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CONTINUED - KARL ANDERSON PRESENTS NATURAL HYGIENE CLASSICS INHS member and long-time hygienist Karl Anderson presents this interesting collection of articles from "Dr. Shelton's Hygienic Review" and other publications. Click here to go to the first articles in this series. |
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VARIOUS ARTICLES BY DR. SHELTON - CONTINUED The Value of Good Digestion - 1972 Herbal Medicine — Phytotherapy - 1978 Suffering In Cancer - 1978 Finding A "CURE" For Cancer - 1943 Eating and Cancer - 1972 Enervation & Toxemia -1964 Gastric Ulcer - 1961 What Is In A Name? - 1967 What Was Incurability? - 1965 Hygienic Position Verified - 1966 The Tyranny of Hygiene - 1967 Living Your Way to Health - 1978 Biodynamics Vs. Pharmacodynamics- 1964 Healing Versus "Curing" - 1967 The Non-Starch Diet - 1971 Fragmentation Of Man's Food - 1973 There Are No Good Drugs- 1973 Pestilence and Plagues - 1967 Contagion - 1967 Adaptation and Toleration - 1968 Explaining The Apparent Actions of Drugs The Hot Bath (1971) The Universal Basic Cause Of Disease (1976) Click here to go to the first articles in this series. For other Shelton writings click here. For various articles by Dr. Gian-Cursio click here. For articles on fasting click here. |
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The Value of Good Digestion
Hygienic Review Vol. XXXIII February , 1972 No.6 The Value of Good Digestion Herbert M. Shelton What shall we eat for health? The old advice to "eat nothing for breakfast and something you don't like for dinner" is a false approach. The wholesome foods of nature are as delicious and delightful to the sense of taste as anything can conceivably be. We can eat things that we like and be healthy. It is true that we can learn to like things that are far from wholesome, and once we have acquired a perversion of the sense of taste, we may no longer relish wholesome foods, but it is not difficult to re-acquire a relish for that which is wholesome. The subject of food and feeding has been fully studied and the many foods we eat have been thoroughly tested and analyzed and there can no longer be any excuse for any man pleading ignorance of diet. If he is ignorant, this is because he has chosen to be so. The food which a man eats, though very important, is no more so than the efficiency of his digestion; for poor digestion will fail to prepare the best of food for nutrition. Many factors or conditions impair or retard the process of digestion and thus interfere with the work of preparing what may otherwise be wholesome foods for entrance into the body. Extensive tests have shown that the residues left in bread by baking powders, retard the digestion of proteins. Although most of these tests were made with cream of tartar powders, there does not seem to be any powders that are exempt from this effect. Strong alkalies in food must go far to neutralize the acid of the gastric juice and thus annul the digestive power. The food eaten is then left to ferment instead of digesting. Baking soda, milk of magnesia or other alkali taken following a meal retard the digestion of the meal. The resort to alkalies as "medicines" is a patent abuse of the body. Physicians with their drugs as well as cooks with their concoctions make dyspeptics. Indigestion is frequently caused by taking laxative and cathartic drugs. This eternal swallowing of drugs ruins many constitutions. The sour stomach, sour eructations, heavy stomachs, gas, distress and discomfort that are so common after the conventional meals do not teach our deluded people that their ways of life and particularly their ways of eating are out of harmony with the laws of being. They think that if they can take a dose of baking soda, or an aspirin and "relieve" their distress, all of the evil consequences of their wrong eating are wiped out and they may go on in continual violation of the laws of life. These drugs are advertised to give absolution of our daily gastronomic sins and free indulgences for repetitions of this agreeable weakness. This use of alkalies is of modern and comparatively recent origin; in fact the indiscriminate use of them dates back not more than a hundred years. Would you eat rotten apples? Of course you couldn't. It borders on insult to even imply that you would condescend to take such an unwholesome substance into your mouth. Do you drink hard cider? Do you use cider vinegar? If you take either of these substances you are taking rotten apples. You may properly be classed with a person who eats ripened (rotted) poultry or spoiled cabbage (sauerkraut). In the production of cider and vinegar we start with a good apple, which is wholesome food. The apple juice begins to undergo decomposition as soon as it is extracted from the apple and soon becomes loaded with decomposition products. The two most abundant of these products are alcohol, which is a protoplasmic poison, and acetic acid, which is more toxic than alcohol. Alcohol precipitates pepsin and thus interrupts and retards protein digestion. Acetic acid chiefly retards starch digestion. Both alcohol and acetic acid occasion irritation of the stomach and thus impair digestion in general. Experiments have shown that even as small a proportion of vinegar as one part in 5,000 appreciably diminishes the digestion of starch by its inhibiting or destructive effect upon salivary amylase. One part in 1,000 renders starch digestion very slow and twice this quantity arrests it altogether. From these facts it becomes evident that vinegar, pickles, salads on which vinegar has been sprinkled and salad dressings containing vinegar and other foods to which vinegar is added are unwholesome, especially when taken with starchy foods such as cereals, bread, legumes, potatoes and the like. As I dictated this article, my secretary, who is taking down the dictation in shorthand, asked me if I had ever eaten sauerkraut. She stated that she had tried it once in her life and could not remember how it tasted. She remembers only that it was repulsive. It probably is repulsive to everybody the first time it is tried, but by repeated eating one can acquire a relish for the rotten cabbage and the brine in which it is pickled. Just as one may acquire a liking for sauerkraut or for tobacco, which is even more repugnant to the unperverted taste, so one may acquire a relish for the repulsive taste of vinegar. By frequent repetition we thus succeed in beating down our instinctive warnings against unwholesome substances. I recall my boyhood experiences in trying to eat cucumbers and beets pickled in vinegar and my efforts to use pepper sauce, which was made by pickling pods in vinegar. I was never quite successful in learning to relish these unwholesome "foods." In those days many housewives made their own vinegar so. that it was free of adulteration and chemical additives, but its taste was nonetheless repugnant. The only way I was ever able to eat it was as the filler in the vinegar pies my mother used to make. In these pies the repulsiveness of the vinegar was camouflaged by an abundance of sugar. The whole concoction was unwholesome and I do not recommend it as an article of diet. Other acids, even wholesome ones such as those of the lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit, tangerine, pineapple and other fruit acids, destroy the salivary amylase and retard or suspend starch digestion. It is unwise to eat acid foods and starches at the same meal. As the hydrochloric acid of the gastric juice, so essential to protein digestion in the stomach, also destroys ptyalin or salivary amylase and thus retards starch digestion, it is not wise to eat protein foods and starch foods at the same meal. Bread, potatoes, cereals, beans, peas, and other starchy foods are best eaten at meals separate from nuts, cheese, eggs or flesh foods. In the largest sense no food is digestible or indigestible per se, but according to persons, times and circumstances. Overeating is among the chief causes of indigestion. The competition of our public dining rooms tempts us to eat three big meals a day, often two of them at a time. The rate of action of the digestion enzymes depends not alone upon the pH of the medium in which they act, but also upon the temperature of the medium. They are most efficient at the normal internal temperature of the body. Making the contents of the stomach cold by drinking cold water or other cold drink or by eating ice inevitably reduces the activity of the digestive enzymes. Very hot liquids raise the temperature of the mouth and stomach above the normal temperature and bring about certain equally undesirable changes in the enzymes. Neither hot nor cold drinks or foods should be taken. Ice cream, ice, sherberts, etc., taken at the end of the meal, play havoc with digestion. The stomach has been termed the "center of sympathies." Certain it is, irritation of the digestive tract can occasion more vertigo, trembling, muscular weaknesses, etc., than irritation of almost any other region of the body. Indigestion is among the most common causes of physical discomfort and emotional stresses. Palliating these discomforts with drugs instead of removing the causes of the indigestion leads to ruinous consequences. What is the extent of the role played in the evolution of disease by impaired function of the digestive tract? The fouling of the food supply and the deterioration of the tissues of the body that results from poisoning by absorption of septic materials from a digestive tract that is reeking with decomposition, this largely, if not wholly from the small intestines, are factors that we must reckon with in any consideration of etiology, even of the simplest as well as of the most complex diseases.< Herbert M. Shelton |
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Herbal Medicine — Phytotherapy
Hygienic Review Vol. XXXIX August, 1978 No.12 Herbal Medicine — Phytotherapy Herbert M. Shelton The worst type of blindness is intellectual blindness—"There are none so blind as those who can see and won't." Modern man likes to think of himself as "enlightened" despite the fact that his intellectual equipment contains a preponderant admixture of ancient errors and superstitions. The survival in modern times, of the ancient herbal practice is a case in point. Here we have an ancient method of treating the sick that has as its sole claim to superior merit, the fact that it is less lethal in its effects than the virulent poisons employed by the modern physician. The two superstitions are of a piece and it is not to be forgotten that "modern medicine" is a direct outgrowth of the ancient herbal practice. The physician regards his present practice as an improvement on the ancient practice; the herbalist or "natural therapist" looks upon "modern medicine" as a perversion and departure from what he likes to think of as the "natural cure." It is difficult to differentiate between the two superstitions. Herbalists attempt to rationalize their herbal practices by discussing their use in the light of modern nutritional science. As an example of this, one writer on "natural therapeutics" says that, "as an aid to the natural cure, some positively beneficial herbs and herbal juices may be used. These should be such as are locally available and of such nature as to make up for the known deficiencies of the sick—the various organic minerals and vitamins. These are not strictly medicines; they must be considered as part of the curative diet." If the herbs so used are nonpoisonous, they are true foods; but it will be observed by the student of these practices, that nonpoisonous herbs do not give rise to the alleged physiological actions that they seek to produce. Only poisonous herbs are considered "medicinal." I frequently find the herbal practice designated a "Nature Cure method." That herbs, all of them, the nonpoisonous as well as the poisonous ones, are natural is true. But they are no more natural than mercury and arsenic. All that is, is natural. The bite of a rattlesnake or the sting of the nettle are both natural. The venom of the cobra is as natural as the opium of the poppy. A stroke of lightning is as natural as the digitalis of foxglove. The eruption of a volcano with its poisonous gases, is as natural as the prussic acid of the bitter almond. The cyclone and tidal wave are as natural as the nicotine of tobacco. That a thing is natural does not mean that it has any normal relationship to the living organism. It does not belong in the human body merely because it is natural. The various molds from which the antibiotics are derived are as natural as any herb that grows. It is objected that the medical man does not use the whole herb, but extracts of the herb, I reply that the herbalist uses teas, infusions, extracted juices, and in other ways, employs, not the whole herb, but extracts of it. But I deny that his use of the whole herb is any more rational than his use of infusions and juices made from the herb. One could easily get the idea, after listening to the fulsome eulogy lavished upon aloe by certain of the herbalists, that, this plant is some kind of king or queen of the plant world and a real wonder drug among the medicinal herbs. A genus of plants of the lily family, of which there are several species, the dried juices of the leaves of several of these species provides the herbalist and the physician with a laxative. An aloetic is defined as "a medicine containing aloes." Time was, and this was in the not distant past, when aloetic pills were very popular and were prescribed by physicians in a variety of so-called diseases. It is difficult to understand why so much praise is lavished on this "laxative" herb. Any other laxative would do as much mischief, indeed, some of the more poisonous herbs are purgatives and drastics. Some of the self-styled "natural therapists" never tire of extolling the virtues of the simple "home remedies," by which they mean herbs, that were employed in the past, and which they tell us were "harmless." The so-called "medicinal" herbs were not harmless. Many of them, on the contrary, can be deadly, as deadly as any drug the physicians now use. None of them removed the cause of the patient's trouble; all * of them were directed at the suppression of symptoms; all of them gave rise to evils of their own. The herbal practice was the original drugging practice and only those drugs were used that occasioned marked defensive actions on the part of the body. They were given to produce vomiting, purging, diuresis, diaphoresis and expectoration, to reduce fever, relieve pain, allay coughing, to produce blistering, as sedatives, stimulants, narcotics, etc., etc. They are still employed for the same purposes, despite all the loose talk about their alleged richness in minerals and vitamins. Few of them have ever been analyzed to determine their mineral and vitamin content. That they are possessed of these food