Philosophy of Osteopathy
by A. T. Still · English · Gutenberg #25864 · 359,910 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Philosophy of Osteopathy
Author: A. T. Still
Release date: June 22, 2008 [eBook #25864]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
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[Illustration: A. T. Still.]
Philosophy of Osteopathy;
BY
ANDREW T. STILL,
DISCOVERER OF THE SCIENCE OF OSTEOPATHY AND
PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOL
OF OSTEOPATHY.
PUBLISHED BY
A. T. STILL, KIRKSVILLE, MO
1899.
Copyrighted, 1899, by
A. T. STILL.
Lithoprinted by
EDWARD BROTHERS, INC.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.
Preface.
Many of my friends have been anxious ever since Osteopathy became an
established fact, that I should write a treatise on the science. But I
was never convinced that the time was ripe for such a production, nor am
I even now convinced that this is not a little premature. Osteopathy is
only in its infancy, it is a great unknown sea just discovered, and as
yet we are only acquainted with its shore-tide.
When I saw others who had not more than skimmed the surface of the
science, taking up the pen to write books on Osteopathy, and after
having carefully examined their productions, found they were drinking
from the fountains of old schools of drugs, dragging back the science to
the very systems from which I divorced myself so many years ago, and
realized that hungry students were ready to swallow such mental poison,
dangerous as it was, I became fully awakened to the necessity of some
sort of Osteopathic literature for those wishing to be informed.
This book is free from quotations from medical authors, and differs
from them in opinion on almost every important question. I do not expect
it to meet their approval; such a thing would be unnatural and
impossible.
It is my object in this work to teach principles as I understand them,
and not rules. I do not instruct the student to punch or pull a certain
bone, nerve or muscle for a certain disease, but by a knowledge of the
normal and abnormal, I hope to give a specific knowledge for all
diseases.
This work has been written a little at a time for several years, just as
I could snatch a moment from other cares to devote to it. I have
carefully compiled these thoughts into a treatise. Every principle
herein laid down has been fairly well tested by myself, and proven true.
The book has been written by myself in my own way, without any ambition
to fine writing, but to give to the world a start in a philosophy that
may be a guide in the future.
Owing to the great haste with which the book has been rushed through the
press to meet the urgent demand, we will ask the indulgence of the
public for any imperfection that may appear. Hoping the world may profit
by these thoughts, I am,
Respectfully,
A. T. STILL.
Kirksville, Mo., Sept. 1, 1899.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
SOME INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
Not a Work of Compilation--Authors Quoted--Method of Reasoning--The
Osteopath an Artist--When I Became an Osteopath--Dr. Neal's Opinion--The
Opinions of Others--What Studies Necessary--What I Mean by
Anatomy--Principles--The Practicing Osteopath's Guide--The Fascia--Not a
pleasing Task--Without Accepted Theories--Truths of Nature--Body, Motion
and Mind--Osteopathy to Cure Disease--The Osteopath Should Find
Health. Page 11
CHAPTER II.
OSTEOPATHIC EXPLORATIONS.
Divisions of the Body--Searching for the Cause--Duty of the Osteopathic
Explorer--Classification and Division--The Abnormal--Nerve
Powers--Witnesses to Examine--Abnormal Growths--Cerebro Spinal
Fluid--Body in Perfect Health--Chemistry--Nature's Chemistry. Page 29
CHAPTER III.
THE HEAD.
A Free Circulation--Death Blows--Something of the Neck--Order of
Treatment--The Pelvis--Brains of Animals--Arterial Motion--Mental
Vibrations--Overburdening the Mind--Hemiplegia. Page 43
CHAPTER IV.
EAR WAX AND ITS USES.
Nature Makes Nothing in Vain--A Successful Experiment--A Question for
Ages--The Position--Meaning of Life--Some Questions Asked--Condition in
Certain Diseases Caused by Cold--Cerumen in Fluid State--Winter Kills
Babies--Some Advice to Mothers--A Case in Point--Connection of the brain
and Other Nerves in Digestion--Unaided Investigation. Page 53
CHAPTER V.
DISEASES OF THE CHEST.
Where Confined--Consumption--Can Consumption Be Cured--Consumption
Described--No Time for Surrender--Cerebral Spinal Fluid--How to Destroy
Deadly Bombs of Decay--Battle of Blood for Life--Miliary
Tuberculosis--Conversion of Bodies Into Gas--Forming a
Tubercle--Breeding Contagion--The Seeds of Disease--Generating
Fever--Whooping Cough--Clouds and Lungs Are Much Alike--The Wisdom of
Nature--Water Formed in Lungs--The Law of Fives--Feeble Action of
Heart--The Heart--From Neck to Heart--Dyspersia or Imperfect
Digestion. Page 68
CHAPTER VI.
THE LYMPHATICS.
Importance of the Subject--Demands of Nature on the
Lymphatics--Dunglinson's Definition--Dangers of Dead Substances--Lymph
Continued--Solvent in Nature--Where Are the Lymphatics Situated?--The
Fat and Lean. Page 104
CHAPTER VII.
THE DIAPHRAGM.
Investigation--A Struggle With Nature--Lesson of Cause and
Effect--Something of Medical Etiquette--The Medical Doctor--An Explorer
for Truth Must Be Independent--The Diaphragm Introduced--A Useful
Study--Combatting Effect--Is Least Understood--A Case of Bilious
Fever--A Demand on the Nerves--Danger of Compression--A Cause for
Disease--Was a Mistake Made in the Creation--An Exploration--Result of
Removal of Diaphragm--Sustaining Life in Principles--Law Applicable to
Other Organs--Power of Diaphragm--Omentum. Page 114
CHAPTER VIII.
LIVER, BOWELS AND KIDNEYS.
Gender of the Liver--Productions of the Liver--A Hope for the
Afflicted--Evidences of Truth--Loaded With Ignorance--Lack of Knowledge
of the Kidney--How a Purgative Acts--Flux--Bloody Dysentery--Flux More
Fully Described--Osteopathic Remedies--Medical Remedies--More of the
Osteopathic Remedy. Page 138
CHAPTER IX.
THE BLOOD.
Uses for Fluids--Blood an Unknown Fluid--Harvey Only Reached the Banks
of the River of Life--Blood Is Systematically Furnished--Fatality of
Ignorance--To Find the Cause Must Be Honest--Following Arteries and
Nerves--Feeding the Nerves--The Blood on Its Journey--Powers Necessary
to Move Blood--Venous Blood Suspended. Page 149
CHAPTER X.
THE FASCIA.
Where Is Disease Sown?--An Illustration of Conception--The Greatest
Problem--A Fountain of Supply--Fascia Omnipresent--Connection with
Spinal Cord--Goes With and Covers All Muscles--Proofs in
Contagion--Study of Nerves and Fascia--Tumefy--Tumefaction. Page 161
CHAPTER XI.
FEVERS.
Be Armed With Facts--Union of Human Gases With Oxygen--Fever and
Nettle-rash. Nature Constructs for a Wise Purpose--Processes of Life
Must be Kept in Motion--No Satisfaction from Authors--Animal
Heat--Semeiology--Symptomatology--Definition of Fever--Fevers only
Effects--Result of Stoppages of Vein or Artery--Aneurisms. Page 175
CHAPTER XII.
SCARLET FEVER AND SMALLPOX.
As defined by Allopathy--Scarlet Fever as Defined by
Osteopathy--Smallpox--Power to Drive Greater Than in Measles. Page 190
CHAPTER XIII.
A CHAPTER OF WONDERS AND SOME VALUABLE QUESTIONS.
Wonders on the Increase--What Is Life?--How Is Action Produced--Acquaint
Yourself With the Machinery--Duty of the Osteopath--Formation of
Sacrum--The Pelvis--Appearance of OEdema--Do All Diseases Have
Appearance in OEdema. Page 193
CHAPTER XIV.
HAS MAN DEGENERATED?
The Advent of Man--Care of the Stock Raiser--Mental Degeneration Makes
It Unpleasant for an Original Thinker--Original Thinkers of the
Ancients--Methods of Healing--Failure of Allopathy--Primitive
Man--Evidences of Prehistoric Man--Mental Dwarfage. Page 203
CHAPTER XV.
OSTEOPATHIC TREATMENT.
Five Points--Visceral List--Care in Treating the Spinal Column--Most
Important Chapter--Perfect Drainage--A Natural Cure. Page 213
CHAPTER XVI.
REASONING TESTS.
The Vermiform Appendix--Operating for Appendicitis--Expelling Power of
the Vermiform Appendix--Care Exercised in Making Assertions--Reasoning
Tests--A List of Unexplained Diseases--Concluding Remarks. Page 223
CHAPTER XVII.
OBSTETRICS.
Overloading--Similarity of Stomach and Womb--Births--Preparation for
Delivery--Caution--Lasceration Need Not Occur--Care of Cord--Severing
Cord--Putting on Belly Band--Delivery of Afterbirth--Preparing for
Mother's Comfort--Post-Delivery Hemorrhage--Treatment for--Food for
Mother--Treatment for Sore Breast. Page 234
CHAPTER XVIII.
CONVULSIONS.
Old Phrases--Results of Stoppage of Fluids--Old Theory of Fits--What the
Real Cause may be--Listen for the Cause--What is a Fit--Sensory System
Demanding Nourishment--The Causes--The Remedy--Dislocation of Atlas and
of the Four Upper Ribs. Page 250
CHAPTER XIX.
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
Thoughts for Consideration--Offering a New Philosophy--Lymphatics and
Fascia--A Satisfactory Experiment--Natural Washing Out. Page 258
CHAPTER XX.
THE SUPERIOR CERVICAL GANGLION.
With What It Has Communication--Its Course--One of its
Functions--Stimulation or Inhibition--Result Produced. Page 263
Philosophy of Osteopathy.
CHAPTER I.
SOME INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
Not a Work of Compilation--Authors Quoted--Method of Reasoning--The
Osteopath an Artist--When I Became an Osteopath--Dr. Neal's
Opinion--The Opinions of Others--What Studies Necessary--What I
Mean by Anatomy--Principles--The Practicing Osteopath's Guide--The
Fascia--Not a Pleasing Task--Without Accepted Theories--Truths of
Nature--Body, Motion and Mind--Osteopathy to Cure Disease--The
Osteopath Should Find Health.
NOT A WORK OF COMPILATION.
To readers of my book on the Philosophy of Osteopathy, I wish to say
that I will not tire you with a book of compilations just to sell to the
anxious reader. As I have spent thirty years of my life reading and
following rules and remedies used for curing, and learned in sorrow it
was useless to listen to their claims, for instead of getting good, I
obtained much harm therefrom, I asked for, and obtained a mental divorce
from them, and I want it to be understood that drugs and I are as far
apart as the East is from the West; now, and forever. Henceforth I will
follow the dictates of nature in all I say or write.
AUTHORS QUOTED.
I quote no authors but God and experience when I write, or lecture to
the classes or the masses, because no book written by medical writers
can be of much use to us, and it would be very foolish to look to them
for advice and instruction on a science they know nothing of. They are
illy able to advise for themselves, they have never been asked to advise
us, and I am free to say but few persons who have been pupils of my
school have tried to get wisdom from medical writers and apply it as
worthy to be taught as any part of Osteopathy, philosophy or practice.
Several books have been compiled, called "Principles of Osteopathy."
They may sell but will fail to give the knowledge the student desires.
METHOD OF REASONING.
The student of any philosophy succeeds best by the more simple methods
of reasoning. We reason for needed knowledge only, and should try and
start out with as many known facts as possible. If we would reason on
diseases of the organs of the head, neck, abdomen or pelvis, we must
first know where these organs are, how and from what arteries the eye,
ear, or tongue is fed.
THE OSTEOPATH AN ARTIST.
I believe you are taught anatomy in our school more thoroughly than any
other school to date, because we want you to carry a living picture of
all or any part of the body in your mind as a ready painter carries the
picture of the face, scenery, beast or any thing he wishes to represent
by his brush. He would only be a waster of time and paint and make a
daub that would disgust any one who would employ him. We teach you
anatomy in all its branches, that you may be able to have and keep a
living picture before your mind all the time, so you can see all joints,
ligaments, muscles, glands, arteries, veins, lymphatics, fascia
superficial and deep, all organs, how they are fed, what they must do,
and why they are expected to do a part, and what would follow in case
that part was not done well and on time. I feel free to say to my
students, keep your minds full of pictures of the normal body all the
time, while treating the afflicted.
