Book Description

In the struggle of life, when so many of His children are engrossed in the vital question of bread-winning; when to obtain the mere necessities of life, or, at most, these and the ordinary comforts, requires all the time, early and late, of so large a portion of the human family, it is not to be supposed that the Creator designed that the due and proper care of the body--its development and the maintenance of a healthy state--should be a matter of such complications as to be beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals, or require the expenditure of an amount of time that would prove embarrassing to all, and totally impossible to many. Nor should Christians conclude that an "all-wise, all-merciful, and all-powerful Father" designed that the creatures formed in "His own likeness" should alone, of all created beings, be necessarily subject to the multifarious forms of disease, that in fact, under present conditions, do so continually afflict them. It requires no more time to breathe pure than impure air--and no more time or expense to obtain it: it is as free as air, and will fill our homes, without money and without price, unless we seal them against its admission. The poorest factory-operative that goes by the bell, can with a pint of water and a single towel, if need be, take a three-minute bath any or every morning, if he appreciates its importance and is conscientious in his living. It costs no more to eat enough than to over-indulge the appetite, as is the universal rule, high and low, until nausea and lack of appetite compel abstinence or moderation. It costs money to poison the system with beer or tobacco, and thus shorten one's life and impair its usefulness, and transmit evil moral and physical tendencies to his offspring, but it is a ten-fold saving to keep clear of these evils. And so it proves throughout the list: it is cheap to keep well, and dear to get sick. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Introduction, CHAPTER II. Consumption CHAPTER III. Consumption--(Continued) CHAPTER IV. Constipation CHAPTER V. Bright's Disease--(Albuminuria), Croup, Diphtheria, Etc. CHAPTER VI. Insomnia--Insanity CHAPTER VII. Rheumatism, Fatty Degeneration, Etc. CHAPTER VIII. Biliousness, "Hay Fever," Neuralgia, Etc. CHAPTER IX. The Flesh-Food Fallacy CHAPTER X. Air-Baths, Dyspepsia, Scrofula, Etc. CHAPTER XI. Saline Starvation--Caution, "Fossil Livers" CHAPTER XII. Wheat-meal vs. "Entire Flour" CHAPTER XIII. Fruit, "Scrofulous Humors," etc. CHAPTER XIV. The One-meal System CHAPTER XV. The Natural Diet: Its Relation to Scrofula and other Affections CHAPTER XVI. Malaria, Sewer Gas, "Change of Air" at Home, etc, CHAPTER XVII. Coffee, Medicinally and Dietetically Considered.--The True Theory of Stimulation CHAPTER XVIII. Appetite--Continence CHAPTER XIX. Conclusion