factors, as all plants are, is not denied; that they are superior sources of such nutrients has not been proved. Certainly a drug that induces vomiting and one that occasions purging does not yield up any minerals and vitamins to the sick organism. The sick organism is suffering from poisoning, not from deficiency. Deficiencies do exist, but the so-called deficiency diseases are not numerous. The acutely sick patient is as unable to digest and assimilate medicinal herbs as he is to digest and assimilate the nonpoisonous herbs. The presence of poisons in herbs renders their digestion all but impossible. Imagine trying to digest a salad of fresh green tobacco leaves! I have taken the following examples of the "medicinal" use of herbs from but one issue of a magazine devoted to what its editor and publisher and its contributors all agree in calling "Nature Cure" and "Natural Therapeutics." Were I to take time to go through several issues of this same journal or to go through several issues of several similar journals and take out the great wealth of similar examples that could easily be collected I could fill a book with them. The few that I have offered here, however, will be enough to reveal to the reader that the herbal practice is not a nutritional program but a drugging practice. Herbs are used to suppress symptoms and not as a means of supplying nutritive deficiencies. The fact is, as every student of the subject is well aware, that the herbal practice antedates our knowledge of nutritional deficiencies by several hundreds of years and grew, not out of any effort to supply the nutritive needs of the body, but out of the assumed necessity of driving evil spirits out of the sick. Under the spell of this ancient etiology, the more of nausea, griping, purging and convulsions a drug occasioned the more effective was it supposed to be in exorcising the malignant imp that had taken up housekeeping in the body of the sick. Spikenard may serve as our first example of the way in which herbs are used as nutritive substances. This herb is described as a "good stimulant, digestant, carminative, diuretic, expectorant, and a good antispasmodic and nervous tonic in hysteria, chorea, convulsions and epilepsy." In India this herb is said to be good in "leprosy, old fever, internal heat, diarrhea, diseases of the eye, asthma, dyspnoea or difficulty of breathing, rheumatism." Penicillin will have to move over and make room for a new wonder drug. All the "therapeutic" classes into which this drug falls, prove it to be poisonous. Certainly none of these alleged "medicinal" qualities have anything to do with nutrition. Like all herbal "medication," the use of this herb is purely symptomatic. Not only is the use designed to "treat the symptoms as they arise," but its use is on the allopathic principle. As an antispasmodic it is used to suppress spasm, not to remove cause. After talking of the vitamins and minerals in herbs, they offer us pastes made from herbs that are applied externally. It is a carminative. It is a good rubefacient "linament." If all this has anything to do with nutrition, I fail to understand the relationship. Of another plant we read that "the leaves are astringent, detergent and deodorant. The flower is refrigerant and soporific. The seed is deodorant. The bark is astringent." What have vitamins and minerals to do with all these effects? Here is another herb of which it is said: "its nutritional value is very little." But it is declared to be a "beneficial stomachic. It aids digestion . It is given even to feverish patients." It is said to be useful in asthma, bronchitis, consumption, fever, dullness of digestive fire, rheumatism, paralysis, etc. It is an expectorant, diuretic, and carminative. Its seed is a drastic purgative." Its alleged therapeutic actions are evidences of its poisonous character. Here is another herb that is said to be "cathartic, anthelmintic, aphrodisiac, lithontriptic." It is useful in "tapeworm, chronic skin disease and hookworm." It is said to kill the tapeworm. Another herb is described as a "good purgative" and causes small thread worms to "come out." Here is another herb that is described as "sedative" in its effect and is advised in cases of irritation in the digestive tract. It is said to form a coating between the lining of the intestines and the food and feces, thus protecting the surface of the stomach and intestine from irritation. Here is another herb that is described as "a mild astringent, refrigerant, diuretic, demulcent and emollient." It is taken internally and applied externally. It is "useful" in a wide variety of diseases, ranging all the way from headache (in this complaint it is applied to the forehead so that the minerals and vitamins may be absorbed through the cranium, I suppose), biliousness, dysentery, scalds, burns and skin diseases, to "syphilis." Certainly this herb should be kept in every "medicine" cabinet in the land. It is almost as "good" as penicillin. A self-styled "natural therapist" who uses and advocates a great medley of herbs, many of them highly poisonous, so far forgets the basic tenets of his herbal practice as to parrot (repeat without understanding) the Hygienic principle that people are sick because of their errors in living and that they can escape from their ills only by correcting their ways of life. He goes so far as to repeat the Hygienic teaching that responsibility for disease rests squarely upon the shoulders of the sick and suffering and that responsibility for recovery rests upon the same shoulders. After he has repeated these Hygienic teachings, he offers his readers a great array of herbal "remedies." Can he give herbs to stop sexual excesses and abuses; will herbs correct gluttony; will they cause the patient to control his emotional life or to secure more sleep; will they render white bread adequate or make unclean living safe? What have herbs to do with right and wrong living? He speaks of the necessity for making "amends for past transgressions." Perhaps the herbal "remedies" will make amends. Too many of the "natural therapists" are trying the impossible task of riding two horses at once, the horses going in opposite directions. The mental gymnastics and logical somersaults that they perform in trying to reconcile their two opposite courses of action fill all rings of a five ring circus. But their antics are neither amusing nor entertaining. To be intelligent and informed, these things are saddening. Here we have a large group of men, represented in almost all parts of the world, who have hibernated in antiquity and who seem unable to free themselves from fallacies that were born in the fecund brain of the ancient shaman. Physically, they live in the second half of the twentieth century; intellectually they are with the cave man. Herbert M. Shelton |
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Suffering In Cancer
Hygienic Review Vol. XXXIX February, 1978 No.6 Suffering In Cancer Herbert M. Shelton Cancer sufferers are said to die fiendish deaths. Their suffering is persistent and almost unbearable. This intense suffering lasts for days or weeks, or until death puts a merciful end to the horror. This tragical ending results from the usual treatment, which is about as follows: the surgeon amputates, excises or extirpates a cancer and gives X-ray treatments to prevent a return. Such treatment renders the patient exquisitely sensitive, requiring (according to "medical science") mild anodynes, which are all too soon supplanted by the king "painkiller," opium or morphine—a habit-forming drug which in a short time produces more pain than it relieves. Drugs are the chief cause of these fiendish deaths. The two chief causes of intolerable suffering in cancer are: 1. anodynes (drugs to "relieve" pain), and 2. eating any food at all when uncomfortable. As both of these procedures are regular parts of standard medical practice, it is not amiss to say that most of the suffering of cancer patients is caused by their physicians. When, through feeding and drugging, pain is established and intensified, a drug habit is established. From this point on pain is dictator. Day and night, patient, physician, nurse, family and friends must dance attendance on this tyrant. Unless feeding and drugging are discontinued, the pains must persist and grow in intensity until the cancer patient pleads for death as a "relief" from his intolerable suffering. The most terrible pains are induced by drugs to "relieve" suffering. These are continued until a drug habit is formed after which, the amount required to relieve must be continuously increased until the most "potent" anodyne will no longer afford respite from suffering. When this point is reached, the poor sufferer clamors for a gun or for sufficient drug to kill. What a dreadful penalty to have to pay at the end of life—a penalty that is made necessary by feeding and drugging, after physicians and surgeons have cut, slashed, X-rayed, and radium-ized to their hearts' content. If there were no physicians with their dreadful disease-breeding influence on the people and their deadly disease-producing drugs and prophylactic measures, good health and long life would be as common as disease and early death are today. When the patient realizes that his or her case is hopeless, when hope is gone, there is no longer any courage to fight. The desire for "relief" increases day by day and the patient will use all of his or her persuasive powers to get enough drug to end it all. All who have cancer must die of that disease plus scientific treatment. There is but one logical and successful way to stop pain and this is to cease feeding and drugging. No food until comfortable, then fruit juices for a few days, then raw fruits and vegetables, with due attention to bathing and exercise. If there is pain, another fast until comfortable with warm water to control the pain, drinking hot water ad libitum. This done, in a reasonable time, the patient will be comfortable. This assures keenness enough of mind to enjoy friends to the end. If the end is near, the patient can remain rational to the last minute of life; if the end is some weeks or months away, light eating of fruits and vegetables will maintain comfort during this period. How truly did Tilden speak when he wrote: "The end of a cancer patient under food and drug poisoning is like the wailing of lost souls as depicted by writers of an earlier age when describing the tragedy of perdition." Few such patients are willing to eat sparingly enough to live comfortably—friends and relatives usually take the position that "she has but a few days to live anyway, she may as well enjoy herself while she can." What they overlook is the fact that she does not enjoy herself, but greatly intensifies her misery. Most people prefer to go to their death drunk on food, alcohol, or drugs. I saw one woman deliberately prepare and "enjoy" a meal she wanted and, then, take enough pain-"relieving" drug to kill herself, rather than persist with the dietary restrictions that were enabling her to live in comfort. I saw a man deliberately cast aside the dietary restrictions that had kept him free of pain for an extended period, return to eating habits that he had been warned would result in suffering, and, then, when he suffered, refused another short fast and a return to dietary restrictions, but demanded an operation he had been warned would kill him. He died on the operating table. I saw another man in his middle thirties with two inoperable cancers, who had grown stronger, was free of pain for an extended period, and had discarded drugs, eat a forbidden meal (a meal of dove) which was followed in two hours by intense pain. He took another three day fast and became comfortable. By adhering to the prescribed dietary restrictions he was free of pain for another month. Then he repeated his former offense which brought immediate suffering. He refused another fast, refused another period of dietary restrictions, returned to his use of anodynes and was soon numbered among those who had been but are no more. These three patients chose death rather than life without their favorite indulgences. The first of them wanted pie and coffee, the second wanted salt and bread, the third wanted flesh foods. None of them wanted to live without these things, which they valued higher than life itself. Old Mother Nature has a way of accommodating those who choose death. Our people do not know the meaning of self-restraint. They are unable to interpret the language of their senses. They have been taught to "go the limit" and, then, when they suffer, to palliate their suffering with drugs. Thus they become slaves to habits that destroy them. They lose all desire to break their fetters and be free again. The unbearable suffering that grows out of their incorrigibility and drugging ends only at death. The ancient admonition: "Choose life that ye may live," is as unintelligible to men and women of today as it was to those to whom it was given. Today we choose suffering and premature death. Herbert M. Shelton |
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Finding A "CURE" For Cancer