WHEN I BECAME AN OSTEOPATH.
In answer to the questions of how long have you been teaching this
discovery, and what books are essential to the study? I will say I began
to give reasons for my faith in the laws of life as given to men, worlds
and beings by the God of nature, June, 1874, when I began to talk and
propound questions to men of learning. I thought the sword and cannons
of nature were pointed and trained upon our systems of drug doctoring.
DR. NEAL'S OPINION.
I asked Dr. J. M. Neal, of Edinburg, Scotland, for some information that
I needed badly. He was a medical doctor of five years training, a man of
much mental ability, who would give his opinions freely and to the
point. I have been told by one or more Scotch M. D.'s that a Dr. John M.
Neal, of Edinburg, was hung for murder. He was not hung while with me.
The only thing made me doubt him being a Scotchman was he loved whiskey,
and I had been told that the Scotch were a sensible people. John M. Neal
said that "drugs was the bait of fools"; it was no science, and the
system of drugs was only a trade, followed by the doctor for the money
that could be obtained by it from the ignorant sick. He believed that
nature was a law capable of vindicating its power all over the world.
THE OPINIONS OF OTHERS.
As this writing is for the information of the student I will continue
the history by saying, that in the early days of Osteopathy I sought the
opinions of the most learned, such as Dr. Schnebly, Professor of
Language and History in the Baker University, Baldwin, Kansas; Dr.
Dallas, a very learned M. D. of the Alopathic faith; Dr. F. A. Grove,
well-known in Kirksville; J. B. Abbott, Indian agent, and many others of
renown. Then back to the tombs of the dead, to better acquaint myself
with the systems of medicine and the foundations of truth upon which
they stood, if any. I will not worry your patience with a list of the
names of authors that have written upon the subject of medicine, as
remedial agents. I will use the word that the theologian often uses when
asked whom Christ died for, the answer universally is, ALL. All
intelligent medical writers say by word or inference that drugs or
drugging is a system of blind guess work, and if we should let our
opinions be governed by the marble lambs and other emblems of dead
babies found in the cemeteries of the world, we would say that John M.
Neal was possibly hung for murder, not through design, but through
traditional ignorance of the power of nature to cure both old and young,
by skillfully adjusting the engines of life so as to bring forth pure
and healthy blood, the greatest known germicide, to one capable to
reason who has the skill to conduct the vitalizing and protecting fluids
to throat, lungs and all parts of the system, and ward off diseases as
nature's God has indicated. With this faith and method of reasoning, I
began to treat diseases by Osteopathy as an experimenter, and
notwithstanding I obtained good results in all cases in diseases of
climate and contagions, I hesitated for years to proclaim to the world
that there was but little excuse for a master engineer to lose a child
in cases of diphtheria, croup, measles, mumps, whooping cough, flux and
other forms of summer diseases, peculiar to children. Neither was it
necessary for the adult to die with diseases of summer, fall and winter.
But at last I took my stand on this rock and my confidence in nature,
where I have stood and fought the battles, and taken the enemy's flag in
every engagement for the last twenty-five years.
WHAT STUDIES NECESSARY.
As you contemplate studying this science and have asked to know the
necessary studies, I wish to impress it upon your minds that you begin
with anatomy, and you end with anatomy, a knowledge of anatomy is all
you want or need, as it is all you can use or ever will use in your
practice, although you may live one hundred years. You have asked for my
opinion as the founder of the science. Yours is an honest question, and
God being my judge I will give you just as honest an answer. As I have
said, a knowledge of anatomy with its application covers every inch of
ground that is necessary to qualify you to become a skillful and
successful Osteopath, when you go forth into the world to combat
diseases.
WHAT I MEAN BY ANATOMY.
I will now define what I mean by anatomy. I speak by comparison and
tell you what belongs to the study of anatomy. I will take a chicken
whose parts and habits all persons are familiar with to illustrate. The
chicken has a head, a neck, a breast, a tail, two legs, two wings, two
eyes, two ears, two feet, one gizzard, one crop, one set of bowels, one
liver, and one heart. This chicken has a nervous system, a glandular
system, a muscular system, a system of lungs and other parts and
principles not necessary to speak of in detail. But I want to emphasize,
they belong to the chicken, and it would not be a chicken without every
part or principle. These must all be present and answer roll call or we
do not have a complete chicken. Now I will try and give you the parts of
anatomy and the books that pertain to the same. You want some standard
author on descriptive anatomy in which you learn the form and places of
all bones, the place and uses of ligaments, muscles and all that belong
to the soft parts. Then from the descriptive anatomy you are conducted
into the dissecting room, in which you receive demonstrations, and are
shown all parts through which blood and other fluids are conducted. So
far you see you are in anatomy. From the demonstrator you are conducted
to another room or branch of anatomy called physiology, a knowledge of
which no Osteopath can do without and be a success. In that room you are
taught how the blood and other fluids of life are produced, and the
channels through which this fluid is conducted to the heart and lungs
for purity and other qualifying processes, previous to entering the
heart for general circulation to nourish and sustain the whole human
body. I want to insist and impress it upon your minds that this is as
much a part of anatomy as a wing is a part of a chicken. From this room
of anatomy you are conducted to the room of histology, in which the eye
is aided by powerful microscopes and made acquainted with the smallest
arteries of the human body, which in life are of the greatest known
importance, remembering that in the room of histology you are still
studying anatomy, and what that machinery can and does execute every
day, hour, and minute of life. From the histological room you are
conducted to the room of elementary chemistry, in which you learn
something of the laws of association of substances, that you can the
better understand what has been told you in the physiological room,
which is only a branch of anatomy, and intended to show you that nature
can and does successfully compound and combine elements for muscles,
blood, teeth and bone. From there you are taken to the room of the
clinics, where you are first made acquainted with both the normal and
abnormal human body, which is only a continuation of the study of
anatomy. From there you are taken to the engineer's room (or operator's
room) in which you are taught how to observe and detect abnormalities
and the effect or effects they may and do produce, and how they effect
health and cause that condition known as disease.
PRINCIPLES.
Principles to an Osteopath means a perfect plan and specification to
build in form a house, an engine, a man, a world, or anything for an
object or purpose. To comprehend this engine of life or man which is so
constructed with all conveniences for which it was made, it is necessary
to constantly keep the plan and specification before the mind, and in
the mind, to such a degree that there is no lack of knowledge of the
bearings and uses of all parts. After a complete knowledge of all parts
with their forms, sizes and places of attachment which should be so
thoroughly grounded in the memory that there would be no doubt of the
intent of the builder for the use or purpose of the great and small
parts, and why they have a part to perform in the workings of the
engine. When this part of the specification is thoroughly learned from
anatomy or the engineer's guide book, he will then take up the chapter
on the division of forces, by which this engine moves and performs the
duties for which it was created. In this chapter the mind will be
referred to the brain to obtain a knowledge of that organ, where the
force starts, how it is conducted to any belt, pully, journal, or
division of the whole building. After learning where the force is
obtained, and how conveyed from place to place throughout the whole
body, he becomes interested and wisely instructed. He sees the various
parts of this great system of life when preparing fluids commonly known
as blood, passing through a set of tubes both great and small--some so
vastly small, as to require the aid of powerful microscopes to see their
infinitely small forms, through which the blood and other fluids are
conducted by the heart and force of the brain, to construct organs,
muscles, membranes and all the things necessary to life and motion, to
the parts separately and combined. By this minute acquaintance with the
normal body which has been learned in the specification as written in
standard authors of anatomy and the dissecting rooms, he is well
prepared to be invited into the inspection room to receive comparisons
between the normal and abnormal engines, built according to nature's
plan and specification, and absolutely perfect. He is called into this
room for the purpose of comparing engines that have been strained from
being thrown off the track, or run against other bodies with such force
as to bend journals, pipes, break or loosen bolts; or otherwise
deranged, so as to render it useless until repaired. To repair signifies
to readjust from the abnormal condition in which the machinist finds it,
to the condition of the normal engines which stand in the shop of
repairs. His inspection would commence by first lining up the wheels
with straight journals; then he would naturally be conducted to the
boiler, steam chest, shafts, and every part that belongs to a completed
engine. To know that they are straight and in place as shown upon the
plan and described by the specification, he has done all that is
required of a master mechanic. Then it goes into the hands of the
engineer, who waters, fires and conducts this artificial being on its
journey. You as Osteopathic machinists can go no farther than to adjust
the abnormal condition, in which you find the afflicted. Nature will do
the rest.
THE PRACTICING OSTEOPATH'S GUIDE.
The Osteopath reasons if he reasons at all, that order and health are
inseparable, and that when order in all parts is found, disease cannot
prevail, and if order is complete and disease should be found, there is
no use for order. And if order and health are universally one in union,
then the doctor cannot usefully, physiologically, or philosophically be
guided by any scale of reason, otherwise. Does a chemist get results
desired by accident? Are your accidents more likely to get good results
than his? Does order and success demand thought and cool headed reason?
If we wish to be governed by reason, we must take a position that is
founded on truth and capable of presenting facts, to prove the validity
of all truths we present. A truth is only a hopeful supposition if it is
not supported by results. Thus all nature is kind enough to willingly
exhibit specimens of its work as vindicating witnesses of its ability to
prove its assertions by its work. Without that tangible proof, nature
would belong to the gods of chance. The laws of mother, conception,
growth and birth, from atoms to worlds would be a failure, a universe
without a head to direct. But as the beautiful works of nature stand
to-day, and in all time past, fully able by the evidence it holds before
the eye and mind of reason, that all beings great and small came by the
law of cause and effect, are we not bound to work by the laws of cause,
if we wish an effect? If the heavens do move by cause when was its
beings divorced from that great common law? Are we not bound to trust
and work by the old and reliable self-evident laws, until something
later has proven its superior ability to ward off disease and cure the
sick.
THE FASCIA.
I know of no part of the body that equals the fascia as a hunting
ground. I believe that more rich golden thought will appear to the
mind's eye as the study of the fascia is pursued than any division of
the body. Still one part is just as great and useful as any other in its
place. No part can be dispensed with. But the fascia is the ground in
which all causes of death do the destruction of life. Every view we
take, a wonder appears. Here we find a place for the white corpuscles
building anew and giving strength to throw impurities from the body by
tubes that run from the skin to tanks of useful fluids, that would heap
up and are no longer of use in the body. No doubt nerves exist in the
fascia, that change the fluid to gas, and force it through the spongy
and porous system as a delivery by the vital chain of wonders, that go
on all the time to keep nerves wholly pure.
NOT A PLEASANT TASK.
I dislike to write, and only do so, when I think my productions will go
into the hands of kind-hearted geniuses who read, not to find a book of
quotations, but to go with the soul of the subject that is being
explored for its merits,--weigh all truths and help bring its uses front
for the good of man.
Osteopathy has not asked a place in written literature prior to this
date, and does not hope to appear on written pages even to suit the
author of this imperfectly written book.
WITHOUT ACCEPTED THEORIES.
Columbus had to launch and navigate much and long, and meet many storms,
because he had not the written experience of other travelers to guide
him. He had only a few bits of drift-wood not common to his home growth,
to cause him to move as he did. But there was a fact, a bit of wood that
did not grow on his home soil.
He reasoned that it must be from some land amid the sea whose shores had
not before been known to his race. With these facts and his powerful
mind of reason, he met all opposition, and moved alone; just as all men
do who have no use for theories as their compass to guide them through
the storms. This opposition a mental explorer must meet.
I felt that I must anchor my boat to living truths and follow them
wheresoever they might drift. Thus I launched my boat many years ago on
the open seas, fearlessly, and have never found a wave of scorn nor
abuse that truth could not eat, and do well on.
TRUTHS OF NATURE.
