But in point of fact, while a number of these lay physicians were brought before the courts, in no instance could the actual harmfulness of the methods employed by them be proven. The natural methods of treatment became so popular that, as a matter of self-preservation, the younger generation of physicians in Germany had to fall in line with the Nature Cure idea in their practice.
Since Dr. E. so strongly questions the efficacy of our methods, I may be permitted to say something about my own professional experience.
Nature Cure in America
During the last ten years, I have treated and cured all kinds of serious acute diseases without resorting to allopathic drugs. In a very extensive practice, I have not in all these years lost a single case of appendicitis (and not one of them was operated upon), of typhoid fever, diphtheria, smallpox, scarlet fever, etc., and only one case of cerebro-spinal meningitis and of lobar pneumonia. These facts may be verified from the records of the Health Department of the City of Chicago.
After the foregoing statements, I leave it to my readers to judge whether the Nature Cure philosophy is inspired by blind fanaticism and based upon ignorance and inexperience, or whether it is justified in the light of scientific facts advanced by the Regular School of Medicine itself and demonstrated by the wonderful success of the Nature Cure movement in Germany, which in its different forms has attained world-wide recognition and adoption.
There is a popular saying: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." The following letter will explain itself:
January 20, 1913.
Dear Dr. Lindlahr:--
You may remember that last winter, Mrs. White and I attended your Sunday afternoon lectures in the Schiller Building. Those lectures were an education--I might better say a revelation and an inspiration.
On the 11th of November last, our boy, aged thirteen years, was taken ill with diphtheria. I called at your office and asked your advice. You replied: "You know what to do--wet packs, no food except fruit juices, osteopathic treatment and no ant.i.toxin."
We called an osteopathic physician, who at once sent a specimen from the boy"s throat to the city laboratory, where it was p.r.o.nounced diphtheria. A physician from the Board of Health came and quarantined us and inquired if we had used the ant.i.toxin treatment.
When Mrs. White replied "No," he said: "I suppose you know that the percentage of deaths of those who do not have it is very high." She said: "Yes, I know, but we do not intend to use it."
The boy had all the acute symptoms, was drowsy, with headache, and on the second day his temperature went to 105 degrees. We applied the wet body pack and by night had reduced his temperature to 100 degrees. With the aid of the osteopathic treatment, which he had each night, the boy slept well all through big illness. On the fifth day, the membrane spread from his throat to his nose, and his temperature rose again; but the wet body packs again reduced it so that it was never again over 100 degrees.
The boy was bright, his mind was clear, he was able to read, and after the first week was able to play chess with his mother. The only unfavorable symptom he had at all was an irregular pulse. He took no medicine and no food except fruit juices. We used occasionally the warm water enema. On the tenth day he took a little lamb broth, but refused it the next day, and again asked for fruit juices. It was not until two weeks had pa.s.sed that his appet.i.te returned and he began to eat. He lost flesh, but did not lose strength in the same degree--he was able to go to the bathroom each day unaided.
On the 21st day, the osteopathic physician sent a specimen to the city laboratory which they p.r.o.nounced "positive," and the city physician found it necessary to take as many as four or five additional specimens before he p.r.o.nounced him free from the diphtheria germ. The boy was not released from quarantine until five weeks had pa.s.sed.
During all this time his only attendant was his mother and the osteopathic physician who came daily. The boy has fully recovered and has suffered no bad results that often follow such diseases.
In contrast to this experience of ours, I would like to cite the case of a neighbor of ours whose little girl died of the disease under the ant.i.toxin treatment. She recovered from the diphtheria, but her heart failed and she died suddenly. They had a regular M. D.
and a trained nurse. Her mother took ill, but recovered. The father told me that their drug bill alone amounted to $75.
We want to express to you our grat.i.tude for the knowledge and confidence that you have so freely given to us, and you are at liberty to make whatever use of this letter that you desire.
Sincerely yours,
HINTON WHITE
1443 Cuyler Ave., Chicago, Ill.
This letter proves that my claims and a.s.sertions regarding the curability of diphtheria by natural methods are not extravagant or untrue. In this case, as in many others, I gave directions for treatment verbally and over the telephone without having seen the patient personally.
I am convinced, furthermore, that this patient would have made just as good a recovery without the osteopathic treatment. I recommended the attendance of an osteopathic physician in order to ease the burden of responsibility on the part of the parents. If the child had died, they would have been blamed by friends and relatives for their seeming foolhardiness.
The experience of Mr. White"s neighbor is another proof of the fatal effect of the ant.i.toxin treatment. The ant.i.toxin "cured" the diphtheria, but-the child died!