Hygienic Review Vol. IV August, 1943 No.12 Finding A "CURE" For Cancer Herbert M. Shelton A recent issue of Science Digest, a popular magazine that digests little science, carries a short article headed; "Predicts Cure for Cancer." There is nothing new or unusual in predicting cures for cancer. Some publicity seeker makes such a prediction almost every day. However, the predictions all have one thing in common — namely: they all fail of materialization. That this one will fail to materialize may be seen from the opening sentence of the article in Science (?) Digest. It says: The cure of cancer will be achieved before the cause is discovered, Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads, director of Memorial Hospital, New York, predicts in the hospital's biennium report. Why do newspapers, magazines, writers, authors, lecturers, etc, continue to call such men, doctors. Call them physicians: call them voodoo priests; call them Shamans; call them Magi; call them any of the traditional names for wonder workers, but, for Heaven's sake, cease calling them teachers or learned men. Medicine (as that ancient system of humbug, delusion and spectacular palliation that dopes, drugs, cuts, electrocutes, blisters and inoculates the well and the sick, is falsely called) has never been anything but a mass of voodoo tricks. It has always claimed to be able to cure disease. It has never bothered with causes. Why? Because, from its origin, it has believed it could control the forces of nature by the use of brews, concoctions, incantations, rites, ceremonials, etc. At first, it sought to control the spirits (good and evil ones) that control nature. It has abandoned its belief in spirits, but it clings with a dogged tenacity to the practices that grew up around the belief. The devotees of the little tin god, Aesculapius, have never believed in law and order. If they ever catch a glimpse of law and order their whole medical house will come tumbling down around their ears. Because they have never had any conception of law and order, they have always believed that they could cure disease without giving any attention to its causes. They do not have to know cause; they do not have to regard cause; they do not have to correct or remove cause. They only need to discover a cure that will cure in spite of Cause. They have been discovering cures for ages and none of their cures have remained cures long. As soon as they announced the discovery of a cure for a certain disease, they set about to find another cure for the same disease. For they know from experience that their cures do not cure. I read Man the Unknown, by Carrel, while in jail where the predatory forces of organized medicine and their ally, the State, had put me for "practicing medicine without a license." I was convicted on the perjured testimony of two lying stool pigeons. But I do not want to tell that story here. It, together with the story of the other rounds of my fight with State Medicine, will soon be published in a little book to be entitled: My Thirty Days in Jail. What I want to discuss here is the impression the book left with me. I got the impression that if I stuck a tack in my foot and the foot became sore, so that I could not walk, and I went to Carrel with it, he would shake his head and say: "We do not know what to do about this at this time. Perhaps in a hundred years, if we can continue our researches, we will have found a serum or other means of protecting man against tacks. In the meantime, I will cut off your foot." But he would not suggest so simple and unscientific a procedure as removing the tack. Removing cause is the last thing the medical mind ever thinks of. They think always of cures. They search always for cures. They make their money out of the "discovery,", manufacture, distribution, sale and administration of cures. One of the largest industries in the world, one that pays rich dividends to a vast world-wide army of men and women, is built around this delusion that diseases can be cured. They have been curing cancer for a long time now without removing its cause. Their cures don't stay cured and this irks their voodoo-infected souls. They cure cancer with the knife, X-rays, radium rays, cyclotrons and other things. Not so long ago (or was it ages ago) they were curing cancer with frozen sleep. All of these cures are methods of destroying the cancerous growth. All of them also help to destroy the patient. But, since destroying the growth does not remove its cause, recurrence is invariable. Hence the need to search for new cures. At the Memorial Hospital where physician Rhoads wastes his time, "search for a chemical cure for cancer is being carried on." Rhoads emphasizes that no chemical cure has been found yet, but a method has been devised for testing in the test tube the poisoning effects on the cancer cells of various chemical compounds. "So far, some 70 different compounds have been tested." Rhoads reports: A type of chemical has been found which in the test tube appears to interfere with the health of one type of cancer cell of man, that found in cancer of the breast, and in the same concentration not to interfere with the well-being of any normal organ tissue so far tested. The chemicals which have this preferential anti-cancer effect are characterized by a common structure. The results may have a far reaching significance. They prove apparently that there is a real difference between cancer cells and normal cells in their sensitivity to certain types of chemicals. The cancer is more sensitive and can be killed by compounds which do not kill the normal tissues. This observation alone is sufficient justification for the intensive continuation of the experiments. Of course! of course! The experiments must be continued. But how are experiments to be continued unless some money-bag (a miscalled philanthropist) supplies a few hundred thousand dollars out of his pile of loot, with which to carry on these justified experiments? This is the reason for rushing into print with a Report when there is nothing to report. Rhoads and the hospital want an endowment with which to intensively prosecute the continuation of the experiments. Science Digest says "Dr. Rhoads is not yet ready to disclose the name of the type of chemical found to have this preferential anti-cancer effect because the studies have not yet gone far enough to justify considering it as a cancer cure." The true facts are (1) that the "studies" have not yet gone far enough to justify saying anything about them at all, and (2) that it will make no difference to anybody but Rhoads if he never names the type of chemicals "that have this preferential anti-cancer effect." The preferential action of drugs is a medical delusion. They are simply poisonous and they poison all cells alike. If some cells are more resistant to them than others, the preferential action is in the living cells not in the lifeless drugs. Cancer cells, being diseased cells, are weaker than normal cells. They doubtless offer less resistance to the drugs. It is easily possible to destroy cancer cells with drugs. Indeed it has been done thousands of times. But whether the cancer cells are destroyed with the knife, X-rays, radium rays or with drugs makes no difference — neither method of destroying the morbid tissue removes the cause of the morbidity. If after more "intensive experiments," Rhoads announces the discovery of another cure (the millionth cure for cancer), it will go to the same limbo to which all other cures have gone. If his cure does not remove cause, it cannot cure. Cancer is an end point in a pathological evolution that had its beginning years prior to the appearance of cancer. Mussolini is reported to have cancer of the stomach. We are told the "disease attacked him four years ago." The idea that "disease" is an attacking force is a hang-over from the days of evil spirits. Cancer does not attack. Cancer evolves. Cancer cells and cancer tissues are modifications of the patient's own cells and tissues. They are not foreign entities that pounce upon their unwary victims from out of the dark. More than fifteen years ago Mussolini had gastric ulcer. Ulcer of the stomach frequently becomes cancer. The stages of its evolution are enervation, indigestion, irritation, inflammation, induration, ulceration, fungation. Mussolini had chronic gastritis for years before it resulted in hardening (induration). The hardening probably persisted for considerable time before it cut off circulation sufficiently to result in the breakdown of the hardened tissues resulting in ulceration. It has taken a number of years more for the condition to evolve into cancer. Searching for a cancer-causing chemical at this stage in the pathological evolution in the "sawdust Caesar," and ignoring all the antecedent stages of the evolution and the causes of the first and subsequent stages, is approved medical practice but it is not at all scientific. Medical pathologists recognize pre-cancer, early cancer and cancer, but they fail to consider the pathological sequences that precede pre-cancer. They close their eyes to the causes of local irritative conditions that finally evolve into cancer. To them, cancer is a specific disease (a special creation) and they must find a specific cause. So long as they persist in holding this view of the matter, just so long must chaos reign supreme in medical "reasoning" about cancer. Despite his optimism about finding a cure for cancer, before its cause is found, we are informed in the same article that "investigations into the cause of cancer" are being made in the same hospital. "Delving into the cause of cancer," says Science Digest, Memorial Chemists, with the help (financial help, no doubt) of Harvard University, are engaged on the gigantic task of searching for cancer-causing chemicals in the kidney excretions of the patient." There is a certain respect in which the medical crowd resemble Hollywood — they never do anything unless it is gigantic, colossal, stupendous. True to the time honored medical practice, they are sifting the ashes to discover the cause of the fire. Abnormal constituents of the urine are effects, results, end-products, not causes. Whatever abnormal constituent they may ultimately discover in the urine will be the result of antecedent causes and they will be no nearer the discovery of the true cause of cancer than they were before they started digging in the ash-heap. If they ever find such "cancer-causing chemicals," they won't know what causes the production of the chemicals. Without knowing the cause of the chemical causes, they won't be able to do anything more than treat the body as a test tube. The Digest says: "Scientists (they mean physicians) believe that a defect in body chemistry may result in cancer-chemicals being formed from the natural ones." This is equivalent to saying that they believe that cancer grows out of a perverted metabolism. Then why not search for the cause of the metabolic perversion. Such a search would not be scientific and could not lead to the production of a new serum or drug, but it might lead them into a sane view of the diseases of the body and a new conception of etiology. The Digest article also says: "attempts to find a cure for cancer by starvation of the cancer cell are being made. Preliminary steps, now under way, consist in studies of the diet requirements of cancer and normal cells." I fear it is to much to hope from this that the medicos are considering adopting the use of the fast in their care of cancer sufferers. If so, let me tell them, in advance that, while the fast "starves" the cancer cells, its greatest influence is in ridding of the body of toxins and nutritive excesses and in normalizing metabolism. It is effective in early cancer only. Late cancer will continue to be fatal. Science News Letter for September 26, 1942 tells us of an "improved" cancer therapy. The new method is still in the "experimental stage," "only a small number of selected patients have been treated by Boston doctors," but "results so far have been encouraging." Day after day we read these much used cliches, "A new and improved treatment." It is "still in the experimental stage." "Only a few selected patients have been treated." "So far results have been encouraging." Then we get prophesies of what the "new treatment" holds one for the future, despite the fact that they "do not want to raise false hopes." It is not just cancer "cures" that are loudly trumpeted to an expectant world by these stereotyped word-formulas. All new treatments come swathed in these same swaddling clothes. What is this "new treatment" for cancer? It is not a new treatment at all. It is merely a stronger dose of an old failure — one that has been tried in hundreds of thousands of cases during many years on a world wide scale, and has never fulfilled any of its "encouraging" promises. It is X-ray treatment. A new and more powerful machine has been devised which allows them to use "X-rays of 3,000,000 volt energy for treatment of malignancy. The "experimental treatment of cancer" with such powerful doses of X-rays was described to the members of the American Roentgen Ray Society Meeting in Chicago, by Dr. Richard Dresser. Dr. Dresser explained that the high intensity of the ray created by the new machine permits a depth dose much greater than has been obtained even with great amounts of radium. He explained, to quote Science News Letter, that "the penetrating effect of these rays of extremely short wave length is such that the maximum therapeutic (treatment) effect occurs not on the patient's skin, but some distances below in the subcutaneous tissue." "Thus the new machine may make possible larger doses of radiation directed at deep-seated malignancies (cancers) with proportionately less effect upon the skin and adjacent normal tissue." The deeper these rays penetrate and the more powerful they are, the more extensive and deeper must be the burns they produce. No doubt they will burn the cancerous tissue, while they also burn the normal tissue. X-ray burns often produce cancer in normal tissues, but they have never been known to cure cancer. The more powerful the rays and the deeper they penetrate, the more likely they are to produce (not cure) cancer. Destroying a growth, in whole or in part, does not remove the cause of the growth and cancers are not their own cause. After destroying millions of growths with caustic drugs, red-hot pokers, knives, X-rays, radium rays and by other methods, the medical profession should have learned that the cause does not lie within the growth and is not destroyed with the growth. It is necessary that we repeat that: if the more powerful and improved X-ray does not remove cause it cannot cure. Cancer sufferers who submit to experimental treatment with this new machine are destined to disappointment. "Research" is a profitable racket and cancer "research" is especially profitable. An item in the New York Times (Dec. 29, 1942) headed "Secret of Cancer on Eve of Discovery", tells us of cancer "research" being conducted in England and adds, "Similar research work is being carried on incessantly in all the civilized countries of the world". The fact is that everywhere men, organizations or the state can be induced to supply the money with which to keep them supplied with cars and golf clubs, these research cooties are engaged in "intensive research". The item in the Times was inspired by a remark made by Lord Horder, "the famous physician, in connection with the British Empire cancer campaign". He said: "We are now so close to the secret of cancer that we shall be able to hand the cure to our children". The great Lord did not explain to the little boys of the press just what he meant by this repetition of a statement that has been made over and over by many lesser lords during the past thirty years, so the reporters hurried to a member of the campaign committee (perhaps this member is its duly appointed and well-paid publicity director), who told the London reporters: "Lord Horder's hopes are based on the results up to date of ceaseless work by more than 100 scientists at our twenty research centers throughout the country. "A different line of experiment is being conducted at each center, and at regular intervals the scientists all meet together and pool whatever new knowledge they have gained. "Certain lines of experiment are often assisted by discoveries made along others, and recently this has been happening more often. "Although it is impossible to say exactly when anybody will hit on the great secret of a cure, there can be no doubt that we are getting nearer to it at a very fast rate. "Lord Horder is aware of all that is going on, and he speaks from that knowledge." It is really unfortunate that