We often speak of truth. We say great truths, and use many other
qualifying expressions. But no one truth is greater than any other
truth. Each has a sphere of usefulness peculiar to itself. Thus we
should treat with respect and reverence all truths, great and small. A
truth is the complete work of nature, which can only be demonstrated by
the vital principle belonging to that class of truths. Each truth or
division as we see it, can only be made known to us by the self evident
fact, which this truth is able to demonstrate by its action.
If we take man as our object to base the beginning of our reason, we
find the association of many elements, which differ in kind to suit the
purpose for which they were designed. To us they act, to us they are
wisely formed and located for the purpose for which they were designed.
Through our five senses we deal with the material body. It has action.
That we observe by vision which connects the mind to reason. High above
the five senses on the subject of cause or causes of this, is motion. By
the testimony of the witness the mind is connected in a manner by which
it can reason on solidity and size. By smell, taste and sound, we make
other connections between the chambers of reason and the object we
desire to reason upon; and thus our foundation on which all five
witnesses are arrayed to the superior principle which is mind.
After seeing a human being complete in form, self moving, with power to
stop or go on at will, to us he seems to obey some commander. He seems
to go so far and stop; he lies down and gets up; he turns round and
faces the objects that are traveling in the same direction he does.
Possibly he faces the object by his own action. Then by about facing, he
sees one coming with greater velocity, sees he can not escape by his own
speed, so he steps aside and lets that body pass on, as though he moved
in obedience to some order. The bystander would ask the question, "How
did he know such a dangerous body was approaching?" He finds on the most
crucial examination, that the sense of hearing is wholly without reason.
The same is true with all the five senses pertaining to man, beast, or
bird. This being the condition of the five physical senses, we are
forced by reason to conclude there is a superior being who conducts the
material man, sustains, supports and guards against danger; and after
all our explorations, we have to decide that man is triune when
complete.
BODY, MOTION AND MIND.
First the material body, second the spiritual being, third a being of
mind which is far superior to all vital motions and material forms,
whose duty is to wisely manage this great engine of life. This great
principle known as mind, must depend for all evidences on the five
senses, and on this testimony, all mental conclusions are bad, and all
orders from this mental court are issued to move to any point or stop at
any place. Thus to obtain good results, we must blend ourselves with,
and travel in harmony with nature's truths. When this great machine man,
ceases to move in all its parts, which we call death, the explorers
knife discovers no mind, no motion. He simply finds formulated matter
with no motor to move it, with no mind to direct it. He can trace the
channels through which the fluids have circulated, he can find the
relation of parts to other parts; in fact by the knife, he can expose to
view the whole machinery that once was wisely active. Suppose the
explorer is able to add the one principle motion, at once we would see
an action, but it would be a confused action. Still he is not the man
desired to be produced. There is one addition that is indispensable to
control this active body, or machine, and that is mind. With that added
the whole machinery then works as man. The three when united in full
action are able to exhibit the thing desired--complete.
OSTEOPATHY TO CURE DISEASE.
The Osteopath seeks first physiological perfection of form, by normally
adjusting the osseous frame work, so that all arteries may deliver blood
to nourish and construct all parts. Also that the veins may carry away
all impurities dependent upon them for renovation. Also that the nerves
of all classes may be free and unobstructed while applying the powers of
life and motion to all divisions, and the whole system of nature's
laboratory.
A full and complete supply of arterial blood must be generated and
delivered to all parts, organs and glands, by the channels called the
arteries. And when it has done its work, then without delay the veins
must return all to heart and lungs for renewal. We must know some delay
of fluids has been established on which nature begins the work of
renewal by increased action of electricity, even to the solvent action
of fever heat, by which watery substances evaporate and relieve the
lymphatic system of stagnant, watery secretions. Thus fever is a natural
and powerful remedy.
THE OSTEOPATH SHOULD FIND HEALTH.
To find health should be the object of the doctor. Anyone can find
disease. He should make the grand round among the sentinels and
ascertain if they are asleep, dead or have deserted their posts, and
have allowed the enemy to get into camps. He should visit all posts.
Before he goes out to make the rounds, he should know where all posts
are, and the value of the supply he has charge of, whether it be shot,
shell, grub, clothing, arms or anything of value to the Company or
Division.
CHAPTER II.
OSTEOPATHIC EXPLORATIONS.
Divisions of the Body--Searching for the Cause--Duty of the
Osteopathic Explorer--Classification and Division--The
Abnormal--Nerve Powers--Witnesses to Examine--Abnormal
Growths--Cerebro Spinal Fluid--Body in Perfect
Health--Chemistry--Nature's Chemistry.
DIVISIONS OF THE BODY.
After many long years, treating and trying to teach the student of
Osteopathy how to hunt for and find the local causes of diseases, not
contagious, or infectious, I have succeeded in planning and suggesting a
method, which I am sure the doctor can easily follow, and find any
diversion from the normal, that would interfere with the nerves, veins,
and arteries, of any organ or limb of the body. I have formulated a
simple mental diagram that divides the body into three parts, chest,
upper and lower limbs. The first division takes in head, neck, chest,
abdomen and pelvis. The second division takes in head, neck, lower and
upper arm and hand. The third division takes in foot, leg, thigh, pelvis
and lumbar vertebra. I make this division for the purpose of holding the
explorer to the limits of all supplies. In the ellipse of the chest is
found all vital supplies; then from that center of life we have two
branches only, one of the arm, and one of the lower limb. In each
division we have five points of exploration.[1]
[Footnote 1: Explore: (1) To seek for or after: to strive to attain by
search; to look wisely and carefully for; to search through or into; to
penetrate or range over for discovery; to examine thoroughly; as, to
explore new countries or seas; to explore the depths of science; "hidden
frauds (to) explore."--WEBSTER.]
SEARCHING FOR THE CAUSE.
To illustrate, we will take the lower limb, whether there is lameness,
soreness, gouty, rheumatic, neuralgic, swollen, shrunken, feverish,
cold, smooth and glassy, sores, ulcers, erysipelas, milkleg, varicose
veins, or any defect that the patient may complain of, who is the only
reliable book or being of symptomatology. For convenience we will divide
that lower limb into five parts, the foot, leg, thigh, pelvis and lumbar
region. The patient (symptomatologist) tells us he has a pain in front,
center and under part of foot. Now the doctor or bird dog, can find
quails of reason in but one field that would lead him to the cause. As
this field is divided into five parts and the hunter has carefully
searched four divisions, he will find the cause or causes in the fifth
and none other. If a dislocated bone is not found in the foot after
ascertaining that there has been no crushing by falling bodies, horses
feet, stepping on glass, nails and other things that would penetrate the
foot, and irritate by being broken off, closed and remaining in the
flesh; we will explore the leg for the quail, ascertain if the
articulation is normal at ankle and knee. If we find the bone is not
broken, the leg has no splinters of wood, nor injured flesh by bites
from dogs or other animals, nor any other substance that would injure
the leg, we are prepared to pass on and explore another place for pain
in the foot. We go on to division No. 3 or the thigh division, and
ascertain if the thigh is normal in all conditions, properly in socket,
with all muscles, ligaments and nerves unoppressed. There are but two
more divisions left for exploration, and they are the most important and
interesting of the five, the pelvis and lumbar, through which all the
nerves of the limb pass. We must stop at pelvis and observe carefully
that there is no twist of ligaments before going to lumbar, which is the
last of the five divisions. If we have found nothing in the previous
four, and have explored them as carefully as we should, we have but one
brush heap left, and that one contains the quail that we have been
hunting for. As the lumbar contains and conveys all nerve forces to the
pelvis from the brain and all divisions of the lower limbs, we will now
examine the articulations of that part of the spine, and in that we are
very certain to find the cause if we have made no mistake in our
examination in the preceding divisions of the limb. As we enter the
exploration of this part of the spine we must remember that we are about
to deal with the many divisions of the nerves of the _cauda equina_. The
great question before us, comes after this form. What would wound or
bruise any division of nerves that would lead by the way of the great or
lesser sciatic, to a bone in the front and under side of the foot? Jars,
strains, twists, and dislocations, must be carefully searched for. A
partial dislocation of one side of the spine would produce a twist which
would throw one muscle on to another and another, straining ligaments,
producing conjestion and inflammation, or some irritation that would
lead to a suspension of the fluids necessary to the harmonious vitality
of the foot, which is the great and only cause by which the suffering is
produced in a foreign land, which we call a famine in the foot.
DUTY OF THE OSTEOPATHIC EXPLORER.
This method of exploration is not directed by the sound of the fog-horns
of unreliable and unsatisfactory symptomatology. Osteopathy has a method
of its own, which is correct or it has no method at all, and is guided
by the surveyor's compass that will find all corners as established by
the orders of the government and surveyor's general. Thus an Osteopath
must find the true corners as set by the Divine Surveyor. The general
surveyor hands our plats and specifications to the division general,
with instructions to establish all lines and divisions, state, county,
township and sections, and mark each one by stones or otherwise, so they
cannot be lost; but are findable by any competent surveyor who follows
the field notes displayed in anatomy. Thus you would see a successful
Osteopath is guided by the field notes of nature to all corners, his
business is to know that every corner stone is in its place, standing
erect as nature designed and established it. If he tolerates any
variation of this stone or stones from the place or places that God the
grand surveyor of the universe has placed them, he will observe there is
an infringement and cause for inharmony and discord of the possessors of
the four quarter sections of land, for which this cornerstone was
placed; and his sworn duty is to bring this stone from any variation
from the field notes and establish it where it was first placed. Thus
his ability to find the true corners and adjust all stones will mark him
as a successful Osteopath.
CLASSIFICATION AND DIVISION.
I will classify or divide man's body for convenience of exploration for
diseases into head and neck first; then head, neck and chest, third,
head, neck, chest and abdomen; then unite head, neck, chest, abdomen and
sacrum. I will take up a few diseases under each division as they are
located. By this method I think I can better show what nerves should be
more or less active.
THE ABNORMAL.
A lesion may and does appear on a part or all of the person which may
appear as a growth or withering away of a limb in all its muscles,
nerves and blood supply. As in case of tumors on scalp, loss of hair,
eruptions of face, growth of tonsils, ulcers of one or both ears,
growths on outside and inside of eyes, a cause must precede an effect in
all cases. A pain in head is an effect; cause is older than the effect
and is absolute in all variations from normal conditions. A tumor on the
head and under the skin is an effect only. It took matter to give it
size, it took power to deliver that substance, the fact that a tumor was
formed, shows that the power to build was present and did the work of
construction. Another power should have been there to complete the work
at that location; that power is the offbearing of the dead matter after
the work of construction was complete.
NERVE POWERS.
If we think as men of reason should, we will count five nerve powers.
They must all be present to build a part, and must answer promptly at
roll call and work all the time. The names of these master workmen are
sensation, motion, nutrition, voluntary and involuntary. All must answer
at every roll call during life; none can be granted a leave of absence
for a moment. Suppose sensation should leave a limb for a time, have we
not a giving away of all cells and glands? An undue filling up follows
quickly because sensation limits and tells when the supply is too great
for the use of the builder's purpose. Suppose the nerve power known as
motion should fail for a time, starvation would soon begin its deadly
work for want of food. Suppose again the nerves of nutrition should fail
to apply the nourishing showers we would surely die in sight of food.
With the voluntary nerves we move or stay at the will of he or she who
wishes to give direction to the motor powers, at any time a change by
action is required. At this time I will stop defining the several and
varied uses of the five kinds of nerves, and begin to account for
growths and other variations, from the healthy to the unhealthy
conditions of man. The above named are the five known powers of animal
life, and to direct them wisely is the work of the doctor of
Osteopathy.
WITNESSES TO EXAMINE.
He has five witnesses to examine in all cases he has under his care. He
must give close attention to the source and supply of healthy blood. If
blood is too scant he must look to the motor systems of blood making,
that would surely invite his most careful attention and study of the
abdomen. He cannot expect blood to quietly pass through the diaphragm if
impeded by muscular constriction around aorta, vena cava or thoracic
duct. The diaphragm can and is often pulled down on both vena cava and
thoracic duct, obstructing blood and chyle from returning to heart so
much as to limit the chyle below the requirement of healthy blood, or
even suppress the nerve action of lymphatics to such degree as to cause
dropsy of the abdomen, or a stoppage of venous blood by pressure on vena
cava so long that venous blood would be in stages of ferment when it
enters the heart for renovation, and when purified and returned the
supply is too small to sustain life to a normal standard.