Once more I repeat: The hydropathic treatment will give equally good results in appendicitis, meningitis, scarlet fever, and all other forms of acute diseases. If this be a fact, why should not my colleagues of the Regular School of Medicine give the hydropathic method a fair trial, the more so since in Germany, even among the physicians of the Regular School, hydropathy as a remedy is fast superseding ant.i.toxin! Is it not worth while when the "mysterious sequelae" referred to by Dr. Osler, and the many cases of chronic invalidism which he does not connect with the disease or its treatment, might thus be avoided?
Chapter XVII
Vaccination
The pernicious aftereffects of vaccination upon the system are similar to those of the various serum and ant.i.toxin treatments.
Jenner, an English barber and chiropodist, is usually credited with the discovery of vaccination. The doubtful honor, however, belongs in reality to an old Circa.s.sian woman who, according to the historian Le Duc, in the year 1672 startled Constantinople with the announcement that the Virgin Mary had revealed to her an unfailing preventive against the smallpox.
Her specific was inoculation with the genuine smallpox virus. But even with her the idea was not an original one, because the principle of isopathy (curing a disease with its own disease products) was explicitly taught a hundred years before that by Paracelsus, the great genius of the Renaissance of learning of the Middle Ages. But even he was only voicing the secret teachings of ancient folklore, sympathy healing and magic dating back to the Druids and Seers of ancient Britain and Germany.
The Circa.s.sian seeress cut a cross in the flesh of people and inoculated this wound with the smallpox virus. Together with this she prescribed prayer, abstinence from meat and fasting for forty days.
As at that time smallpox was a terrible and widespread scourge, the practice of inoculation was carried all over Europe. At first the operation was performed by women and laymen; but when vaccination became popular and people were willing to pay for it, the doctors began to incorporate it into their regular practice.
Popular superst.i.tions run a very similar course to epidemics. They have a period of inception, of virulence and of abatement. As germs and bacteria become inactive and die a natural death in their own poisonous excreta, so popular superst.i.tions die as a natural result of their own falsities and exaggerations.
It soon became evident that inoculation with the virus did not prevent smallpox, but, on the contrary, frequently caused it; and therefore the practice gradually fell into disuse, only to be revived by Jenner about one hundred years later in a modified form.
He subst.i.tuted cowpox virus for smallpox virus.
Modern allopathy, in applying the isopathic principle, gives large and poisonous doses of virus, lymph, serums and ant.i.toxins, while homeopathy, as did ancient mysticism, applies the isopathic remedies in highly diluted and triturated doses only.
From England vaccination gradually spread over the civilized world and during the nineteenth century the smallpox disease (variola) constantly diminished in virulence and frequency until today it has become of comparatively rare occurrence.
"Therefore vaccination has exterminated smallpox," say the disciples of Jenner.
Is that really so? Is vaccination actually a preventive of smallpox?
This seems very doubtful when the advocates of vaccination themselves do not believe it. "What," I hear them say, "we do not believe in our own theory?" Evidently you do not, my friends. If you believe that vaccination protects you against smallpox, why are you afraid of catching it from those who are not vaccinated? If you are thoroughly protected, as you claim to be, how can you catch the disease from those who are not protected? Why do you not allow the other fellow to have his fill of smallpox and then enjoy a good laugh on him? The fact of the matter is you know full well that you are not safe, that you can catch the disease just as readily as the unprotected.
German statistics are more reliable than those of any other country.
In the years of 1870-71 smallpox was rampant in the Fatherland. Over 1,000,000 persons had the disease, and 120,000 died. Ninety-six percent of these had been vaccinated and only four percent had not been protected. Most of the victims were vaccinated, once at least, shortly before they took the disease.
In 1888 Bismarck sent an address to the governments of all the German states in which it was admitted that numerous eczematous diseases, even those of an epidemic nature, were directly attributable to vaccination and that the origin and cure of smallpox were still unsolved problems.
In this message to the various legislatures the great statesman said: "The hopes placed in the efficacy of the cowpox virus as a preventive of smallpox have proved entirely deceptive."
Realizing this to be a fact, most of the German governments have modified or entirely relinquished their compulsory vaccination laws.
"But," our opponents insist, "you cannot deny that smallpox has greatly diminished since the almost universal adoption of vaccination."
Certainly the disease has diminished. But so have diminished and, in fact, nearly disappeared the plague, the Black Death, cholera, the bubonic plague, yellow fever and numerous other epidemic pests which only recently decimated entire nations.
Not one of these epidemics was treated by vaccination. Why, then, did they abate and practically disappear?
Not vaccination, but the more universal adoption of soap, bathtubs, all kinds of sanitary measures, such as plumbing, drainage, ventilation and more hygienic modes of living generally have subdued smallpox as well as all other plagues.
Many of us remember how the yellow fever raged in Havanna during the Spanish occupancy. Within two months after the energetic Yankees took possession and gave the filthy city a good scouring, yellow fever had entirely disappeared--without any yellow fever vaccination.