these crystal gazers cannot tell just what day some "researcher" is going to stumble upon the long-sought "cure" for cancer. It is some satisfaction to know, however, that in the minds of these wise men, there is "no doubt" that they are getting "warm" in their search for the holy grail. Perhaps they only need another hundred million pounds to enable them to find the "secret" that is so near and yet so far. "Research", other than that previously mentioned is also going on in our country — in fact, it will continue to go on so long as the money holds out. In his "Science News In Review" (N. Y. Times, Dec. 27, 1942) Waldeman Kaempffert tells us that during 1942 "promising new ways of controlling cancer were tested". He lists as the "promising new way of controlling cancer" that probably "attracted most medical attention", that of administering large daily doses of dry egg-white. This voodoo method is based on the assumption that growth, whether normal or abnormal, depends upon the vitamin, biotin, and that avidin, "the active principle of egg-white, neutralizes biotin". The next leg on which this practice stands is the assumption that "an excess of biotin causes cells to proliferate". This being so "it should be theoretically possible to check a tumor and even to cause it to disappear by giving a cancer patient large doses of avidin or dried raw egg-white". Kaempffert does not explain just why the egg-white has to be dried to be effective, nor why cancer is so common among those who eat large numbers of eggs each year, but I think we may take it for granted that the voodoo boys have "scientific" reasons for the use of dried raw egg-white. It seems that Drs. Ira I. Kaplan and Milton Zurrow of Bellevue Hospital, New York, have made "the only clinical experiments of importance" with the raw egg-white. They report that "the evidence is sufficient to warrant belief that raw-egg white, and possibly pure avidin, is of substantive value in the control of cancer." "The evidence is sufficient to warrant" to warrant somebody in supplying us with more funds with which to play golf. This statement has been used so often and so long, it is becoming worn. Can't they coin another one? Research always seems to stimulate the search for more funds for research. Researchers must not research themselves out of a job. This particular branch of the cancer research racket is becoming more and more complicated. After being told that "further research will be facilitated by Dr. Vincent de Vigneaud's success in determining the structure of biotin" we learn that: Drs. Dean Burk and Charles Kensler found that not only avidin but riboflavin (one of the B vitamins), liver extract and yeast extract and casein were anti-cancerous. Moreover, they concluded that not only biotin but inositol (a B vitamin) plays its part in the growth of tumors. But when liver extract is given with casein and riboflavin to rats, cancers nevertheless develop. It follows that the cancer problem cannot be solved by juggling biotin and avidin alone. The cancer problem, which is a problem only to the willfully blind, can never be solved by juggling anything. Juggling in the "research" laboratories and in the clinics (where patients are used as guinea pigs) is done for the same purpose as on the stage — to entertain the paying patrons and get them to open their purse strings. Time for April 30, 1943, briefly recounts a story from an article by Robert H. Williams, M. D., which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, of an Italian who had been consuming two dozen to six dozen raw eggs a week and who had been eating raw eggs since he was in his teens.. He had cancer which had developed despite the hypothetical inhibiting effect of the large amounts of avidin he was consuming. The fantastic patient's condition ran contrary to this theory", says Time. It does not run contrary to the theory that cancer is the result of protein poisoning, a theory the blind editors of Time re-ruse to devote space to. In the hospital, where the above patient had been temporarily taken off his diet of eggs and wine, when they placed him back on his huge raw egg consumption, "his cancer progressed." He had other troubles and a "possible explanation" of the progress of cancer in spite of large doses of avidin is that "perhaps the bacteria of the urinary tract infection were making biotin, sending enough into his blood to cancel stupendous quantities of avidin and feed the cancer besides." Every guess of "science" requires the support of another guess. It has not been proved that excesses of biotin produce cancer. It was not determined that the bacteria in this patient's urinary tract were manufacturing large quantities of biotin. It is not certain that the biotin got into his bloodstream — it would not be likely to do so in such location. It is all guess, but Time's writer did not question the correctness of this new guess at the cause of cancer. For several years now, medical men have been warning us of the dangers of sunshine. The sun's rays they warn, cause skin cancer. We have seen no real evidence of the truth of this claim and have not noted any increase in skin cancer with the growth in popularity of sunbathing. Recently Frank L. Apperly of the Medical College of Virginia, presented a new theory of the cause of cancer of the stomach to the meeting of the Southern Medical Association in Richmond. He suggested that stomach cancer and perhaps other cancer is a deficiency disease. Lack of sunlight and, therefore, possibly deficiency of the so-called sunshine vitamin D were suggested as the deficiency which results in cancer of the stomach. Dr. Apperly showed statistically that cancer mortality in this country and Canada grows less as the amount of sunlight across the continent increases and as more people are exposed to sunshine in outdoor occupations. The doctor also referred to some studies which show that patients with stomach cancer have in general some deficiency of vitamin A. The effort to trace cancer to deficiency is no new thing. For years, now, there have been men who are determined to trace every so-called disease with which man suffers to some deficiency or other, just as there are others who are determined to trace all of man's ills to glandular malfunctioning. All of these guessers, theorizers, "researchers" and peddlers of peurile piffle are determined not to see the most obvious facts of pathological evolution. They will not recognize that cancer is an end-point in a pathological process that has gone on for years and which has had many causes. They refuse to see it as merely the last link in a chain of causes and effects that reaches back to the very childhood of the patient. Perhaps there is not a more wilfully blind group anywhere in the world. The experimental method is extolled as the scientific method. "Don't think; try" is the advice given by Sir John Hunter. Cancer researchers follow this advice to the letter. They don't think. They do try. They try everything that they can get their fingers on — perhaps on the theory that if they only experiment long enough and with a sufficiently large number of kinds of agents and substances a cure for cancer will sometime, somehow, somewhere turn up. The following item was published in one of the Austin Texas dailies on June 4 of this year: CANCER GROWTH IN MICE CHECKED BY NEW YORKERS - VITAMIN INOSITOL SAID TO STOP DEVELOPMENT WITHIN 48 HOURS TIME NEW YORK, June 3.—(INS)—A new scientific discovery which may aid in medical science's efforts to prevent and treat cancer in man was reported Thursday night in the June 4 issue of "Science." The discovery, which is that the vitamin inositol a member of vitamin B complex—"inhibits" (stops) the growth of one kind of cancer in mice, has been made by Drs. Daniel Laszlo and Cecile Leuchtenberger, under their chief, Dr. Richard Lewisohn, at the cancer research laboratories of New York's Mount Sinai hospital. Drs. Lewisohn, Laszlo and Leuchtenberger were led to the present discovery through their previous research which has shown that certain yeast preparations, rice and barley and soy beans contain some substance or substances which check the growth of cancer in mice. CANCER CHECKED What has now been found is this: By injection into the veins of a solution in salt water of the pure, crystalline vitamin inositol the growth of "Sarcoma 180," a very fast growing and fatal mice cancer, is checked within 48 hours. Hence science has a new "yardstick" for measuring the cancer-checking power of other substances, including those found in cereal grains, liver and so on. The New York scientists make no mention whatever of the application of their discovery to the treatment of cancer in man. No one yet knows whether or not other types of cancer than the one used in the experiments can be cleared up, even in mice. SUBSTANCE IN YEAST Nevertheless it is very significant that inositol is found in yeast, certain extracts from which were found to check cancer in mice. Also, two other substances which act like inositol check cancer growth in mice. One of these substances, "sodium phytate" is derived from rice, barley and other seeds and plant materials. 'The other substance, "dipositol," is present in animal brain tissues, and probably other body tissues. Normally inositol and the other like substances help in the growth of the body tissues of mice. The fact that they check the growth of cancer cells, while they are needed for normal body tissue growth, is of great interest to these investigators. Hundreds of substances have been reported to "check the growth of cancer in rats." None of them have ever been successful in "checking the growth of cancer" in man. Do I need to say that if a substance is found that will "check the growth of cancer" it will not remove the cause of cancer. It will not restore the patient to health. All of the efforts to "check the growth of cancer" with members of the vitamin B complex, extracts of various foods, etc., are efforts to cure disease without removing its cause. Only simpletons and lack-wits will expect these efforts to succeed. I think the "great interest" that these "investigators"—these boys who don't think, but try —have in the alleged fact that inositol, while needed for normal body tissue growth, check the growth of cancer cells, is not just "interest," but compound interest and I'll wager that it is greater than 6 per cent compounded semi-annually. Herbert M. Shelton |
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Eating and Cancer
Hygienic Review Vol. XXXIII May, 1972 No.9 Eating and Cancer Herbert M. Shelton Lawrence Lamb, M.D., authors a syndicated isn't too surprising, medical newspaper column that appears in many newspapers over the land. How many physicians he has associated with him in the production of this column, I shall not try to guess. I shall, however, assume that there is a sufficient number of physicians at his side to give his article the stamp of medical authority. In his column dated February 6, 1972, Lamb quotes the following words contained in a letter from one of his readers: "Dear Dr. Lamb What precautions do doctors take with their families? We never hear of any of them having cancer." To this query Lamb makes the following significant reply: "Dear ReaderUnfortunately, doctors and doctors' families have just about as many cancers as other people. I suspect that you are just not acquainted with that many physicians and their families. There are really no secrets about preventing cancer. Almost anything that a doctor and his family might do, you can do as well. One thing is regular checkups and I might add that doctors aren't always too good about this in reference to their own families. Many a doctor's wife has complained that she needed to make an appointment at the office to find out what her own medical status was. Incidentally, doctors as a group are not the most healthy segment of our population. This A good many of them, like other middle class Americans, eat entirely too much of the wrong foods. Their profession, as such, does not permit them to enjoy a lot of physical activity." Aside from tacitly admitting that physicians do not know how to maintain health in themselves and their families and suffer more disease than many other groups in our country, Lamb admits that the profession and its families suffer with cancer about as often, if not more so, as other segments of the population. He tries to excuse the profession by saying that they tend to eat too much of the wrong food and fail to get enough exercise, as though these factors taken together constitute a healthy program. Has Lamb joined the ranks of the faddists and quacks? Does overeating on wrong foods and insufficient exercise cause or aid in causing cancer? His reply to his reader's question would seem to imply as much. If this is what it means and if he knows what are right and wrong foods, why does he not give this information to his readers? So physicians tend to eat too much, do they? I wonder, by what valid standard, Lamb or some other member of his profession determines when a man has had too much to eat. When did physicians ever give enough attention to the subject of food and feeding to cause them to assume that they know how much food is enough. So they eat the wrong kind of food, do they? What is the right kind of food? What are the wrong foods? Physicians customarily advise their patients to eat what agrees with them or to eat what they like. They commonly tell them not to worry about their diet, a piece of advice that would be well heeded if by worry they really mean worry. Unfortunately what they mean is that one should give no intelligent attention to what one eats, but should just eat as haphazardly and indiscriminately as his friends and relatives. When and where did and do physicians study the subject of diet? How do they know when they are eating the wrong kind of food? If they do know when they are eating the wrong land, why do they continue to do so? A few days before we entered World War II, I was in the office of a physician friend here in San Antonio. His office was on the eleventh floor of the Medical Arts Building and I arrived just before his office girl brought in his noon lunch from the cafeteria on the first floor. On the tray was a stack of white bread, an oversized helping of mashed potatoes, a liberal dish of cheese and spaghetti, a small dish of spinach, a half pint of cream and a few other items. The physician explained to me that he was eating all of that gooey mess of starch and grease in an effort to gain weight. He was underweight, he said, and had been trying for some time to gain. I suggested that a more adequate form of diet would be more likely to enable him to gain weight than the one he was eating. Before eating this lunch, he indulged in his customary smoking of a cigarette. I suggested that if he would give up smoking he would probably gain more readily. He agreed, saying, "I