ABNORMAL GROWTHS.
Thus the importance of a careful attention to the normal certainty of
all the ribs to which the diaphragm is attached is essential. The
eleventh and twelfth ribs may, and do often get pushed so far from their
normal bearings, that they are often found turned in a line with the
spine, with cartilaginous ends down near ilio-lumbar articulation. When
in such position they draw the diaphragm down heavily on vena cava at
about the fourth lumbar. Then you have cause for intermittent pulse, as
the heart finds no passage of blood through the prolapsed diaphragm
which is also stopping the vena cava and producing universal stagnation
of blood and other fluids in all organs and glands below the diaphragm.
Thus you have a beginning for abnormal growths of womb, kidneys and all
lymphatics of liver, kidneys, spleen, pancreas, and all tumors of
abdomen.
CEREBRO SPINAL FLUID.
To satisfy the mind of a philosopher who is mentally capable of asking
for and knowing truth, when presented by nature, you must come at him
outside of the limits of conjecture, and address him with self-evident
truths only. When he takes up the philosophy of the great subject of
life, to him who does know truth, no substitute can to any degree
satisfy his mental demands. To the one who would deal in conjectures or
suppose so's, he will at once be placed in the proper category to which
he belongs, which is the drift-wood that floats down the dark river that
is overshadowed by the nightmare of ignorance and superstition. A
seeker after truth, is a man of few words, and they are used by him only
by the truths or facts discovered. He has no patience with the unmeaning
records offered only to please the credulous, and by those of little or
no truth that appears during a long recitation of ungrounded statements.
From the above it is wisely seen that the object of these remarks is to
present a few truths for the purpose of stimulating the attention of the
listener. We will take man when formed. When we use the word formed, we
mean the whole building being complete. The brain with all organs,
nerves, vessels, and every minutia in form with all materials found or
used in life.
BODY IN PERFECT HEALTH.
We look at it in perfect health which means perfection and harmony not
in part, but of the whole body. So far we are only filled with love,
wonder and admiration. Another period of observation appears to the
philosopher. We find partial or universal discord from the lowest
observable to the highest in action and death. Then the book of whys is
opened and displays its leaves which calls out mental labor even to the
degree of agony, to know the cause or causes that produce a failure of a
limb in sensation, motion, nutrition, voluntary and involuntary
functional exhibits. His mind will explore the bone, the ligament, the
muscle, the fascia, the channels through which the blood travels from
heart to local destiny, with lymphatics and their contents,--the nerves,
the blood vessels and every channel through or over which all substances
are transmitted all over the body, particularly the disabled limb in
question. It proceeds too and does obtain blood abundantly to and from
the heart, but the results obtained are not satisfactory, and another
leaf is opened of why no good results are obtained and where is the
mystery, what quality and element of force and vitality has been
withheld? A thought strikes him that the cerebro spinal fluid is the
highest known element that is contained in the human body, and unless
the brain furnishes this fluid in abundance a disabled condition of the
body will remain. He who is able to reason will see that this great
river of life must be tapped and the withering field irrigated at once,
or the harvest of health be forever lost.
CHEMISTRY.
As chemical compounds are not known to Osteopathy to be used as
remedies, then its use as a study for the student is only to teach that
elements in nature do combine and form other substances, and without
changes and unions, no teeth, bone, hair, or muscle could appear in the
body from the food eaten. Then chemistry is of great use as a part of a
thorough Osteopathic education. It gives us the reasons why food is
found in the body as bone, muscle and so on, to all kinds of flesh,
teeth and bones found in animal forms. Unless we know chemistry
reasonably well, we can not do away with much mental worry of what
becomes of food after eating. By chemistry the truths of physiology are
firmly established in the mind of the student of nature, that in man a
chemistry of wonderful powers does all the work of animal forms, and
that in the laboratory of nature's chemistry is the ruling power. By
elementary chemistry we are led to see the beauties of physiology only.
Thus chemistry of the elementary is one, and physiology is the witness
that it is law in man as in all nature. Thus in chemistry we comprehend
some of the laws of union in nature which we can use mentally with
knowing confidence. In chemistry we become acquainted with the law of
cause and change in union, which is a standard law sought by the student
of Osteopathy.
NATURE'S CHEMISTRY.
Osteopathy believes that all parts of the human body do work on chemical
compounds, and from the general supply manufacture for local wants; thus
the liver builds for itself of the material that is prepared in its own
division laboratory. The same of heart and brain. No disturbing or
hindering causes will be tolerated to stay if an Osteopath can find and
remove it. We must reason that to withhold the supply from a limb, to
wither away would be natural. We suffer from two causes. First, want of
supply (hunger), and the burdens of dead deposits along nerve centers,
which five nerves by chemical changes while in fermentation should
regulate local or general divisions.
CORRECT METHOD OF REASONING.
In concluding this chapter we will confine our labor to an effort to
direct the beginner to a correct method of reasoning. When he is brought
face to face with the stern realities of the "sick room," the Osteopath
begins his inquiries and follows with his questions just far enough to
know what division of the body is in trouble. If he finds an arm has
lost motion, he goes to arm to explore for cause. He can begin his hunt
for cause at hand, explore it carefully for wounds, strains or any
lesion that could injure nerves of the arm. If he finds no probable
cause there, he should explore bones for dislocations or strains of
ligaments at elbow; if he finds no defect there sufficient to locate
cause in lower arm or hand; he has only two more places left to inspect,
the shoulder and neck with their articulations of bone and muscles. If
found normal at shoulder, then go to neck, out of which go all or most
of the nerves of the arm; if he finds no lesion or cause equal to the
trouble so far, then he has been careless in his search and should go
over and over from marrow to periostium of all bones of the neck and
head, because there are only five divisions in which a lesion can exist.
Carefully look, think, feel and know that the head of the humerus is
true in the glenoid cavity, clavicle true at both ends of its
articulation, with sternum and acromion processes. See that the biceps
are in their grooves, and ribs on spine are true at manubrium and spine,
and that neck is true on first dorsal. True in all joints of the neck,
as the nerves of the arm come from the neck, there must be no variation
from normal, or trouble will appear from that cause. As the neck has
much to do with the arm, we should keep a living picture of the forms of
each bone, how and where it articulates with others, how it is joined by
ligaments, what blood vessels, nerves and muscles cross or range with it
lengthwise, because to overlook a small nerve and blood vessel you may
fail to remove a goitre, and all diseases of the head, face and neck.
CHAPTER III.
THE HEAD.
A Free Circulation--Death Blows--Something of the Neck--Order of
Treatment--The Pelvis--Brains of Animals--Arterial Motion--Mental
Vibrations--Overburdening the Mind--Hemiplegia.
A FREE CIRCULATION.
Before we treat of the head, we must follow blood from the heart to all
organs of the head. Not only look at the pictures in Gray, Morris,
Gerrish, or some finely illustrated work on anatomy, but we must apply a
searching hand and know to a certainty that the constrictors of neck, or
other muscles or ligaments do not pull cervical and hyoid bones so close
as to bruise pneumogastric or any other nerves or fibres that would
cause spasmodic contraction of digastric, stylo-hyoid or the whole
remaining group of neck muscles and ligaments, with which you are or
should be very familiar. Ever remember that the venous drainage must be
kept normally active or congestion, and tumefaction, with inflammation
of the glands of the head, face and neck will appear, and mark for you
this oversight; because the perpetual health, ease and comfort of the
head beginning with the scalp and hair, with their nerves, glands and
purity of blood supply, a healthy eye, good hearing, healthy action of
brain with its magnetic and electric forces to the vital parts which
sustain life, memory and reason, depend directly and wholly upon
unlimited freedom of the circulatory system of nerves, blood and
cerebral fluid. They must be normal in action and quantity
unembarrassed, otherwise bad hearing, ulcers of the ears, cross eyes,
pterygium, cataract, granulated lids, staphyloma, lachrymosis and up to
full list of diseases of the eye, with tonsilitis, injured voice, tumors
and cancers of face, head, tongue, mouth and throat, along with
erysipelas, blotches and pimples, and all diseases of the glandular
system of the head and neck. Undoubtedly all these afflictions have
their origin in obstructed normal action between the heart and the
termination of all above it, for want of nerve and blood harmony.
DEATH BLOWS.
Remember that death blows are dealt out freely above the sternum by
irritation and constriction of the parts above described. We should
often refresh our minds, beginning with the muscles that connect the
head and neck, and know to a certainty as we explore that junction that
the capitas minor, major and lateralis, long and short of both anticus
and posticus regions are indisputably normal to your hand and judgment.
It is almost useless to say to the anatomist who has had the drilling in
all branches of that science, previous to obtaining his diploma, to
commence and detail the venous and excretory system, through which all
those glands are drained, and kept in a healthy condition, but we say
this much; let your morning, noon and evening prayer be this, Oh Lord!
give me more anatomy each day I live, because experience has taught me
the unavoidable demands when in the "sick room."
SOMETHING OF THE NECK.
Before you leave that wisely constructed neck, I want to press and
imprint on your minds in the strongest terms that the wisest anatomist,
and physiologist, the oldest and most successful Osteopath knows only
enough of the neck, and its wondrous system of nerves, blood and muscles
and its relation to all above and below it, to say, "From everlasting to
everlasting thou art great, O Lord God Almighty!" Thy wisdom is surely
boundless, for I see that man must be wise to know all about the neck,
for we find by a twist of neck, we may become blind, deaf, spasmodic,
lose speech and memory, and all that is known as the joys of man. On
that division of the body all action of arms, legs, chest and all
muscles get their life--power and motion. Think for a moment of the
thousands and tens of thousands of large and small fluid vessels that
pass to and from heart and brain, to every organ, bone, fibre, muscle
and gland, both large and small, receiving and appropriating the
substances as prepared in the chemical laboratory; so wisely situated,
and so exact in all its works in the production and application of all
substances in the body.
ORDER OF TREATMENT.
The reader will begin with the brain or head because I want to start
with the head; first give such diseases as belong to that division of
the body. Then the neck, chest, abdomen and pelvis. Thus we have five
divisions in regular order, beginning with the head and finishing with
the sacrum. The reader will find diseases of eye, ear, tongue, nose,
face, scalp and hair under the chapter treating of the head. Next in
regular order will be the division of the neck, with diseases of tonsils
and glands of neck, swallow, trachæ, nerves, blood vessels and muscles,
fascia and lymphatics, superior cervical ganglion and other nerves of
the neck, as they affect vitality in diseases. Then we pass on to third
division, with diseases of lung, heart, pericardium, and pleura, with
all parts of chest. Then abdomen, liver, stomach and bowels, and all
organs with resisting power of diaphragm. Fifth, pelvis, with its great
supply of nerves, blood and other fluids. These give us cause to halt
and seat the mind for a long season of observation. A great field opens
at this point for the observing thinker.
THE PELVIS.
In the pelvis we find a system of nerves and arteries with blood for
local supply, besides blood to construct womb, bladder, rectum, colon,
cellular system and all the muscles of that cavity (the pelvis) all of
which comes from arteries and branches above. We think it is not
necessary to name them only in bulk, to a student versed in anatomy.
Perhaps less is known of the pelvic system and its functions than any
division of the body, and for that reason I have felt that we should
know all that is possible to be learned. I believe more ignorance
prevails to-day of internal causes of diseases than would if we reasoned
that the pelvic nerves and vessels had much to do in forming the
abdominal viscera.
THE BRAIN OF ANIMALS.
Of all parts of the body of man to be well studied, the brain should be
the most attractive. It is the place where all force centers, where all
nerves connect to one common battery. By its orders the laboratory of
life begins to move on crude material and labors until blood is formed
and becomes food for all nerves first; then arteries and veins by nerve
action and forces, to suit each class of work to be done by that set of
nerves which is to construct forms; keep blood constantly in motion by
the arteries and from all parts back to the heart, through the veins,
that the blood may be purified, renewed and re-enter the arteries to be
taken to all places of need.
ARTERIAL MOTION.
