open and shut the hand again in the same manner, it is count Two.

5. Five full counts of opening and shutting will constitute One Per Cent, in the measure of your Life Electricity.

6. The arm must not be lowered, nor the hand changed in any way from its position of action.

7. If you can succeed in making ten counts of the double action of opening and closing, you will have a credit of two per cent, for your first trial. This is good. Twenty such actions would be four per cent, which is grand. Five hundred such actions would be perfect, which is impossible if done right, until you have built up a great vitality.

Make your record in this book at this page, and report to the Ralston Health Club, Ralston Heights, Hopewell, Mercer County, New Jersey, on every Ralston Day, which is the fourth day of each month; if you so desire; otherwise, keep the record for your own future reference.

VITAL RECORD

OF

Whose Club Number is

Date of first test...

Date of second test Date of third test.

Per cent, of Vitality

« tc « a « a

Date of fourth test

“THE DEEDS THAT MAKE EARTH BETTER”

SECOND DEPARTMENT

Chapter Three how WE RIPEN

The moment we are born we ail begin to die for It Is natural law that earthly life is mortal.

MANITY, like all life, ripens. Nature sets up a law that works itself into death. The law is that of the first development from birth. No matter whether it is a plant, a blade of grass, an animal or man, the young days lead on into maturity, and this much is necessary. Nothing can be born at full size of an adult being, for there is not room enough to spare for that purpose. Having to begin small, it is necessary that size and strength should be added, and this is done by an excess of mineral matter in the nutrition.

The sap in the plant is overloaded with mineral material; and the blood of the child is likewise charged with an excess which is found in almost all kinds of food.

It is the mineral matter in food that changes the gelatine of the infant form into cartilage, and later the cartilage into bones.

It is the mineral excess that increases the size of the hones so that the frame of the body shall keep getting larger until it is large enough; and, when the normal or desired size is attained, the bones stop growing while the mineral matter keeps coming into the blood through the food.