know I should give them up. I don't know why I don't." A few days later we entered the war and he attempted to volunteer for medical service in the army. He had been rejected and I met him as he came from the army medical center. He was staggering like a drunk man, although I knew he did not drink. He fell into my arms and I think would have fallen had I not held him. To my query: "What is wrong, doctor?", he stated, that he had been turned down for medical service in the army because of a small hernia. This was not enough to account for the state he was in. He regained his composure after a few minutes of talk with me and returned to his office. A few days later I was informed by his office girl that he had gone away to the country for a rest. He returned at the end of six weeks and attempted to resume his practice but after two weeks of this he gave up and retired to his home, where he died after another three or four weeksof heart disease. In view of the present thought about fat in causing heart and arterial diseases, we are constrained to wonder how much his cream drinking to gain weight had to do with hastening his death. Also, we may add: what was the office of cigarette smoking in which he had indulged since his student days, in producing his heart disease. The heart disease had gone unnoticed and unsuspected until uncovered by the army medical examiners. How much influence did the emotional state created by this disclosure have in hastening his death? When he was told he had heart disease (the exact diagnosis is unknown to me) it was like a blow on the head, hence his staggering which I previously described. A few years before the death of this physician I had another experience with him. We were driving in early one morning from attending a birth in a suburban home. As we drove along he said to me: "Dr. Shelton, when you feed a woman through her pregnancy, we have no trouble. The birth is soon over and there are no complications. The woman rapidly recuperates and she always has plenty of milk for the baby." Then, he added: "I know nothing about diet." To my question, why don't you learn something about it?, he gave the stock reply: "I don't have time." A few years passed, and I called him one evening to attend a birth. On the telephone, he said to me: "I am sorry, Dr. Shelton, but I'll have to send my assistant. I'd like to come myself, but I am taking my thirty-third degree in Masonry this evening, and I've got to be present." Immediately my mind ran back to the time when he said he did not have time to study diet. I thought of all the time he had to waste in study, and in ritual exercise to become a thirty-third degree mason. I believe the real answer was given to me by a woman physician who lived in and practiced in Ohio. I met her in New York, where she was attending special classes in Columbia University. Our conversation turned to diet and, after saying that she believed that there is much value in diet, she added that she did not know anything about it. To my question, why do you not learn something about it, she gave the stock reply: "I do not have time." I pointed out to her, that while she was in New York with a lot of spare time on her hands would be an excellent time to devote some attention to the study of diet. Then she said: "My profession regards dietetics as quackery and I cannot afford to get the reputation of being a quack." Now the answer was out in the open: It is scientific to poison the sick; it is quackery to attempt to feed them correctly. So long as this is the accepted view of the profession, there is no hope that they will ever give any intelligent attention to the subject of food and feeding. They will continue to overfeed their patients, their families and themselves on "wrong food." Herbert M. Shelton |
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Enervation & Toxemia
Hygienic Review Vol. XXV August, 1964 No. 12 Enervation & Toxemia Herbert M. Shelton In line with the old concept of disease as something imposed from without, an attacking entity, medical men and the public have been taught to think of causation in terms of germs, viruses, parasites; resistance as the capacity of the body to marshal its phagocytes to overcome or repel an invader or to marshal antitoxins to neutralize the toxins of germ activity; cure in terms of antagonists, antidotes, antitoxins. They employ the term toxemia, but they mean by it poisoning by germ activity. No germs, no toxemia, is their general attitude. Our concept of toxemia is fundamentally different from that held by the medical profession. To us toxemia is the result of the accumulation in the blood, lymph, and tissues of retained metabolic waste. It is an autogenerated state, the toxin arising as a normal by-product of the regular and necessary activities of life. Toxin accumulates as a result of inhibited excretion (checked elimination). Basically, we hold that any influence, whether physical or mental, that results in an excessive expenditure of nerve energy leads to toxemia. This means that the chief causes of enervation are found in the voluntary habits of the individual. What is meant by the term enervation? It means the reduction of nerve energy sufficient to interfere with or reduce the organic activities of the body. The nervous system presides over and controls the functions of the many and various organs of the bodysecretion, excretion, circulation, digestion, respiration, absorption, etc., etc. Hence the term enervation simply means a reduction of the capacity of the nervous system below the level required to maintain a normal level of physiological activity. As man in civilized life does not possess perfect health, we hold that everyone is more or less enervated, hence more or less toxemic. This lowering of the body's capacity to function on a high physiological level is what we mean by lowered or broken resistance. But we have a different concept of what is resisted. We resist heat, cold, poisons, fatigue, and other inimical influences. When our energy is sufficiently low that we present inadequate resistance to cold, for example, exposure to severe or prolonged stress by cold, results in a sufficient added check being placed upon excretion that there is a sudden increase of the body's toxic load, thus precipitating a crisis. A gradual accumulation of waste (toxin) occurs when continual draughts upon the nerve energy of the body are made by various activities, stresses and exigencies of life that prevent the maintenance of complete elimination. This accumulated waste constitutes what we understand as toxemia. This is not to say that there are no other sources of intoxication (such as drug poisoning, toxins absorbed from decomposition processes going on in the intestine, etc.) but we prefer to differentiate between poisons of en-dogeneous origin and those of exogeneous origin, by calling the one toxemia and the other poisoning. Poisoning from any source causes suffering & disease, so that we have also defined toxemia as the presence in the fluids and tissues of toxins from any source. Tobacco poisoning causes disease; acute disease when the tobacco is first taken, chronic disease after toleration has been established. The same facts are true of all poisons. Bacteria produce toxins in their activities, but they are as helpless as a feather in a whirlwind in a healthy body. The body must first be enervated and toxemic before bacteria can gain a foothold therein and thrive. This means that we must first be sick before bacteria can add a complicating and, perhaps, differentiating toxemia to the primary or metabolic intoxication. It should be borne in mind that there can be no toxemia, as we have here defined it, without a previous checking of elimination and that this is due to lowering of functioning power-enervation. The order of events (sequence) in the evolution of cause is habits of mind and body and environmental influences that use up nerve energy in excess of the body's power to regenerate it during the hours allotted to rest and repose, enervation, checked secretion and excretion (indeed a lowering of the power of function in general), retention and accumulation of body waste, toxemia. In the last analysis toxemia is the result of fatigue of the nervous system to a sufficient degree to lessen the functioning power of life and cripple the effort to maintain normal functions. While we may speak of an absorptive-toxemia arising from gastro-intestinal decomposition or from an abscess, or we may speak of a toxemia resulting from great emotional stress or from profound physical fatigue, in the final analysis these are results of enervation. Intoxication (alcoholic, narcotic, tobacco, etc.) may occur even in those of perfect health, if poisons are deliberately introduced into the body, but let us keep this variety of poisoning separate in our thinking from the toxemia that is the result of habits of life and environmental influences that reduce nerve energy; all the while keeping in mind that indulgence in poison habits add a profoundly enervating influence to their poisoning. Enervation may grow out of any possible combination of the following practices and influences: Such emotional stresses as fright, grief, worry, apprehension, anxiety, hurry, anger, irritability, hate, resentment, jealousy, over ambition leading to overwork (mental or physical); physical overexertion, excessive venery, lasciviousness, pain and shock, injuries, loss or blood, surgical operations, disease processes, constant coughing, loss of sleep, lack of rest and relaxation, drug treatments, the stimulations and inhibitions of osteopathic, chiropractic, naprapathic, hydropathic, electrical, thermal (heat and cold), and similar treatments, the digestive strain caused by overeating, wrong food combinations, condiments, drinking with meals; exposure to cold, and wet, exposure to heat and humidity; eye-strain, malpositions anywhere in the body; a lack of exercise, of fresh air, of warmth and comfort, lack of cleanliness, lack of sunlight, inadequate food; in short, the universal excesses and deficiencies of which mankind is guilty and the treatments which are heaped upon the sick, are the most common causes of enervation. Another great source of enervation is the almost universal indulgence in poisons of one kind or anotherthe various alcoholic beverages and soft drinks, tobacco (smoking and chewing), betel chewing, arsenic eating, drinking of tea and coffee, the taking of narcotics and other drugs, poisons absorbed from the intestinal tract, chemical and bacterial poisons taken in by mouth, lungs, mucous membrane or by injection. Poisoning of any nature and from any source causes a waste of nerve energy in resisting and expelling the poison. Toxemia, once it is established, causes a waste of nerve energy in the activities needed to resist and expel the toxin. Thus it will be seen that enervation results in toxemia, toxemia increases enervation, thus increasing the toxemia; enervation causes the individual to resort to enervating depressants and stimulants for relief of discomforts and the enervation thus caused calls for more enervating means of relief. Soon the individual finds himself in a complex of vicious cycles, from which he sees no way of escape. The more he resorts to the treatments, the more enervated he becomes. The more enervated, the more toxemic and the more he thinks he needs treatment. The more he lashes himself with stimulants, the weaker he grows and the more he resorts to stimulation. How do we break up this complex of vicious cycles? Certainly not by resort to more enervating treatments, not by surgical vandalism, not by more of the hair of the dog that bit you. A radical, a revolutionary change in the way of life is the only way out. Every cause of enervation must be abandoned or corrected. Every bad habit of mind and body must be abandoned and good habits of life substituted therefor. Anything short of a radical change in the way of life will fail to enable the man or woman to evolve into a state of good health. A housecleaning is in order. Toxin must be eliminated. This is not to be accomplished by the artificial and forcing methods that have been employed for ages by the curing cults, for the effect of these is to produce more enervation while failing to secure toxin elimination. The body has its own blood purifiers and these will do the work if they are given an opportunity and supplied with adequate functioning power. Where is functioning power to come from in a body that is already profoundly enervated? It can come only by hoarding what one has; this is, by ceasing all unnecessary expenditure. Energy saved from one activity is available for use in other activities. This is the reason physical and mental rest result in an immediate increase in excretion. It is also important that we look toward stopping the absorption of toxic materials from the digestive tract and from drug habits. An empty digestive tract and discontinuance of all drug habits enable the body to free itself of poisons already accumulated. The fundamental error of all the curing systems lies in their effort to force the sick organism to act in accordance with the practitioners' conceptions of how it ought to act, ignoring all study and observations of how it is constituted to act. They try to force healthy action upon the sick body and cause more suffering by their very efforts. Herbert M. Shelton |
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Gastric Ulcer