Arterial motion is normal during all ages, from the quick pulse of the
babe's arm, to the ages of each year to one hundred or more. At this
great age the pulse is so slow that the heat is not generated by the
nerves, whose motor velocity is not great enough to bring electricity to
the stage of heat. All heat, high and low, surely is the effect of
active electricity--plus to fever; minus to coldness. When an irritant
enters the body by lung, skin or any other way, a change appears in the
heart's action from its effects on the brain, to the high electric
action and that burning heat called fever. If plus violent type (yellow
fever), if minus, low grades (typhus, typhoid, plagues), and so on
through the list.
MENTAL VIBRATIONS.
To think implies action of the brain. We can grade thought although we
cannot measure its speed.
Suppose a person of one kind of business thinks just fast enough to suit
that profession. A man is engaged in raising hogs and that alone. He
must reason on and of the nature of hogs. He begins about so: a hog
eats, drinks, bathes, roots and sleeps. He knows the hog eats grain, so
he feeds it corn, or some other suitable cereal, with plenty of water
and good bedding. The swine is on his mind night and day.
THE WHEELS OF THOUGHT.
Now the question is, how fast does he think? How many revolutions do the
wheels of his head make per minute to do all the necessary thinking
connected with the hog business? Say his mental wheels revolve 100 times
each minute. Then he adds sheep to his business, and if that should
require 100 more revolutions and he takes charge of raising draft horses
with 175 revolutions added, you see the wheels of his head whizzing off
375 vibrations per minute. And at this time he adds the duties of the
carpenter with 300 more revolutions, add them together and you see 675.
To this number he adds the duties and thoughts of a sheriff, which are
numerous enough to buzz his wheels at 1500 more, you find 2175 to be
his mental revolutions so far. Now you have the great physical demands
added to the mental motion which his brain has to support, yet he can do
all so far, fairly well.
OVERBURDENING THE MIND.
He now adds to his labors the manufacturing of leather, from all kinds
of hides, with the chemistry of fine tanning, which is equal to all
previous mental motions. Add and you find 4250 revolutions all drawing
on his brain each minute of the day. Add to this mental strain the
increased action of his body which has to perform these duties and you
see the beginning of a worry of both mind and body, to which you add
manufacturing of engines, iron puddling, rolling, etc.; a delegate to a
national convention, thoughts of the death of a near relative; add to
this a security debt to meet during a money panic. By this time the mind
begins to fag below the power of resistance.
HEMIPLEGIA.
Duration of such great mental vibrations for so long stops nutrition of
all or one-half of the brain, and we have a case of "Hemiplegia," or the
wheels of one-half of the brain run so fast as to overcome some fountain
of nerve force and explode some cerebral artery in the brain and deposit
a clot of blood at some motor supply or plexus.
Thus we see men from over mental action fall in our National councils,
courts, manufactories, churches, and almost all places of great mental
activity. Slaves and savages seldom fall victims to paralysis of any
kind, but escape all such, for they know nothing of the strains of mind
and hurried nutrition. They eat and rest, live long and happy. The idea
of riches never bothers their slumbers. Physical injuries may and often
do wound motor, sensory and nutrient centers of brain; but the effect is
just the same, partial or complete suspension of the motor and sensory
systems.
If you burst a boiler by high pressure or otherwise, your engine ceases
to move. And just the same of an over-worked brain or body.
Hemiplegia. "The half" and "I strike." Paralysis of one half of the
body.[2]
[Footnote 2: Chambers.]
Hemiplegia is usually the result of a cerebral hemorrhage or embolism.
It sometimes occurs suddenly without other marked symptoms, but commonly
it is ushered in by an apoplectic attack and on return of consciousness
it is observed that one side of the body is paralyzed, the paralysis
being often profound in the beginning, and disappearing to a greater or
less extent at a later period.
Hemiplegia is much more rarely produced by a tumor. It then generally
comes on slowly, the paralysis gradually increasing as the neoplasm
encroaches more and more upon the motor tracks, though the tumor may be
complicated by the occurrence of a hemorrhage and a sudden hemiplegia.
A gradual hemiplegia may also be produced by an abcess or chronic
softening of the brain substance. Other conditions or symptoms
presented, will in such case, assist us to diagnose the nature of the
lesion.
CHAPTER IV.
EAR WAX AND ITS USES.
Nature Makes Nothing in Vain--A Successful Experiment--A Question
for Ages--The Position--Meaning of Life--Some Questions
Asked--Condition in Certain Diseases Caused by Cold--Cerumen in
Fluid State--Winter Kills Babies--Some Advice to Mothers--A Case in
Point--Connection of the brain and Other Nerves in
Digestion--Unaided Investigation.
NATURE MAKES NOTHING IN VAIN.
That nature makes nothing in vain is an established truth in the minds
of all persons whose observation has created in such persons a desire to
reason, and that being my faith for many years I asked myself to try and
get a reason of why nature had made and placed in a person's head so
much fine machinery just to make a little ear-wax. If nothing is made in
vain, what is that bitter stuff made for? It is always there, and more
being made all the time. I have read many authors or say so's about
ear-wax, and about the best the wise or the unwise have said is that it
would keep bugs and other insects out of our heads. I thought if that
was all that it was made for nature had done a great deal to shoo off
the bugs. The idea that it was made bitter and bad to eat just to make
bugs sick was weak philosophy, if nature never did any useless work or
made anything in vain. At this time I saw the doors all open and a good
chance for the loaded mind to unload and give us other uses for ear-wax
than bug food, and to lubricate the auditory nerves with dry wax. At
this time of my desire to know some positive use or object that nature
had in forming so much fine machinery and no use for its products when
made, but to pull out of the head with a hairpin, I reasoned about so,
that this dry hard wax was once in the gaseous or fluid state.
A SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT.
When I had about concluded to sit down with the common herd of doctors
and say that wax was wax, a fat boy of two summers was reported to me to
be dying with croup. I began to think more about the dry wax that is
always found in cases of croup, sore throat, tonsilitis, pneumonia, and
all diseases of the lungs, nose and head. On examination I found the
ear-wax dried up. So I put a few drops of glycerine, and after a
minute's time a few drops of warm water in the child's head, and kept a
wet rag corked into its ear frequently for twelve hours, and gave it
Osteopathic treatment, at the end of which time all signs of croup had
disappeared. I used the glycerine to soften the wax, which combining
with water formed a harmless soap better qualified for washing the ear,
and retaining the wax in solution than anything I have tried, for it is
my opinion that the ear wax should be kept in a fluid state. When in
that state the absorbent can more readily take it up and use it in the
economy of life in this condition. The same day two ladies came to my
house, sore in lungs, necks tied up, sore throats, fever and headache.
As an experiment, in addition to Osteopathic treatment, I put a few
drops of glycerine in their ears, followed with water to wet and soften
the wax which was dry and hard, to get it back to a fluid state. Both
got better of their sore lungs and throats in a short time, and in
twenty-four hours they were about well, and lungs coughing out phlegm,
easily. From this I think that the cause of croup is simply the result
of abnormality of the cerumen system.
A QUESTION FOR AGES.
As a question of the uses of ear-wax has been before man for ages
without an answer being given that passes the line of conjecture, I
think there could be no reason why a few looks through the field glass
of inquiry should not be given in a limited way on that great plane of
fertility, for the minds of our most profound thinkers. As far as the
writer can learn from reading and other methods of inquiry, the power
and use of ear-wax has never been known, looked on, or thought of as one
of life's agents for good or bad health. One asks this question: "Why
are you talking about ear-wax, the filthy stuff?" In answer I asked,
"What do you know about ear-wax?" The answer, "I don't know or care
anything about the dirty stuff."
THE POSITION.
As my spleen is my organ of mirth, I let it bounce against my side a few
times at such ignorance and gave the wax subject more study than ever--I
began to read all the books I could find on Anatomy, Physiology, and
Histology to get some knowledge of the machinery that the wise architect
of that greatest of all temples had made to generate wax. At this time a
conviction came to me to be sure of its uses before I gave an opinion. I
find the center of nerve supply of the ears located at the base of the
brain and side of the head, in front of the cerebellum, just below and
near the center of the brain, a little above the foramen magnum, close
to and behind the carotid arteries, deep and superficial, just above the
entry of the spinal cord to the brain. Thus it is situated directly in
communication with all nerves to and from the brain to every part of the
body. Another question, and another came only to come and go without an
answer--such as how and where is this wax made? Of what use is it? Why
so awful bitter? Has it any living principle above dry earth? Is it
produced in the brain, lymphatics, fascia, heart, lungs, nerves or
where? How much of it would kill a man? Would it kill at all? What is it
made for? Is it used by nerves as food, or used by lungs, heart, or any
organ as an active principle in the magnetic or electric forces? So far
all authors are silent even to offer a speculative opinion about how it
is made and its uses. So far we get nothing from the ancient or modern
writers, as to its uses or anything that would cause a man to think that
the Creator had any great design, when he made so wisely constructed and
so much machinery and gave it such prominent place in the center of the
brain. By this time the reader begins to mentally ask what does this wax
evangelist know about the wax and its uses? The writer wishes to observe
and respect all nature and never be too hasty. To carefully explore all,
and never leave until he finds the cause and use that nature's hand has
placed in its works, never overlooking small packages as they often
contain precious gems. I am sure no man of brilliant mind can pass this
milepost and not hitch his team and do some precious loading. At this
point my pen will give notice to all anatomists, histologists, chemists
and physiologists that I will give "no sleep nor slumber to their
eyes," until I hear from them an answer, yes or no to these questions:
For what purpose did God make ear-wax? Is it food or refuse? If food,
what is nourished by it? and how do you know your position is true and
undebatable?
MEANING OF LIFE.
Life means existence; existence means subsistence; subsistence means
something to subsist on, and of the degree of refinement to suit the
being or principle whose function is to do the skilled work which is
found marked on the tressle-board of the wisest of all builders, whose
work is absolutely correct in form and action, and beautiful to behold.
It calls out the admiration of man and God himself, who did say of man,
"Not only good, but very good."
SOME QUESTIONS ASKED.
I consider ear-wax one of the most important questions before the minds
of our physiologists. The first and only knowledge of which substance
begins with the observer's eye when he beholds the dry wax as it is
excreted and dropped into the cavities of the ears. A question
arises--and stands without an answer--is this substance which is
commonly called ear-wax, technically called cerumen, is it dead or is it
alive while in this form and visible? If dead, why, and how did it lose
its life? Why has it not been consumed if once a living substance? When
alive, is it in the gaseous or fluid state? and when alive, and consumed
as nutriment by the system what does it nourish? is the question for the
philosopher's attention, not superficial, but his deepest thought? Why
is it deposited in the center of the brain if not to impart its vital
principle to all nerves interested in life and nutrition--both physical
and spiritual. Its location, itself, would indicate its importance.
Another thought is that no better place could be selected to establish
and locate a universal supply office for the laborers of all parts of
the whole superstructure. Another question arises: When we examine a
person paralyzed on one side, why do we find this bread of life in such
great quantities on the table and not consumed? Has not one-half of the
brain and the nerves of that whole side, limbs and all, lost their power
of digestion? Is hemiplegia a dyspepsia of the nerves of nutriment of
the brain and organs of that side? If so we have some foundation on
which to build an answer why this wax is not consumed and is dried up in
the ears of the parylytic. The answer would be that nutrition is
suspended.
CONDITIONS IN CERTAIN DISEASES, CAUSED BY COLDS.
Let us take croup, diphtheria, scarlet fever, la grippe, and all classes
of colds--on to pneumonia. They present about the same symptoms,
differing more in degrees of severity than of place. All affect the
tonsils, nostrils, membraneous air-passages, and lungs about the same
way. Croup exceeds by contracting the trachea enough to impede the
passing of air to the lungs; diphtheria has more swelling of the
tonsils, throat and glands of the neck, but all depend upon the same
blood and nerve supply, or a general law of blood beginning with
arteries to and from veins, lymphatics, glands and ducts to supply and
take away all fluids that are of no farther use to the vital and
material support. As all authors have agreed that the brain furnishes
the propelling forces to the nerves, it would be proper to inquire how
the brain is nourished. If so, we will begin and say the great cerebral
system of arteries supply the brain of which it gives quality of all
fluids and electric and magnetic forces, which must be generated in the
brain. Then a question arises, if the heart, lungs, liver, pancreas,
lymphatics, kidneys and all parts of the body depend upon the brain for
power, what do they give in return? If they give back anything it must
be of the kind of the organ from whence it comes; thus a kidney cannot
give liver nor spleen. Each must help to keep up the universal harmony
by furnishing its mite of its own kind. Suppose lung fever is the effect
of lack of renal salts, where would be a better place to dispatch from
to renal organs than the ears to reach the brain and touch the nerve
that connects with the sympathetic ganglion.
