Medicine is mostly poison and its effect is to shock the organs or glands to bring about reaction. Nature makes the cure.
In emergency drugs are all right, but the doctor and not the individual should settle the matter of what drug to use and the time to use it.
When there"s a pain or disease it"s due to congestion of some organ, to infection, or to improper nourishment or improper habits.
Ninety per cent of the aches, pains or ailments can be cured by a dominant mental att.i.tude and attention to eating and exercise.
The habitual medicine user is not cured by the medicine but by nature; the medicine simply serves as a means to establish mental control and confidence that the sufferer is to get well.
Recently I have spent much time in a large hospital visiting a relative who had been operated on. I know several of the staff of doctors and nurses.
I have seen many operations, some very heroic ones, and my appreciation of the good work of good surgeons is greatly augmented by the wonderful helps I have seen them bring to suffering humanity. I have talked with and watched the cases of scores of patients.
I have by plausible logic, mental suggestion, and good cheer to the hospital patients, brought many a smile through a mist of tears.
I have seen wonderful results of mental suggestion to the discouraged patients.
To show the effects faith thought will produce, I will relate some instances.
One patient screaming for a hypodermic injection to relieve her pain was given an injection of sterilized water and the pain vanished.
Another just could not sleep without her bromide. The nurse fixed up a powder of sugar, salt and flour, the patient took the powder and went to sleep. That was mind control and mental longing satisfied.
Another patient had to take something to stop her pains; she got capsules of magnesia. The capsule satisfied her longing, established her faith and gave her relief; the relief was through her mind and not by the capsule.
I have seen several weary, despondent patients fretting and wearing themselves out over their so-called weakness and condition. I have placed copies of "Pep" in their hands and watched courage, faith, cheer and sereneness come to them.
The reading of "Pep" diverted their minds from self-thought and self-accusation to faith-thought and courage.
"Pep" is simply powerful common-sense, practical, digestible, hope, faith, cheer and courage. One brain cannot at the same time hold its attention on faith and fear, on joy or sorrow, on smiles and tears.
You can only think one thing at a time, and "Pep" or any other book that can change the habit thought from fear to faith, from worry to peace, is doing a service.
I"ve been in shadowland in the hospital to see for myself the actual help that mental control will bring to sufferers and the evidence is far above my powers to describe.
I"m mighty glad I wrote "Pep" for it has helped many a brother and sister out of darkness into sunshine, and proved the value of right thinking and mental control.
I"ve seen the lifting up of a patient"s hope, when the cheery surgeon came with hope, smiles and confidence on his face.
I"ve seen the drooping of spirits when well meaning but poor expressing friends came into the patient"s room and condoned and sorrowed with the patient.
Verily "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
Verily good cheer and good thought are good medicines.
And to these truths all good doctors say "Amen!"
READING
Let Your Final Evening"s Reading be Good Stuff
When you spend the evening playing cards, the chances are you come home late, and when you retire it takes perhaps an hour or so before you fall to sleep.
And during the night you dream of cards, of certain hands, of certain circ.u.mstances, or certain persons, that were prominent in the evening"s game.
The reason you do not go to sleep after an exciting evening is because you have set your nerve carburetor at high tension and forgotten to lower it before you go to sleep.
On the other hand, when you have been reading a restful book, full of good thought, you establish an equilibrium, a relaxed state of nerves and particularly you have switched the current or direction of your day"s thoughts. That change spells rest, and you retire and go to sleep easily.
In "Pep" one of the most beneficial suggestions was that you read its chapters one or two each evening, after you had undressed, and just before going to bed.
You will scarcely believe what a wondrous change for the better will happen to you if you make it a rule to have a brain clearing, mental inventory, and nerve relaxation every night before you sleep.
Your brain works at night always; oft-times you have no remembrance of your dreams, but if your last hour, before retiring, was an hour of excitement, tension or unusual occupation you will likely go over it all again in your dreams.
If you will let nothing prevent your period of soliloquy, or evening round-up, you will establish your mental habits into a rhythm that will give you peace, rest and benefit.
In the olden days, when most families had evening worship or family prayers, the members of those households slept soundly and restfully.
Particularly was this so because of the habit formed of getting the mind on peaceful, helpful, comforting, soul-satisfying thoughts that remained fresh on the brain tablets as the members of the home circle went to sleep.
One of the common practices in the home circle is reading, and generally the books or papers read are of the exciting, fascinating, highly colored imaginative type; people read stories of love, adventure, plot or crime, and they dream these same things most every night.
I have found that it pays to read two cla.s.ses of literature in the same evening. First read your novel, story or fascinating book, and fifteen minutes before you are ready to go to sleep, read some good, wholesome, helpful, uplifting book, and that good stuff will be lastingly filed away in your brain.
Finish your evening with books that are interesting, yet educational.
Such books as "Life of the Bee" by Maeterlinck, or any one of Fabre"s wonderful books on insect life; "Riddle of the Universe," by Haeckle; Darwin"s books; Drummond"s "Ascent of Man;" "Walks and Talks in Geological Fields" is a splendid mental night cap; "Power of Silence;"
"Physiology of Faith and Fear;" Emerson"s "Essays;" Holmes" "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table;" Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; Tom Moore"s Poems; "Plutarch"s Lives;" "Seneca;" "Addison;" Bulwer Lytton; Hugo; Carlyle"s "Sartor Resartus." This latter book will not fascinate you like Carlyle"s "French Revolution," but you will learn to love its fine language, its fine a.n.a.lysis of character, of times, and of things.
There are countless books of the good improving kind. Always save one of them for your solid reading, after you have read light literature or novels. If you will get the habit you will notice great benefits and rapid advancement in your mental apparatus.
You will sleep better, think clearer; you will learn to enjoy mental pleasures more than material pleasures.
Fifteen minutes then to be yours, yours alone, in which you quiet, soothe, strengthen and pacify yourself and add abundant resources and a.s.sets.
Let the last reading in the evening be something worth storing up in that precious brain of yours and the good worth-while deposit will grow and produce beautiful worth-while mental fruit.
VERBOMANIA
A Widely Prevalent Modern Disease