Gastric Ulcer HM Shelton Orthopathy VII 1961 Definition: A circumscribed loss of tissue in the stomach, usually involving both the mucous membrane and the deeper structures. An ulcer differs from a wound in the following ways: A wound arises from some external source; an ulcer has its cause within the body. A wound is always idiopathic; an ulcer is always symptomatic. The tendency of the wound is to heal because its cause is removed: the cause acted but momentarily. An ulcer persists and often enlarges, because its cause persists and often increases. The healing of an ulcer therefore depends primarily upon the removal and correction of the internal condition of which it is but a symptom. This done, the ulcer quickly heals. Symptoms: Pain, usually paroxysmal, severe and localized, though it may radiate to the back or sides, is usually present. In many cases taking food induces or aggravates the pain and this lasts until the stomach is emptied, either by vomiting or by emptying into the intestine. Localized tenderness is often felt. Vomiting, usually of undigested food and acid fluid, which is quite frequent, usually comes on from one-half hour to two hours after eating. Hemorrhage into the stomach with vomiting of blood occurs in more than half the cases and is said to cause death in about twenty per cent of all fatal cases of ulcer. There is an excessive secretion of hydrochloric acid (hyperacidity). Symptoms of indigestion (dyspepsia) precede most cases, though in some cases there are few symptoms until sudden perforation into the peritoneum, pleura, pericardium, or intestine, with hemorrhage, occurs. Complications: Perforation occurs in from 8 to 10 per cent of cases. General or circumscribed peritonitis results from perforation. The peritonitis is a conservative process resulting in adhesions and walling up of the perforation. Sub-phrenic abscess sometimes follows the formation of adhesions. Stenosis, either of the cardiac or pyloric orifices, or hour-glass constriction of the stomach may result from contraction of the cicatrices scars. About 20 per cent of ulcers become malignant cancerous. Etiology: As gastric catarrh evolves, the catarrh passes to inflammation, from inflammation to induration (hardening), and from induration to ulceration. Stomach ulcer is the end of a chain of stomach disorders beginning with irritation indigestion from imprudent eating or drinking which, when very severe, or oft repeated causes' inflammation (catarrh); and when the abuse of the stomach is continued, ulceration follows, or induration (hardening), then cancer. Decidedly nervous individuals who consume much starch bread, cake and pastry are more inclined to develop ulcer. Where there is a decided acidity of the secretion, inflammation and ulceration are almost sure to develop. Discomfort and often great pain accompany this condition. It is not uncommon to see a patient whose stomach is so sour that, on drinking water and vomiting, the returned water and diluted acid are strong enough to sear the throat and paralyze the epiglottis so it can not close, and an attempt to drink water will cause the water to run into the nose. Even gases eructated from such a stomach burn the membranes of the nose and throat. Prognosis: This is very favorable in all early; cases. Many persist for years, then recover. Relapses, so common under regular care, are due to failure to remove causes. Advanced cases, in the profoundly enervated may end fatally in spite of the best of care. Care of the Patient: The palliative treatments in vogue are so unsatisfactory that a noted American surgeon recommends that ulcers be removed after they have been cured nine times. As in all other troubles, the first necessity is the removal of the causes immediate and remote of the trouble. All enervating habits must be discontinued and sufficient rest in bed secured to permit of restoration of full nerve energy. A fast, both to hasten elimination of toxemia and to give the stomach an opportunity to heal, is essential. Chronic provocation by food, indigestion and drugs prevent healing. Food also keeps up the excessive gastric secretion. Fasting soon stops gastric secretion so that, while it often increases the pain during the first two or three days, it speedily establishes a state of comfort so that satisfactory healing may proceed. The fast should last until the body is free of toxemia. Feeding after the fast should be, in most particulars, exactly opposite to the feeding commonly employed in cases of ulcer. Instead of the highly acid-forming diet in vogue, an alkaline diet should be employed. Fruits and vegetables, and these raw, should make up the bulk of the diet. If, at first, there is sensitiveness to the roughage in these foods, raw juices of the fruits and vegetables and purees and strained vegetable soups may be used. Cooked fruits are never to be used. Every health building agent sunshine, exercise, etc. should be employed as early as possible. Operations are notoriously unsatisfactory in ulcers. First, the operation does not remove the cause of the ulcer. Second, the ulcer is in a field of inflammation in the mucous membrane, which inflammatory field may be quite limited or may involve much of the gastric mucosa, and an operation will remove the ulcer, but there is always quite an area of inflamed mucous membrane left after the ulcer is removed and this inflamed membrane tends to ulcerate. Two, three, four, five and even more operations are performed for the removal of ulcers, as these persist in developing. There is nothing to restore an inflamed mucous membrane to health when the causes of the inflammation are left operative. Herbert M. Shelton |
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What Is In A Name?
Hygienic Review Vol. XXVIII March, 1967 No. 7 What Is In A Name? Herbert M. Shelton We often hear the remark that "there is nothing in a name." Is it true that there is nothing in a name? A name is a mere word and it may seem that one word is as good as another. But words have both denotative and connotative meanings and they carry these meanings with them at all times, so that it does make a difference 'what name we use to designate a thing. When we take into consideration the fact that when a thing is misnamed, it may be received by the unwary and uninformed as desirable, whereas, if it is correctly named, it will be rejected, we can understand that a thing wrongly named may maintain its hold upon the public mind for a long time and do much mischief in the meantime. Names, in other words, may be deceptive; they may hide the true character of a thing. No better example of the power of false labels to deceive can be offered than that of drugs. If they were all called, as they all are, poisons, they would be immediately condemned and rejected; but they are not called poisons. Instead, they are named medicines. Just as we see valuable truths rejected simply because they are introduced under an unpopular name, so we observe the acceptance of the most virulent poisons because they come to us labeled as medicines. Perfume manufacturers are well aware that they can sell more of a certain perfume if they market it under one name than under another; lip-stick manufacturers find that not only the name but the showyness of the container affects the sales of their product. Man is deceived by the packaging as well as by the name. Due, in great measure, to this power of names to deceive, poisons have long retained their hold upon the public confidence, because they have been called medicines. The toxicologist and the chemist may list them as poisons; in the drug store, they may be contained in bottles, bearing a skull and cross bones; but in the sick room, they are introduced as medicines. Iodine, potassium, mercury, arsenic, quinine, prussic acid, strychnine, aspirin, sulfonamides, antibiotics, cortisone, etc., may be labeled poison; but when they are put up in ampules, draughts, pills, powders and potions to be given to the sick, they are no longer correctly labeled they are called medicines and are administered to cure disease. The term, medicine, helps to blind both the physician and the patient to the true character of the poison being administered as a cure. Suppose, instead of giving his drugs under the name of medicine, the physicians were required to use the word poison every time he now uses the term medicine; what would be the effect upon both the physician and his trusting victim? If, when the prospective patient inquires of the physician how he is to be treated, the physician were always to reply: "I am going to give you a dose of this poison three times a day, and, if after a time, the results are not satisfactory, I am going to switch to this other poison," would not the patient be less ready to take it and the physician himself less ready to prescribe it. But in the mind of the physician, as in the mind of the patient, the drug is a medicine; hence, both of them impose their confidence in it. Remarkable, isn't it, how the human mind can be so easily cheated by a mere change of name. If the physician and the patient is familiar with the Latin name of the drug and understands that it is a medicine, no matter how virulent it may be, he is likely to forget that the substance logically comes under the plain English name for all such substances poison. We are fooled by names; there is more in a name than we have recognized. All drugs are poisonous. All drugs, even the least virulent of them, occasion, when administered, consequences that are far from desirable. In saying this, I do not have reference solely to those effects that follow their administration that have been labeled untoward side effects and those that are frankly called their toxic effects. I include in these undesirable consequences, their alleged physiological and their alleged therapeutic effects. I insist that all of their consequences are evil, that there is no good in poisoning. Herbert M. Shelton |
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What Was Incurability?
Hygienic Review Vol. XXVII September, 1965 No. 1 What Was Incurability? Herbert M. Shelton What is meant when a patient is told that his disease is incurable? Some diseases are said to be incurable and some patients are declared to be incurable. There are those who declare that, while there are no incurable diseases, there are incurable cases. What, then, is an incurable disease and what is an incurable patient? I do not find any clear-cut replies to these questions and I note that practitioners of all schools do not hesitate to treat "diseases" and patients that are declared to be incurable. At the same time researches are carried on in efforts to discover cures for the incurable diseases. For those of us who do not believe that any so-called disease is curable or that there is any such thing as a cure, the whole concept of curability and incurability is wrong. We regard all the effort devoted to administering cures as wasted effort. Curing disease is a form of voodooism that should be outgrown by enlightened and civilized peoples. There should be a search for causes and an effort made to correct or remove these, but no effort should be made to cure disease. Now it is a generally known fact, one that no intelligent medical man will deny, that many thousands of patients who had been told by their physicians that they were incurable, have recovered health after deserting medicine and seeking cure through other channels. Many thousands of so-called incurables gained health through the application of Water-Cure processes; many more did so through the efforts of the Ling Movement-Cure; many thousands have regained health, after being told by their physicians that they were hopelessly incurable, by recourse to Christian Science, the same thing may be said of the great armies of hopeless invalids who regained health after turning to Mechano - Therapy, Osteopathy, Chiropractic, Physical Culture (Physcultopathy), Naprapathy, Neuropathy, Naturopathy, the Emanuel Movement, the Unity School of Christianity, herbalism, radiesthesis, acupuncture, ultrasonics, and a host of other methods and systems. Mass experiences of this kind, having occurred under the very noses of medical men, and not without their knowledge, should long ago have completely upset the medical ideas regarding the curability and incurability of disease. If they declare a disease to be incurable and cases do recover under Christian Science or under Water-Cure or if a patient is told that he cannot be cured and he gets well under chiropractic, should not the medical man re-examine both his theories and his practices? It is safe to say that more than eighty per cent of the patients going to these other schools for care or treatment or prayer, have given medical physicians weeks, months and years of opportunity to restore them to health. Great numbers of them have been pronounced incurable. They do not all get well when they go to these other practitioners and they patronize first a chiropractor, then a naturopath or a Christian Scientists, but a sufficient number of them are either greatly improved or recover health that they supply these other practitioners with enough case histories of success to keep them in practice and in popular favor. To be assured, by one or more scientific physicians that you are hopelessly incurable, to go through a medical clinic and be informed that there "is no cure" for your disease, to have the verdict of a consultation of physicians handed to you in the word, incurable, to be treated for years with drugs and surgery and grow progressively worse, and then to turn to some form of "quackery" and recover health, is to upset your faith in science. Now, I believe that these medical men are right in their judgements of the incurability of these cases. I believe that everyone of them would die of their "disease, " as told they will by their physicians, should they remain under medical care. The people have no sort of conception, nor have physicians much better conception of the health-destroying effects of drugs. Every dose of every drug administered to a patient is not only disease producing in its own right, but it depresses the healing operations that are always going on in the sick organism. When the drugging is discontinued, when the body is relieved of this intolerable burden, it can do for itself much that it fails to do while being poisoned. One thing all of these various schools have in common is their rejection of drugs. They do not remove causes, they do not cure disease, they do not make an intelligent effort to supply the physiological needs of the body or supply healthful conditions, but they do eschew drugs. There is no drug in a Christian Science prayer, there is no drug in a chiropractic thrust, these is no drug in a water application, the mechano-therapist does not have any drugs in his manipulative procedures, the New Thought practitioner administers no drugs in her metaphysical formulas. Now there have also been numerous instances of recovery in incurable cases in which nothing, other than the abandonment of drugging, was done. When drugs are abandoned, whether the patient turns to some other and ineffective mode of treatment or merely resigns himself to the seeming inevitable, a most prolific cause of chronic disease and organic impairment is removed. The strength of the body's self-healing efforts is graphically illustrated in those many instances in which they succeed in restoring health in spite of the use of drugs. Should we, then, be surprised that they are frequently successful in more advanced cases, when drugs are abandoned? Incurability is often nothing more than chronic drug poisoning. Incurability is often due entirely to the fact that the original and sustaining causes of the disease (to which drug poisoning is merely an addition) are not corrected or removed. As the other schools of "healing" also fail to remove causes, we have every reason to think that more incurables would recover than do, were these original causes removed coincident with the cessation of drugging; No case should be classed as incurable until, after the full correction of all causes, it fails of recovery. Another reason for failure of recovery is the failure to provide the sick organism with adequacies of the primordial requisites of organic existence. If the drugs are discontinued and nothing is done other than chiropractic adjustments or