CERUMEN IN FLUID STATE.
Suppose we take the cerumen in its fluid state, by the secretions to the
lungs from the ears and see the action of air and other substances on
it, and it on them. We may safely look for a general action of some
kind. If it be magnetic food, we will see the magnetic power shown in
the lungs, and through the whole system, vitalizing all organs and
functions of life. Thus the lymphatics will move to wash out impurities,
and the nutritive nerves will rebuild lost energy. As but little is
known or said of how or where the cerumen is formed, we will guess it is
formed under the skin in the glands of the fascia and conveyed to the
ears by the secretory ducts. Its place and how it is manufactured is not
the question of the greatest importance, but its uses in disease and
health.
WINTER KILLS BABIES.
The writer has much reason to believe he has found a reliable pointer
for the cause of croup, diphtheria, and pneumonia; also a rational and
easy cure that any mother can administer and save the babe from choking
to death in her arms. Having witnessed croup in all its deadly work for
fifty years, and seen the best skill of each year and generation fail to
save, or even give relief, I lost all hope and grew to believe there was
no help and the doctor was only one more witness to the scene of death
and carnage found along the mysterious road that croup travels to slay
the babes of the whole earth. Of later days we have new and different
names for the disease, but alas, it kills the babe just as it did before
it was called diphtheria, la grippe and so on.
SOME ADVICE TO MOTHERS.
I write this more for the mothers than for the critics. We say to
mothers, as you are not Osteopaths, you are perfectly safe in putting
glycerine in a child's ears. It is made from oils and fats. I believe
when the wax is not consumed it clogs up the excretories with dead
matter, thus the irritation of the nerves of throat, neck, lungs and
lymphatics which give cause for the swelling of the tonsils and glands
of the neck. In this book can be found why I see wisdom in treating for
croup from the nerve centers of the brain. So far the uses and
importance of healthy ear-wax as a cure for disease has had no attention
that I can find by any author on disease or physiology. I hope time and
attention may lead us to a better knowledge of the cure of diphtheria,
croup, scarlet fever and all diseases of the throat and lungs of
children, and how to cure a greater per cent than has been up to this
writing. My experience up to date with such diseases, when treated as
indicated, has been very encouraging. Though it is but a short time
since I began to treat by this method, it has proven good with the young
and old.
As all authors so far seem silent even as to how or when the wax is
formed, we must resort to much careful dissection to find the relation
of the cerumen system to health. To intelligently acquaint the mother
with this treatment who does not understand anatomy so as to give
Osteopathic treatment for croup, diphtheria, and so on, I will say; take
a soft wet cloth and wash the child's neck and rub gently down from ears
to breast and shoulders; keep ears wet, often dropping in the glycerine.
Use glycerine because it will mix with the water and dissolve the wax,
while sweet oil and other oils will not do so.
A CASE IN POINT.
At 2 o'clock p. m. I called to see a babe having malignant croup in its
worst form, and examined its ears to see condition of wax. I had noticed
in consumptives that some cases had great quantities of dry wax in one
or both ears, but to this time had not thought of such deposits being an
evidence of lost or suspended action of the nerves that manufactured
cerumen. In this case I found wax dry and very hard, with much swelling
and hardness in region of ears, eustachian tubes and tonsils. I reasoned
that the excretory duct had become clogged, and that by the wax being
retained in ducts and glands an irritation of the nerves of the cervical
lymphatics had caused contraction near head, and produced congestion of
the lymphatics, of the pneumogastric, and cutting off nerves supply from
lungs. Believing this to be very likely I concluded to act on the above
line of reasoning and see if I could give some relief. I did not stop to
debate why the wax was hard and dry, but how to soften the wax, was the
question of interest to me then. So I proceeded. I reasoned that soap
and water would be the best treatment to clean the ears, and soften the
wax. At this point to select the best make of soap in the ears was to be
desired, so I took pure glycerine and water, dropped in a few drops and
took a small roll of cloth, made it wet in warm water and pushed it in
ears to keep them wet. In a few minutes I wet and inserted a soft cloth
cork in the child's ears. I twisted the corks around in the ears, each
time to mix the water and the wax to a softened condition, for to keep
the wax wet was the object. In a few minutes I got the wax wet and the
child coughed up phlegm easily, and when the dreaded hour, ten o'clock
at night came, all danger had passed.
CONNECTION OF BRAIN AND OTHER NERVES IN DIGESTION.
If digestion is the effect of organs, fluids and forces, then the
student of nature's law must be governed by well known truths, such as
the location of the brain, connection of the nerves to other organs,
bringing all parts interested in digestion in mental view. Thus you have
a chance to know if one organ has an assisting relation to any other
organ or system or if its products are of general or of special use. A
few questions at this point of inquiry would be in place. Does the brain
give assistance in digestion, and why may we reasonably suppose so, when
digestion does its work normally and has a full, rich supply of blood?
Yet disease enters the system, and begins its work with general
weakness, swelling, wastings, and pain with some, or all the glands
congested and sore, and a plenty of rich blood all the time. Then are we
justified to go to the brain and examine the electric and magnetic
batteries? We know such forces exist but as their location in the brain
is not known farther than the fact of their existence, we do not know
how they are fed, nor from where, so we are fully warranted in seeking a
use for both powers--magnetic and electric. One says the power of
electricity belongs more to the motor nerves and the magnetic to the
nutrient system; if not they are happily blended and give the results.
Without such forces life and motion could not be sustained. As it is not
my object to write a treatise on general physiology, I will turn at once
to the subject of the relation of life and health as affected by the
abnormal supply and action of ear-wax.[3]
[Footnote 3: "The secretion of the external auditory meatus, mixed with
the secretion of the neighboring glands or ceruminous glands, forms the
well known ear-wax or cerumen. The secretion in this place contains a
reddish pigment of a bitterish sweet taste, the composition of which has
not been investigated." American Text-Book of Physiology.]
UNAIDED INVESTIGATION.
As our investigations are without the assistance of ancient or modern
writers we will have to reason that man is a machine of form and power,
forming its own parts and generating its own powers as it has use for
them. At this time we begin to reason thus, that all powers are
invisible and we see effect only. We know such forces to be abundant in
nature, and life is sustained by them. To find the substances in the
body that causes them to act and how to act, has been the object of my
journey as an explorer. If they give us health when normal action
prevails and disease only when abnormal, then we are admonished to form
a more intimate acquaintance with the qualities, and with all the
products, when formed in this great laboratory which compounds and
qualifies each substance to fill its mission of force, construction,
purity and action.
CHAPTER V.
DISEASES OF THE CHEST.
Where Confined--Consumption--Can Consumption Be Cured--Consumption
Described--No Time for Surrender--Cerebral Spinal Fluid--How to
Destroy Deadly Bombs of Decay--Battle of Blood for Life--Militis
Tuberculosis--Conversion of Bodies Into Gas--Forming a
Tubercle--Breeding Contagion--The Seeds of Disease--Generating
Fever--Whooping Cough--Clouds and Lungs Are Much Alike--The Wisdom
of Nature--Water Formed in Lungs--The Law of Fives--Feeble Action
of Heart--The Heart--From Neck to Heart--Dyspepsia or Imperfect
Digestion.
WHERE CONFINED.
Diseases of the chest are generally confined to heart, lungs, pleura,
the pericardium, mediastium, blood vessels, with nerves and lymphatics.
As we open the breast we behold the heart, a very large machine or
engine, situated conveniently to throw blood to all parts of the body.
To it we see hose or pipes that go to each organ, all muscles, the
stomach, bowels, liver, spleen, kidneys, bladder and womb, all bones,
fibers, ligaments, membranes, and its body, lungs and brain. When we
follow this blood through its whole journey to feed the dependent parts,
be they organ or muscle, we find just enough unloaded at each station to
supply the demand as fast as consumed. Thus life is supplied at each
stroke of the heart, which gives blood to keep digestion in full motion
while other supplies of blood are being made and put in channels to
carry to the heart, blood is freely given to keep those channels strong,
clean and active. Thus much depends on the heart, and great care should
be given to that study, because a healthy system depends almost wholly
on a normal heart and lung. Thus to study well the frame work of the
chest should be with the greatest care. Every joint of the neck and
spine has much to do with a healthy heart and lung, because all vital
fluids from crown to sacrum do or have passed through heart and lungs,
and any slip of bone, strain or bruise will affect to some degree the
usefulness of that fluid in its vitality, when appropriated in the place
or organ it should sustain in a good healthy state. To the Osteopath,
his first and last duty is to look well to a healthy blood and nerve
supply. He should let his eye camp day and night on the spinal column;
to know if the bones articulate truly in all facets and other bearings,
and never rest day or night until he knows the spine is true and in line
from atlas to sacrum, with all ribs known to be in perfect union with
processes of spine. In reasoning for probable causes of diseases of
chest, we are met with the fact that the heart and lungs are housed up,
and out of reach of the hand and eye. We hear a cough, see blood and
other substances after they pass out of the lungs; we learn of general
and local pain and misery, feel heat and cold on skin, note abnormal
breathing, but here we are at a stop, for want of facts. We know
something is wrong, but cannot say what, until after death has done the
work, then we open the chest and find tubercles, cancers, ulcers and
abcesses. How came they there? is the unanswered question. The servant
of that breast who failed to keep his room clean, is the one to find and
punish.
CONSUMPTION.
I believe so much death by consumption will soon be with the things of
the past, if the cases are taken early and handled by a skilled
mind,--one trained for that responsible place. He or she must be taught
this as a special branch. It is too deep for superficial knowledge or
imperfect work. Life is in danger, and can be saved by skill, not by
force and ignorance. He who sees only the dollar in the lung, is not the
man to trust with your case.
It is such men as have the ability to think, and the skill to comprehend
and execute the application of nature's unerring laws, that obtain the
results required. We believe the day has come, and long before noon, the
fear of consumption will greatly pass from the minds of people. We have
long since known and proven that a cough is only an effect. If an effect
then a wise man will set his mental dogs on the track, which is (effect)
to hunt the skunk, (cause). He has all the evidence by the cough,
location of pain, tenderness of spine, neck, and quality of the
substances coughed up to locate the cause, and to know, when he has
found it, how to remove the cause, and give relief; will grow more
simple as he reasons and notes effect. We do not think this result will
be obtained every time by even an average mind, unless he has a special
training for that purpose. He must not only know that the lungs are in
the upper part of the chest close to the heart, liver and stomach, but
he must know the relation all sustain to each other, that the blood must
be abundantly supplied, support and nourish three sets of nerves, namely
sensory, motor and nutrient; also voluntary and involuntary. If the
supply should be diminished on the nutrient nerves, weakness would
follow; reduce the supply from the motor and it will have the same
effect. Motion becomes too feeble to carry blood to and from lungs
normally, and the blood becomes diseased and congested, because it is
not passed on to other parts with the force necessary for health of
lungs.
At this time the nerves of sensation become irritated by pressure and
lack of nutriment, and we cough, which is an effort of nature to unload
the burden of oppression that congestion causes with sensory nerves. If
this be effect, then we must suffer and die, or remove the cause, put
out the fire and stop waste of life, without which all is lost. Nature
will do its work of repairing in due time. Let us reason by comparison.
If we dislocate a shoulder, fever and heat will follow. The same is true
of all limbs and joints of the body. If any obstructing blood or other
fluid should be deposited in quantities great enough to stop other
fluids from passing on their way, Nature will fire up its engine to
remove such deposits by converting fluids into gas. As heat and motion
have much to do as remedies, we may expect fever and pain until nature's
furnace produces heat, forms and converts its fluids into gas and other
deposits, and passes them through the excretories to space, and allows
the body to work normally again.
