The pill eater is a hypochondriac and very likely his doctor knows it.
The salvation is that the doctor probably gives him harmless stuff in pill form. The patient doesn"t know this and it"s like a rabbit"s foot or a piece of pork rubbed on a wart; it satisfies the mind and nature makes the cure.
Often, however, the pills are not innocent; the pill fiend buys the tablets and pills direct from the druggist. The headache tablet is most likely one of the coal tar drugs like acetanilid, and that is positively harmful when taken too often.
There are times to take pills, in cases of emergency, when you can shock nature with a poison and bring a wholesome reaction.
These times are rare, and the doctor should be the sole judge as to when they are necessary.
Exercise, diet, correct habits of living will prevent congestion and illness that cause pain.
The pill habit is nothing less than a drug habit, and the drug habit positively weakens the system.
The headache tablet does not cure the headache, it only stops the pain; the evil is still there. The headache is merely nature"s signal that something is out of whack.
Headaches are generally caused by the stomach, eye strain, or neuralgia; the latter in turn is caused by too much uric acid in the system.
Eat fruit, drink plenty of water, and that will flush the system and stop stomachic headache.
See the optician if it"s eyes. If you have frequent headache in the forehead, very likely it"s the eyes, even though you do not suspect it.
If it"s neuralgia, get a corrective diet list from the doctor.
I know scores of men and women, too, who take pills enough to kill a person. Their systems have been educated up to it; they are saturated with poison.
And the worst of it is they never get well while taking the pills; it is only a temporary deadening of the pain.
Then there are many who take pills to make them sleep. That"s a crime.
It"s murder in slow degrees for they are surely shortening their lives by this poison dope pill habit.
Mark this: Nature, and Nature alone, effects cures and it"s in very, very few instances that a poison pill can be used to advantage.
You can keep well by getting good air, good water, good sunshine, good food, good exercise, good rest, good cheer and good thought. That is what I call my golden prescription, and it will do wonders for you, and every doctor will tell you so.
Pills kill, if you keep up the habit. There are no two ways about it. I say positively and knowingly, that this pill habit is absolutely life shortening.
Don"t try to argue; the evidence is unshakable on this point.
If you had seen the derelicts in the hospitals I have seen, if you had seen the wretched bodies, destroyed nerve systems, the drugged, shattered, hopeless patients resulting from the baneful pill habit, you would be as positive as I am in saying pills kill if you keep up the habit.
Life is sweet and precious to us all. Do not shorten it by taking pills and tablets for every ache or pain. Try nature"s way. Realize that mental suggestion and will power will drive away most pains or temporary aches.
Brace up, cheer up; chuck the pills in the garbage can.
FAKE MEDICINES
Like Whiskey, the End Is Near
Whiskey must go. It is written on the pages of the records of man"s progress. Likewise must the quack doctor and the fake medicine go.
The side-whiskered advertising doctors are nothing short of criminal when they by powerful use of words magnify symptoms and feelings to be grave, serious fore-runners of awful disease, and by fright, bring in the hypochondriac to his spider-web and filch him in a manner no better than a thief uses. The thief is really more honorable, for he steals because he wants your money and makes no bones about it.
The doctor charlatan steals your money under the guise of being your benefactor.
As I have explained in "Pep," illness, feeling out of sorts, local pains and sickness, unless of the contagious or infectious kind, are largely conditions of the mind and of food habits, and surely are accentuated by fear thought.
Because people have off days, and aches and pains, the frock-coated, white lawn tie doctors and pseudo professors work on the minds and imaginations, magnify trifles into troubles, then when the victims lose courage these charlatans rob them under the guise of professional advice and treatment.
Most of the temporary ailments are caused by constipation, wrong diet or lack of exercise. The doctor gives a laxative, nature re-a.s.serts herself, and the patient is cured.
Chronic ailments require long treatments, so as to make long bills and many visits for the quack doctor.
Read "Pep" and fool the doctors. Your health and happiness are things largely in your own control.
When you feel you must have a doctor, go to your family physician and not to a strange doctor who advertises. His advertis.e.m.e.nt is merely a spiderweb to catch and hold you while he robs you.
It is a hopeful sign of the brighter future to which man is progressing, that the respectable papers will not lend their aid to swindling doctors. The best papers will not carry these doctor or fake medicine ads.
Before long the government will pa.s.s laws on this baneful, shameful, quack advertising. Quack doctors, gambling houses, liquor selling, are all swindling methods to get money, and in the getting they are killing men, ruining homes, destroying happiness, holding back progress.
The one object of the quack doctor is to size you up and see what you "are good for." "Good for" means how much money can he get from you and how long can he keep you as a patient to contribute to his coffers.
Let every reader of this book enroll as an opponent to quack doctors and quack medicines, and by word and influence help to hasten the day when such pernicious swindlers are things of the past. You can"t get health out of a bottle.
And this is true.
THE CHURCH
It Is Hampered By Too Many Sects
No two minds can see the same picture, nor can two persons with logic, on religion, come to the same definite conclusion.
The old Scripture said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." The new Scripture teaches us to "turn the other cheek" and "love your enemies."
Two hundred years ago they burned witches.
Thirty years ago the preacher who took exception to the universal belief of a h.e.l.l of fire and brimstone was thrown out of the church. Today no preacher believes in such a h.e.l.l.
Present day religion is really a Sunday religion. One and a half hours a week the members of the church join in singing "we shall know each other there." The remainder of the week they make it a point to keep from knowing each other here.
The protestant church divides itself into a lot of sects, each one built on some particular ordinance or practice and each one swallows a camel and strains at a gnat. One sect insists that baptism shall be by immersion because the disciples baptized that way. They believe in following customs literally, yet in the cities they immerse the members in a big tub under the pulpit, which practice is entirely different from the method employed by John the Baptist.