Christian Science jollying, and the physiological needs of life are neglected, many will fail of recovery who might speedily recover were these Hygienic requirements fully and adequately met. As none of the schools of "healing" make an effort to meet all these needs of life, it must be certain that many incurables are sacrificed to this neglect. No practitioner, of whatever school of so-called healing, who ignores cause, provides only inadequately and haphazardly for the physiological wants of the sick organism, and contents himself with throwing monkey-wrenches into the vital machinery, can have any adequate conception of the marvelous efficiency of the body's self-healing abilities when operating under favorable or healthful conditions. To take only a simple example, the common cold: no one who has not watched it repeatedly can know with what greater speed and satisfaction one who rests and fasts recovers from a cold, as contrasted with recoveries under drugging and feeding. There can be no doubt that there are irreversible pathologies; there are patients who are so badly impaired that they are past vital redemption. But there was a long stage in the disease of these before irreversibility was reached, when they could have recovered health. We can say of these that failure to remove causes, failure to provide primordial requisites, and drugging and enervating palliatives have persisted so long that an irreversible stage has been reached. Correct means of care, even if now employed, come too late. In the final analysis, then, it seems correct to say that incurability, which exists far less often than popularly and professionally thought to be the case, is almost always due to maltreatment, ignorance and simple neglect of the most elemental needs of life. None of the schools of so-called "healing, " can be exempt from the charge of contributing to the production of incurability, but it must be recognized that the drugging school is by far the worst offender in this respect. Perhaps if correct care is inaugurated in the initial stages of disease, no such thing as incurability would ever evolve. This brings us to a brief consideration of the question: what and when are the initial stages of disease? The Hygienist regards the first cold or diarrhea or skin eruption of infancy as representing an already established toxemia. This is the initial stage of a pathological evolution that will culminate years later in apoplexy, Bright's disease, heart disease, cancer, etc. The time to begin to head off the evolution of advanced and incurable pathologies is in infancy or even before birth. There is no time of life when it is safe to neglect its genuine needs or to subject it to abuses. Herbert M. Shelton |
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Hygienic Position Verified
Hygienic Review Vol. XXVII May, 1966 No. 9 Hygienic Position Verified Herbert M. Shelton Many times during the past several years I have told my readers that all drugs are poisonous and that it was folly to expend time and money investigating each drug when it is possible to discard them all in one blanket condemnation. I am happy to be able to present some confirmation of the view from authoritative medical sources. I am going to quote from an article entitled, "Toxicology and the Biomedical Sciences" which appeared in the June, 1965, issue of Science, the official organ of the American Association For The Advancement of Science. This article was jointly authored by Bernard B. Brodie, M. D., chief of Laboratory of Chemical Pharmacology in the National Heart Institute; George J. Cosmides, M. D., program director, Pharmacology-Toxicology Program, National Institutes of Health; and David P. Rall, M. D., associate scientific director for Experimental Therapeutics, National Cancer Institute. The high standing of each of these men assures us the last word on the subject. To begin with they say, "The number and variety of chemicals that affect man has increased at an alarming rate and created a public health problem of major proportions. We are confronted with a profusion of chemicals in the form of industrial and municipal wastes, air and water pollutants, herbicides, pesticides, cosmetics, food additives, as well as drugs administered over extended periods of time, and yet we do not know what these substances do to biological systems. In effect, we are thrust into global experiments for which we are not prepared. "For some of these hazards, such as automobile exhaust fumes or cigarette smoke, we are unlikely to find more compelling evidence of their deleterious effects. It remains for industrial and governmental bodies to utilize in the public interest all the information now available, and for the scientific community to continue experimentation on the basic mechanisms of their effects and to find ways of preventing or attenuating their hazard. "There remains, however, a major problem with the vast number of chemical compounds whose possible poisonous effects are not known or cannot be predicted. It is this area which is the subject of our article." Then it is that these authors confirm my position that it is futile to test chemical substances, one by one, when it is known that all of them are toxic. Concerning this they say: "It seems futile to record one by one the biological effects of millions of chemical entities without the development of unifying and simplifying generalizations. It is evident that new means must be sought to accelerate the acquisition of new knowledge on the effects of chemicals on living materials, and to develop a system for the rapid dissemination of such information, In this article we outline some of the problems in toxicology and offer recommendations as to how these problems should be approached." While it is fully acknowledged by the authors that our modern chemical environment is a mass of toxins, that new toxic substances are being added to our environment daily, they do not offer anything so simple as the discontinuance of air pollution, water pollution, food pollution, and country-side pollution with insecticides, but have taken for granted that the increasing poisoning of our environment is to continue and that the so-called researchers are to continue testing the various toxins to determine the effects of each. In their article, they practically ignore environmental pollution after the initial admission that it exists and constitutes a serious problem and largely confine their attention to drugs. Of drugs they say: "Investigations of drugs are frequently complicated by the difficulties of eliciting their subtle, often unusual deleterious effects, and of evaluating these effects against the beneficial actions. Even members of a single species can vary in their response to a particular substance, yet large numbers of people may be exposed to a drug on the basis of toxicity in relatively few animals." A recent example of the manner in which human beings are subjected to drug dangers after relatively slight animal testing is that of a new birth control drug, NK-665, manufactured by the Merck Company. While the drug was still being tested on animals, large numbers of women were used in so-called clinical tests on the same drug. When it was found that it produced cancer in the test animals, testing on women was immediately discontinued. Whatever else we may say about drug and drug testing, it does seem that all animal testing should be completed before a new drug is tested on human beings. In saying this I do not mean to be understood as having anything against the animals. I pity these poor victims of "science" the same as I do the poor human guinea-pigs who are submitted to drugging, whether for test purposes or for therapeutic purposes. I do not put any value in the medical stupidity that drugs that have usual or unusual deleterious effects may also have "beneficial actions. " Drugs are simply poisonous, and the only effects they can have are harmful ones. These authors say: "At present, a potential therapeutic agent is first screened for biological activity in laboratory mammals. If the substance shows potentially useful pharmacological or therapeutic activity, then the toxic effects are determined in experimental animals before the substance is tested in man. Thus the pharmacological and toxic effects exerted by a drug must he predicted from the effects in laboratory animals. Our modern system of drug development, therefore, depends on the assumption of a high degree of correlation between effects in animals and man. That such predictions are often unreliable raises serious questions regarding these tests." Concerning this same difference between effects following drugs when given to animals and when given to man, they say: "In the past, variations among species in the response to a drug were attributed to differences in the sensitivity of receptor sites, and the prospects of obtaining data from animals that would be applicable to man were bleak. However, variation in drug metabolism within and between species is now known to be the rule rather than the exception..." Here again we have these men stupidly referring to the biological activity of chemical substances and to drug metabolism. It is becoming quite common for pharmacologists and physicians to discuss the metabolism of drugs, when they should know that there is no such thing as drug metabolism not any more than there is such a thing as biological activity of chemical components. Loose language of this type indicates loose thinking, or else it indicates a deliberate misuse of terms in an effort to deceive, to create confusion, and in an effort to deceive readers. Another frequent expression of these men of so-called science is "drug receptors. " They regard the various organs and tissues of the body as receivers of drugs when in reality they reject them. Returning, however, to the difficulties of extrapolating the effects occasioned by a drug in one animal to another animal, let me quote further from these authors. They say: "In tests of subacute and chronic toxicity, differences between animals and man in rates of drug metabolism are particularly important. Despite a large variability in metabolism, the acute lethal toxicity of many barbiturates (administered intravenously) is almost identical in various mammalian species because of the short time lapse between administration of drug and death, On the other hand, the lethal toxicity of a drug will vary considerably if time elapses between drug administration and death. A substance metabolized in rats 50 times more rapidly than in man may have the same acute toxicity in both species, but the chronic toxicity may be vastly different because of drug cumulation. Phenyl-hutazone, an antirheumatic agent metabolized much more rapidly in the rat than in man, causes the retention of sodium. Rats given a single dose of drug do not show this effect. To maintain the drug at a plasma concentration that produces sodium retention in man (about 150 ug/ml), the rat must be given a total daily dosage of 400 milligrams per kilogram of body weight compared with the 5 to 10 milligrams per kilogram required in man. "Much of the research on the teratogenic effects of thalidomide in animals is difficult to interpret. The drug is said to produce a long-lasting sedation in man and the horse but only a fleeting effect in most other species. We know of no studies that relate the plasma concentration to the teratogenic effects. From the short-lived sedative action in the rat, one would suspect that this animal might inactivate the drug much more rapidly than does man. "Thus, in toxicity studies it is important to compare in the various species the plasma or tissue concentration at which a drug elicits an adverse effect. Until this has been done with a variety of agents we cannot know to what extent species variability in toxicity depends on differences in rate of' drug metabolism or differences in inherent toxicity." By drug metabolism and inactivating the drug they mean the same thing. They have in mind only the means employed by the body in defending itself against the "inherent toxicity" of chemical substances that are foolishly introduced into the body. After all the testing on men and animals has been done, there still remains the variability between men and women. For example, these authors say: "A common cause of toxic reactions arises from 'overdosage' because of person-to-person variability in rates of drug metabolism; the same daily dose of a drug may cure, cause severe toxicity, or have no effects whatsoever... Each person seems to have his own pattern of metabolism for these drugs. (They have previously mentioned certain drugs) The consequences of individual differences in drug metabolism are exaggerated in long-term therapy..." It may be well to consider a few more statements of theirs concerning the harmfulness of drugs. They say: "Drugs used medicinally may produce adverse effects by causing biochemical lesions and cellular damage, rather than by exaggerating the actions of physiological control systems." "Some drugs will invariably produce cellular damage if the concentration in the plasma is high enough. For example, isoniazid at almost the same plasma concentration in animals and man reacts with pyridoxal to produce adverse effects on the nervous system. In fact, isoniazid produces a neuropathy in patients who, by genetic predisposition, (a mere suppositionauthor) metabolize the drug excessively slowly and therefore receive the maximum antituberculous effects of the drug." They tell us that certain drugs cause delayed toxic reactions and that cancer production is among the important aspects of chemical toxicity. While certain drugs which are classed as cyto-toxic agents (cellular poisons) cause necrosis of the liver, others produce irreversible but fatal lesions in the kidneys, and certain others produce cataracts. They point out that tissue damage is related to drug accumulation and say that small amounts of some drugs may be retained in the body for months and even years. Thus, if they are prescribed for regular use, they tend to accumulate in amounts that cause great damage and death. To the intelligent individual it would seem that men, viewing all of these dangers produced by drugs, would warn against their use. But these men issue no such warning. They are medical men engaged in prescribing drugs and in promoting the use of drugs. Their interest is not in discrediting drug usage but in increasing the drugging practice. Were it suggested to either of these three men that it might be more advantageous to the sick to provide them with helpful things, rather than ply them with destructive chemicals, they would indignantly characterize the one making the suggestion as a member of the "lunatic fringe. " They would be on the alert to protect their racket and would be among the first to denounce as an ignoramus and quack any man who should dare to challenge the validity of a system that seeks to restore the sick to health by poisoning them. Yet there is no more sense in poisoning the sick than there is in poisoning the well. Why should we pollute the human blood stream any more than we should pollute our water supply or our atmosphere? Why should we pollute our cellular structures any more than we should pollute our foods? The growing problem confronting mankind, consequent upon the effort of chemists to take over human life and deal with it as though it could be handled in a test tube, cannot be solved by any amount of drug research. Human life will be safe only when the last physician has been strangled with the guts of the last chemist. Herbert M. Shelton |