HOW CONSUMPTION USUALLY BEGINS.
We believe consumption causes the death of thousands annually who might
be saved. We must not let stupidity veil our reason, and we are to blame
if we let so many run into "Consumption" from a simple hard cough. The
remedy is natural, and we believe from results already obtained 75 per
cent can be cured if taken in time. What we generally call
"Consumption" begins with a cough, chilly sensations, and lasts a day or
two. Sometimes fever accompanies with cough, either high or low. The
cold generally relaxes in a few days, lungs get "loose," and much is
raised and continues for a period, but the cough appears again and again
with all changes of weather, and lasts longer each time, until it
becomes permanent, then it is called "Consumption," because of this
continuance. Medicines are administered freely and often, but the lungs
grow worse, cough more continued and much harder, till finally blood
begins to come from lungs with wasting of strength. Change of climate is
suggested and taken, but with no change for the better; another and
another travels to death on the same line. Then the doctor in council
reports "hereditary consumption" and with his decision all are
satisfied, and each member of the family feels that a cold and cough
means a coffin, because the doctor says the family has "hereditary
consumption." This shade tree has given comfort and contentment to the
doctors of the whole past.
CAN CONSUMPTION BE CURED?
If you have a tiresome and weakening cough at the close of the winter,
and wish to be cured, we would advise you to begin Osteopathic treatment
at once, so the lungs can heal and harden against next winter's attack.
This is the first I have written on "Consumption" because I wanted to
test my conclusions by long and careful observations on cases that I
have taken and successfully treated. I kept the results from public
print until I could obtain positive proof that "Consumption" could be
cured. So far the discovered causes give me little doubt, and the cures
are a certainty in very many cases. An early beginning is one of the
great considerations in incipient consumption.
CONSUMPTION DESCRIBED.
For fear you do not understand what I mean by "Consumption" I will write
on a descriptive line quite pointedly. I will give start and progress to
fully developed consumption. We often meet with cases of permanent
cough, with expectorations of long duration, dating back two, five, ten,
even thirty years, to the time they had measles. The severity of the
cough and strain had congested even the lung substances, and a chronic
inflammation was the result. If we analyze the sputa we find fibrin and
even lung muscle. Does all this array of dangerous symptoms cause an
Osteopath to give up in despair? It should not, on the other hand he
should go deeper on the hunt of cause. He may find trouble in nerve
fiber of pneumogastric nerve, atlas or hyoid, vertebra, rib, or
clavicle, may be by pressing on some nerve that supplies mucous
membrane of air cells or passages. A cut foot will often produce
lockjaw, why not a pressure on some center branch or nerve fiber cause
some division--nerve of the lungs that governs venous circulation which
would contract and hold blood indefinitely as an irritant, equal to
cause, perpetual coughing?
NO TIME FOR SURRENDER.
This is not the time for the brainy Osteopath to run up the white flag
of defeat and surrender. Open the doors of your purest reason, put on
the belt of energy and unload the sinking vessel of life. Throw
overboard all dead weights from fascia and wake up the forces of the
excretories. Let the nerves all show their powers to throw out every
weight that would sink or reduce the vital energies of nature. Give them
a chance to work, give them the full nourishment and the victory will be
on the side of the intelligent engineer. Never surrender but die in the
last ditch.
Let us enter the field of active exploration and note the causes that
would lead us to conclude we have the cause that produces "consumption"
as it has ever been called.
Begin at the brain, go down the ladder of observation, stop and whet
your knives of mental steel sharp, get your nerves quiet by the opium
of patience. Begin with the atlas, follow with the search-light of
quickened reason, comb back your hair of mental strength, and never
leave that bone till you have learned how many nerves pass through and
around that wisely formed first part of the neck. Remember it was
planned and builded by the mind and hand of the infinite. See what nerve
fibers passes through and on to the base center, and each minute cell,
fascia, gland and blood vessel of the lungs. Do you not know that each
nerve fiber to its place is king and lord of all?
CEREBRAL SPINAL FLUID.
I think consumption begins by closing the channels of cerebro-spinal
fluid in neck, which fluid stands as one of, if not the most highly
refined elements in animal bodies. Its fineness would indicate that it
is a substance that must be delivered in full supply continually to keep
health normal; if so, we will for experimental reasons look at the neck
ligated, as found in measles, croup, colds and eruptive fevers. Supply
is stopped from passing below atlas for three days. During such diseases
fever runs high at this time and dries up the albumen, giving cause for
tubercles to begin, as fever has dried out the water and left the
albumen in small deposits in the lungs, liver, kidneys and bowels. If
this view of the great uses of brain fluid is true as cause of
glandular growths and other dead deposits; have we not a cause for
militis tuberculosis? Have we not encouragement to prosecute with
interest, in the hope of an answer to the question, "What is
tuberculosis?" Our writers are just as much at sea to-day as a thousand
years ago. I will give the reader some of the reasons why I think the
mischief was started while fluid was cut off by congestion of neck. How
can the fluid be cut off at neck is a very natural question. By the
crudest method of reasoning we would conclude that from the form of the
neck, many objects are indicated, and the material of which it is
composed would give reason to turn all its powers of thought, to ask why
it is so formed, as to twist, bend, straighten, stiffen and relax at
will, to suit so many purposes? A very tough skin--a sheathe--surrounds
the neck with blood vessels, nerves, muscles, bones, ligaments, fascia,
glands great and small, throat and trachea. In bones we find a great
canal for spinal cord. It is well and powerfully protected by a strong
wall of bone, so no outer pressure can obstruct the flow of passing
fluids, to keep vitality supplied by brain forces, but with all the
guards given to protect the cord, we find that it can be overcome by
impact fluids to such degree as to stop blood and other fluids from
supplying lungs and all below.
The fluid we speak of comes from the skull, and when in process of
formation must not be disturbed until it has passed through all chances
of being injured by force, air or light. Thus the great need of walls to
hold the enemy outside the safety line. Such truths surely should
attract our attention when we explore for causes. We can analyze
material bodies but we have to stop at the life line for more knowledge.
Our boats have been in port over 6000 years, waiting for knowledge about
the whats and whys of life, until barnacles of ignorance have
accumulated to such thickness that the conchologist has called that cake
of shells "allopathy" which weighed anchor and turned to the great sea
of human credulity to expound, with nothing but conjectures to offer. He
toots his fog-horn in all lands and on all seas, and says, "age before
reason." Thus one generation blindly follows another.
HOW TO DESTROY DEADLY BOMBS OF DECAY.
I think by this time the reader has gotten his mind in line with his
exploring needle of thought to get some light or knowledge of why a
growth and how a body that has never failed for few or many years,
begins and continues to form and plant deadly bombs of decay in that
once powerful engine of perfect health, to produce suicide. We see and
know this to be the case in thousands of beings annually, and this same
question is just as applicable to the herds of animals as to man. Thus
we cry piteously for help, but no answer has come in past days; we go on
and give place in lungs and other parts of the deadly tubercle. But one
answer can be given in "Holy Writ" to suit these questions, "Cleanliness
is next to Godliness." Turn the waters of life loose at the brain,
remove all hindrances and the work will be done, and give us the eternal
legacy, LONGEVITY.
BATTLE OF BLOOD FOR LIFE.
In America from the day of Washington and all centuries before his time,
man has dreaded diseases of the lungs more universally than any other
one disease. If we compare pulmonary diseases with other maladies we
find more persons die of consumption, pneumonia, bronchitis and nervous
coughs than from smallpox, typhus and bilious fever and all other fevers
combined. Many diseases of contagious natures do not stay in city, town,
country nor an army, but a short time; kills a few and disappears and
may not return for many years. The same is the history of yellow fever,
cholera and other epidemics. They slay their hundreds and stop as
unceremoniously as they began. But when we think of diseases that begin
to show their effects in tonsils, trachea and lining membranes of the
air passages, we find we are in a boundless ocean; because we find all
seasons of the year, which afford changes of weather: Wet, dry, windy,
hot and cold, which mark 30° to 60° in twenty-four hours, chills the
lungs and whole system, closes the excretory system against renovating
equal to deposits, with all other chances to throw out dead matter and
gases that destroy blood and life in proportion to the amount and time
of abnormal retention.
It takes no great mind to know from past observation that a common cold
often holds on and settles down to chronic inflammation of the lungs,
and the patient dies of consumption, croup, diphtheria, tonsilitis, and
as catarrhal trouble stays and begins to waste vitality by failing to
oxygenize blood while in the lungs, diphtheria paves the way for the
young and old to die of consumption. Dance halls, opera houses,
churches, school houses, and all crowded assemblies never fail to
inspect and deposit the seeds of consumption in weak lungs.
As one delves deeper and deeper into the machinery and exacting laws of
life, he beholds works and workings of contented laborers of all parts
of the one common whole--the great shafts and pillars of an engine
working to the fullness of the meaning of perfection. He sees that great
quarter-master the heart, pouring in and loading train after train and
giving orders to the wagon-master to line his teams and march on quick
time to all divisions, supply all companies, squads and sections with
rations, clothing, ammunition, surgeons, splints and bandages, and put
all the dead and wounded into the ambulances to be repaired or buried
with military honors by Captain "VEIN," who fearlessly penetrates the
densest bones, muscles and glands, with the living waters to quench the
thirst of the blue corpuscles, who are worn out by doing fatigue duty in
the great combat between life and death. He often has to run his trains
on forced marches to get supplies to sustain his men of life when they
have had to contend with long sieges of heat and cold. Of all officers
of life, none have greater duties to perform than the quarter-master of
blood supply, who borrows the force with which he runs his deliveries
from the brain which give motion to all parts of active life.
MILITIS TUBERCULOSIS.
A tubercle is a separate body being enveloped.[4]
[Footnote 4: Chambers.]
As all descriptions of a tubercle in books amount to about this, that
the tubercle is an amount of fleshy substance which may be albumen,
fibrin, or any other substance collected and deposited at one place in
the human body, and covered with a film composed generally of fibrinous
substances, and deposited in its spherical form, and separated from all
similarly formed spheres by fascia. They may be very numerous, for many
hundreds may occupy one cubic inch and yet one is distinct from all
others. They seem to develop only where fascia is abundant; in the
lungs, liver, bowels and skin. After formation they may exist and show
nothing but roughened surfaces, and when the period of dissolution and
the solvent powers of the chemical laboratory take possession to banish
them from the system, it generally begins its labors at such time as
some catarrhal disease is preying upon the human system. Nature seems to
make its first effort for the purpose of disposing of such substances as
have accumulated at the catarrhal period. At which time it brings
forward all the solvent qualities and applies them with the assistance
of the motor force to drive out through the bowels, lungs, porous and
excretory system all irritable substances. Electricity is called in as
the motor force to be used in expelling all unkindly substances. By this
effort of nature, which is an increased action of the motor nerves,
electricity is brought to the degree of heat usually called fever, which
if better understood we would possibly find to be the necessary heat of
the furnace of the body being used to convert dead substances into gas
which can travel through the excretory system and be thrown from the
body much easier than water, lymph, albumen or fibrin.
CONVERSION OF BODIES INTO GAS.
During this process of gas burning, a very high temperature is obtained
by the increased action of the arterial system through the motor nerves,
permeating those tubercles and causing an inflammation of them by the
gaseous disturbance so produced; another effort of nature to convert
those tubercles into gas and relieve the body of their presence and
irritable occupancy.
As an illustration we will ask the reader if it would be reasonable to
expect to pass a common towel through a pipe stem. Nevertheless nature
can easily do it. Confine the towel in a cylinder and apply fire, which
in time will convert the towel into gas or smoke, and enable it to pass
through the stem. Is it not just as reasonable to suppose those high
temperatures of the body are nature's furnaces, making fires out of
those dead bodies, while passing them through the skin in order to get
rid of these great and small towels which are packed all through the
human fascia, and can only be passed from the body in a gaseous form;
the gas generated by heat.
The blackened eye of the pugilist soon fires up its furnaces and
proceeds to generate gas from the dead blood that surrounds the eye.