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The Tyranny of Hygiene
Hygienic Review Vol. XXVIII April, 1967 No. 8 The Tyranny of Hygiene Herbert M. Shelton If healing is a biological process, which we can neither imitate, duplicate nor substitute, as we contend, the proper plan of caring for the sick will be one of supplying the most favorable conditions for the successful operation of the healing processes. The primary requisite of the success of the healing processes is the removal of all causes of organic and systemic impairment. There are no short-cuts to health. There are no speedways that take us there in a hurry. There are no ways of "cutting corners" or "going across the lot." You either remove the causes of organic and functional impairment and supply the conditions of health, or you do not get well. Dr. James C. Jackson once advised one of his physician correspondents, P. H. Adams, M. D., of Florence, Texas, to "be autocratic in your determination to have them (the patients) do as you wish to have done. " How far Adams carried out this advice the record does not reveal; but if we can judge the past by the present, he was inclined to go easy with his patients and cater to their whims and compromise with their habits of life. "Who made you God?," is a question that we are frequently asked when we insist upon instructions being carried out. The undisciplined resent the restrictions that are placed upon their living habits; the incorrigible refuse to go even a little way in correcting their ways of life; yet it is true, as Dr. Tilden so often stressed, that the limitations that we place upon these unruly ones are only such as nature herself dictates. We do not advise rest for our own profit, but because there is a distinct need for and a natural call for rest. What good does it do to the Hygienic practitioner for a man to give up coffee or tobacco? The patient receives all the good out of abandoning these practices. But, in insisting that these poison habits be discontinued, have we done anything more than to demand that the normal rules of life be carried out? Nature herself is the tyrant; she is the dictator. She is the one who does the penalizing when her rules are flouted. What or who is this nature that penalizes us for our wrongs to ourselves? It is none other than our own body. If you try to live on deficient food, it is your own tissues that fail to renew themselves ideally. If you do not secure adequate rest and sleep, it is the tissues of your own body that fail of ideal renewal. If you smoke or drink, it is your own tissues that are damaged. The limitations you face are your own limitations. They are set by your own constitutional capacities and powers. All the needs of normal physiology are present in states of disease and require to be supplied to the end that organic and functional integrity may be preserved or restored. No piece-meal plan of care can possibly succeed in restoring health. Hygienic care comprehends not only a regulation of the diet, but a synthesis and coordination of all the factor elements of normal livings-drinking, breathing, sunning, temperature, clothing, exercise, rest, sleep, emotional factors, etc. Nothing short of a total regulation of the way of life can produce ideal results. All processes of recovery or healing are but extensions and modifications of the processes that preserve health and the materials and processes employed in caring for the sick must be in consonance with physiology and compatible with all other useful measures. A sane method of caring for the sick will not attempt to force the body to utilize substances that are not subject to its metabolic processes. If we demand a correction of the ways of life as the one and only means of securing a restoration of health, we will not be patronized by the millions who still believe that among the myriads of so-called cures there is palliation for them and who are content with mere palliation. There is a mighty army of invalids today who cannot get well in spite of their travels, their patronage of the great specialists and their submission to operations; but they are still unwilling to make a few simple corrections in their ways of living in the interest of better health. When one of these sufferers does condescend to break away from the cures of science and to undertake a wholly new and, to him, untried way back to health, he is often in a desperate condition. Much organic change has occurred so that nothing short of the creation of a new organ can restore full health. We don't expect such sufferers to recover full health, but we do witness some remarkable improvements in great numbers of these desperate cases. In the less damaged, we see great numbers of full recoveries. It is often in these desperate cases that we witness the most remarkable effects of the fast. To withhold food provides relief from pain and discomfort, enables tired and damaged organs to rest and to repair themselves, gives the enervated organism an opportunity to excrete its accumulated load of waste and exotic poisons and, to, in great measure, rejuvenate itself. What is needed is a plan or mode of elimination much more compatible with physiology than those proposed by the so-called schools of healing and fasting meets this demand. Even in those cases where full recovery is no longer possible, comfort may be restored and, by teaching them how to eat and live, life may be prolonged for months and even years. A correction of the habits of life, even if for only a time, results in an abandonment or disappearance of symptoms; but to build vigorous health and restore body and mind to normal, to retrieve lost vigor and add years to life, the correction must take place before serious organic change has occurred in some or several of the vital organs of the body. Herbert M. Shelton |
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Living Your Way to Health
Hygienic Review Vol. XXXIX January, 1978 No. 5 Living Your Way to Health Herbert M. Shelton Professor Millard Parker, M. D., said: "Hygiene is of far more value in the treatment of diseases than drugs. "This admission by one of the leading medical authorities and professors of this country, was made while Trail was living and trying to awaken the people and the profession to a full realization of the value of Hygiene. Unfortunately, Parker's statement implies that drugs have value in the treatment of disease. While this should be sufficient to cause the people and the profession to prefer Hygiene to drugs, it is not a full statement of truth. The whole truth is that Hygiene possesses all the value and drugs none. A full moon may be mistaken for a crescent behind a cloud sufficiently thick. Those who possess only confused and hazy ideas about Natural Hygiene are likely to fail to comprehend its full scope in caring for both the well and the sick. They are likely to think of it as a useful adjunct to some system of treatment. Hygiene long ago asserted its independence of all other schools. The Hygienic System is no mere adjunct to medical science. Hygienic measures are not supplements to drugs, nor mere substitutes for them. The Hygienic method is not just a "better way"; it is the only way. The essential difference in our practices and that of the schools of healing is that they treat the disease with drugs and we care for the body with Hygienic agencies alone. Hygienists seek to find and remove causes; whereas, medical men seek to dose and cut away effects. Our care of the sick involves a more thorough and complete regulation of regimen and Hygienic agencies, because in that consists our whole hope of aiding and assisting nature. "Physicians of all schools save the Hygienic have taught that disease should be cured-but the underlying question is: 'Should disease be cured?' We say no. And we challenge all the medical men of the earth to prove the affirmative. This challenge issued by Trail was never accepted by any of the cure-mongers of any of the schools of his day. "Be it remembered, he said, "that we do not believe in curing disease. Not until we understand the true nature of disease can we understand the meaning of this statement. I do not believe in curing the sick. To me it seems more rational to permit the sick to get well. Curing is a fallacious practice-it is, in fact, voodooism. Grave errors have been entertained as to what is really intended to be remedied by the practices of the "healing art. Ambiguity in the use of the term disease makes itself felt more as we pursue our studies of the subject before us. Unfortunately our language could not have been more precise because our ideas in the field were not clear. All healing is according to the law of cause and effect. So-called miracles of healing may all be explained by natural law. We cannot admit exceptions to law and order. Who ever discovered exceptions to gravitation, chemical affinity, the law of the lever, or any other principle of nature? Mathematicians do not record exceptions. It is not merely a general, but an invariable rule that two and two make four. Mechanical laws know no exceptions. The laws of nature are invariable, immutable, universal, omnipresent. Living existence is undoubtedly a part of nature, hence its operations are subject to natural principles. An analysis of all the facts connected with any apparent miracle of healing will reveal that it has violated no law of life. There was no miracle. When Nature's laws and human institutions come in conflict, we are always suspicious of the latter. We are of the opinion that Nature is not the erring party. Hygiene is not a system of caring for the sick according to the names that are attached to groups of symptoms and pathological conditions. We care for the sick according to well-defined principles, and according to the nature of disease. For these reasons "accurate diagnosesare not as important in our work as medical men demand in theirs. In making an examination in order to diagnose the patient's disease, a careful hunt for signs, symptoms, pathology and effects is made. After these have all been found and classified, the disease is named and a prognosis is given. It is unfortunate for the patient that the disease cannot be diagnosed until it has progressed far enough to produce physical signs. Hence physicians are in the habit of telling many people that they only imagine that they are sick. On the medical theory, if the physician cannot diagnose the disease, he does not know how to treat his patient. Medical examinations do not find causes. They are not efforts to find causes. For the reason that cause is not found, it cannot be removed, hence the sick man never recovers health. The Hygienist searches for causes rather than for effects; he removes causes and does not treat symptoms. This permits full recovery. The government demands correct burial certificates on which to base the national mortuary reports. Cabot published the results of the autopsy findings in one of the best hospitals in the nation. These showed the diagnoses to have been wrong in over fifty percent of the cases. Few top-notch physicians are willing to publish their autopsy reports as contrasted with their diagnoses. It is certain that average physicians' diagnoses are not correct as often as were those in the hospital where Cabot made his findings. How, then, can the country's mortality reports present a true picture of the people's illnesses? As it is likely that the diagnoses are wrong as often in cases that recover as in cases that die, no dependence can be placed in the statistics of disease incidence and in the percentage of recoveries in the various diseases. It is a peculiar circumstance that all doctors of all schools of so-called healing admit that nature is the healer. All that any of them profess to be able to do with their drugs and treatments, their diets, and baths, their electrical gadgets and manual maulings, is to aid nature. All that we ask these people, who admit that nature heals, is that they make their practice conform to their theory and stop trying to usurp nature's prerogative. Of the people we ask only an increased and abiding faith in nature and a loss of faith in drugs and treatments. Let us not lose sight of the real healing process and then, we will not be found guilty of meddling with the process. For, all too often, when we think we are aiding nature, we are thwarting her very effort. It is an unfortunate circumstance that all those who seek to "aid naturethink of disease as an evil that must be combatted. They think of their "aidsas things that act upon and within the body to combat, subdue, repress or kill the disease. Their "aidof nature is almost always a war upon the human constitution. To check coughing, induce vomiting, "relievepain, reduce fever, repress inflammation, "allaynervousness, induce diarrhea or suppress it, to force sweating or "stimulateand "inhibit(depress) function in any manner is not to "aid nature, but to thwart her. A patient has a sour stomach and the physician prescribes alkalies; another has worms and the physician administers something to poison them to death; another has pain and the physician administers a "pain-killing(really, a patient-killing) drug; another has constipation and the physician prescribes a laxative, and so on to the end of life. But who cannot perceive that all this practice as a part of the "healing art, is absurd and ridiculous? Who is so stupidly blind as to be unable to see that it is merely patchwork; tinkering with effects without removing causes? All the schools of so-called healing have myriads of methods of spectacular palliation. They palliate the patient's suffering and "relievehis pain, and do nothing constructive in caring for him. No Hygienist would employ drugs to "relievepain, for the reason that, besides the other evils that attend their use, they are causes of greater pains than they "relieve. While the medical man classifies certain drugs an anodynes, Dr. Jennings said truly, that they are odynes. Instead of pain relievers, they are pain inducers. Who suffers more pain than the morphine addict? Giving drugs to relieve pain is like giving whiskey to relieve drunkenness. Drugs are the causes of the "fiendish deathscancer sufferers are said to die. They suffer |