Though it may be considerable quantities under the skin, the blood soon
disappears leaving the face and eye normal to all appearances. No pus
has formed, nor deposit left, fever disappears, the eye is well. What
better effort could nature offer than through its gas generating
furnace. I will leave any other method for you to discover. I know of
none that my reason can grasp.
FORMING A TUBERCLE.
When reason sees a white corpuscle in the fascia not taken up as a
nutrient, it attaches itself to the fascia with all its uterine powers
during the time of measles or other eruptive diseases, and soon takes
form and is a vital and durable being whose name is tubercle; in form a
sphere, and place of foetal life is a cell in the fascia of life
giving power to all forms of flesh. Thus all tubercles are
unappropriated substances whom mother fascia has clothed and ordered in
camp for treatment and repairs, and placed them on the list of enrolled
pensioners, to draw on the treasury of the fascia, until death shall
discharge them.
BREEDING CONTAGION.
The mothers of the human race give birth to children from puberty to
sterility. She may give birth a dozen times, but nature finally calls a
halt, and the whole system of life sustaining nerves of the womb which
are in the fascia, with blood in great abundance to supply foetal
life, ceases to go farther with the processes of building beings.
Vitality for that purpose stops, never to return. Nature has no longer a
demand for her system to act as a constructing cause for other beings,
of her kind, and she is free the remainder of her days.
A question arises. Are children all she can develop in her system and
give birth to? No, she can go through other processes of breeding. In
her fascia there is one seed, if vitalized will develop a being called
measles. She never has but one confinement. That set of nerves that gave
support and growth to measles died in the delivery of the child, and
never can conceive and produce any more measles. Another seed lives in
her fascia waiting to be vitalized by the male principle of smallpox,
and when it is born it always kills the nerves that gave it life and
form. And the person never can have but one such child or being during
life.
Still another seed awaits the coming of the commissary to nourish while
it consumes that vitality in the fascia of the glands to develop the
portly child we call mumps. Both male and female conceive and give birth
to such beings, then tear up the tracks and roads behind them, by
killing the demand for such drink.
I want to draw the mind of the reader to the fact that no being can be
formed without material. A place in which to be developed, and all
forces necessary to do the needed work. And as all excressences and
abnormal growths, diseases and conditions, must have the friendly
assistance of the fascia before development; the fascia is the place to
look for cause of disease and the place to consult and begin the action
of remedies in all diseases, even though it be the birth of a child.
THE SEEDS OF DISEASE.
We can arrive at truth only by the powerful rules of reason, so the
philosopher has shouted from the house tops of all ages. He adjusts his
many supposable causes, adds to and subtracts until he arrives at a
conclusion based upon the facts of his observations. Knowing the
principles that exist in substances and seeds, by which when associated
with proper conditions that powerful engine known as animal life gives
the truth with fact and motion as its voucher. We reason, if corn be
planted in moist and warm earth, that action and growth will present the
form of a living stalk of corn, which has existed in embryo, and still
continues its vital actions as long as the proper conditions prevail, i.
e., until the growth and development is completed. If you take a seed
in your fingers, push it in the ground and cover it up, incubation,
growth and development is expected in obedience to the law under which
it serves. Thus we see to succeed we must deposit and cover up the seed
in order that the laws of gestation may have an opportunity by which
they get the results desired. As nature always presents itself to our
minds as seeds deposited in soil and season to suit, and it is loyal to
its own laws only, we are constrained by this method of reasoning to
conclude that disease must have a soil in which to plant its seeds
before gestation and development. It must have seasonable conditions,
the rains of nourishment, also the necessary time required for such
processes. All these laws must be fulfilled to the letter, otherwise a
failure is absolute. As the great laboratory of nature is always at work
in the human body, the chilling winds and poisonous breaths, with
extremes of heat and cold at different seasons of the year by day and
night, and the lungs and skin are continually secreting and excreting
every minute, hour and day of our lives, is it not reasonable to suppose
that we inhale many elements that are floating in the common winds that
contain the seeds of some destructive element, to the harmony of fluids
that are necessary to sustain the healthy animal forms.
GENERATING FEVER.
Suppose it should start the yeast, or kind of substance that lives
greatly upon lime. If this yeast in its action and thirst for food to
suit its life and appetite should call in from the earth, water and
atmosphere for its daily food lime substances only, and by its power
destroy all other principles taken as nourishment, is it not reasonable
to suppose it would deposit such elements in over powering quantities in
the fascia of the mucous membrane of the lungs in such quantities, as to
overcome the renovating powers of the lungs and excretory system, by its
paralyzing quantities of diseased fluids, all through the universal
fascia of animal life. This deposit acts as an irritant to the sensory
nerves to such an extent that the electricity of the motor nerves is
forced to take charge of, and run the machinery of the human body, with
such velocity as to raise the temperature of the body, by putting the
electricity above the normal action of animal life, and thereby generate
that temperature known as fever?
The two extremes, heat and cold, may be the causes of retention and
detention. One is detained by the contraction of cold until the blood
and other fluids die by asphyxia. The warm temperature produces
relaxation of the nerves, blood, and all other vessels of the fascia,
during which time the arteries are injecting too great quantities of
fluids to be renovated by the excretory systems. Thus you have a cause
for decomposition of the blood and other substances, to be conveyed to
the lungs for purification and renewal. You have a logical foundation
and a cause for all diseases, catarrhal, climatic, contagions,
infections, and epidemics. The fascia proves itself to be the probable
matrix of life and death. Beginning with the mucous membrane penetrating
all parts to supply and renovate the fluids of life, and nourishing all
the nerves of nutrition and assimilation. When harmonious in normal
action, health is good; when perverted, disease is destructive unto
death.
WHOOPING COUGH.
I have perused all the authority obtainable, advised with and counciled
for information in reference to the cause of whooping cough until I am
constrained to think, whether I say so or not, that I have had many
additions of words during the conversation, and to use a homely phrase,
less sense than I started out with. My tongue is tired, my brain
exhausted, my hopes disappointed and my mind disgusted, that after so
much effort to obtain some positive knowledge of the disease in
question, which is whooping cough, that I have received nothing that
would give me any light whatever pertaining to the subject. It winds up
thus, that it may be a germ that irritates the pneumogastric nerve. I go
off as blank and empty as the fish lakes on the moon. I supposed writers
would say something in reference to the irritating influence of this
disease on the nerves and muscles that would contract or convulsively
shorten the muscles that attach at the one end to the os hyoid, and at
the other end at various points along the neck, and force the hyoid back
against the pneumogastric nerve, hypoglossal, cervical, or some other
nerve that would be irritated by such pressure on nerves by the os
hyoid, when pulled back and held against such nerves. The above picture
will give the reader some idea why I became so thoroughly disgusted with
the heaps of compiled trash. I say trash because there was not a single
truth, great or small, to guide me in search of the desired knowledge.
And at this point I will say on my first exploration I found all of the
nerves and muscles that attach to the os hyoid at any point contracted,
shortened and pulling the hyoid back to and pressing against the
pneumogastric nerve, and all the nerves in that vicinity. Also each and
every muscle was in a hard and contracted condition in the region of
this portion of the trachea, and extended up and into the back part of
the tongue. Then I satisfied myself that this irritable condition of the
muscles was possibly the cause of the spasms of the trachea during the
convulsive cough. I proceeded at once with my hand guided by my judgment
to suspend or stop for awhile the action of the nerves of sensation that
go with and control the muscles of the machinery which conducts air to
and from the lungs. That my first effort while acting upon this
philosophy was a complete relaxation of all muscles and fibers of that
part of the neck, and when they relaxed their hold upon the respiratory
machinery the breathing became normal. I have been asked what bone I
would pull when treating whooping cough? My answer would be, the bones
that held by attachment the muscles of the hyoid system in such
irritable condition that begin with the atlas and terminate with the
sacrum. To him who has been a willing student of the American School of
Osteopathy the successful management of whooping cough should be
absolute, reliable and successful in all cases, when taken for treatment
in anything like, a reasonable time.
CLOUDS AND LUNGS ARE MUCH ALIKE.
One is always the same in form and stays in the body of animals, while
the clouds, the lungs of the sky, are never the same in form. They are
sometimes very dense and separated from all others. Such are more
furious in display. Then we see the softer clouds which cover all
visible space above; they too give us rain but in a more quiet way and
are more extended in space; they shade the sun, and form water by
uniting oxygen and hydrogen, and supply vegetation and all demands for
water. Now we see and know the uses for the clouds or lungs of the sky,
and we are led to hunt and locate the water forming clouds of the animal
beings. As we behold above us the forming clouds we see great activity,
with darkness and attending shadows, without such shadows or darkness no
rain can form.
The lung of man, too, is in the shade, and surely like the clouds have
much to do with the air which contains both gases, which compose water
and other elements of life. With my power of reasoning, if the lungs do
not generate water and supply the human system through the secretions to
sustain life, and keep the body clean and healthy by the excretories, I
am at a loss to know why so much wind is taken into the body just to
blow out. One would say we live by the wind, and to cut it off we die.
At this point I will ask the question, Where and how do fishes get their
wind? If they can live on oxygen and hydrogen when united in the form of
water, is not this the strongest conclusion we can come to that the
lungs generate water of a purer quality than is found in the running
brooks or ocean?
Is it not reasonable to suppose that in the lungs can be found the
fountain from which water is conveyed to the lymphatics and other parts
of the body, to mix with the blood and keep it in proper condition while
in construction and processes of renovation? Then if this be true, have
we not established and located the fountain head and supply of the
nutrient waters of life? If so are we not justified in going to that
fountain for water to extinguish a fire that is consuming the body,
which we call fever? This heat never appears until the water supplying
the lymphatics is very much exhausted, previous to this exhibition of
heat; which the chemist would conclude was the result of the action of
phosphorous uniting with oxygen without hydrogen.
We as philosophical machinists, to extinguish this fire by every method
of reason, would be forced to go to the lungs, and place them in a
condition that they can generate water at once and supply the excretory
ducts, which will at the first pulsation of the heart throw water upon
the consuming fire, and extinguish it by uniting oxygen with hydrogen,
and cover the burning building with water by disabling the power of
phosphorous and oxygen from uniting and keeping up the flames of
destruction.
THE WISDOM OF NATURE.
For all my life previous to the day I spoke out with my conclusions of
the wisdom of nature as a very wise and careful mechanic, I had been
told that "God" was wise to a finish,--from my birth until I was
thirty-five years old,--when I saw that all work done by that law of
power and wisdom was absolutely perfect in all its requirements. In
vegetable life no power of human can detect a flaw or even suggest an
additional leaf, limb or fruit. I had made a long study of minerology in
which I found each stone or mettle was in a division of life that was
its own, and no other stone could appear dressed in its garb, from the
black silurian to the purely transparent crystal. I saw that a diamond
could not be a ruby, neither could it be an oak, a goose nor a goat.
With all the teaching which had given God credit for his perfect
construction, wisdom and ability in all nature, I reasoned that in
parching seasons that the sun's fires were put out, and a feverish earth
cooled by the falling dews of the clouds. I asked of my own reason if
there was not a cloud of water in the human body that could be caused to
drop its dews, put out the fires of fever, and save the forests of life
that were being burned every fall season.
WATER FORMED IN LUNGS.
I reasoned that water was made by the union of two gases, hydrogen and
oxygen,--then a question arose, Is it not fully in line with reason that
union of the two gases can and does occur in the lungs and form water,
that is taken up by the secretions carried to the lymphatics, and by
them to all of the system and stored away for use? Thus I reasoned, and
proceeded to seek nerve centers to cause the lymphatics to discharge
this water on such places and in quantities sufficient to reduce the
heat called fever. I succeeded, fevers vanished as with a magic touch,
and left the persons, both old and young, in their normal temperatures
without any difference as to kinds of fever to the complete list.
Our lungs are surely the half-way place between life and death. We are
told by chemistry that two gases make water for the uses of the body. Is
it not true that nature makes water in great quantities often for
special cases or conditions, for relief purposes, such as in asiatic
cholera, cholera morbus, chills and fever; when the contents of stomach,
bowels and skin run off many gallons of water, running through sheet and
mattress and on floor, not from kidneys but skin. Is it not plain to the
man of reason that the two gases, oxygen and hydrogen, do unite in the
lungs, form water and give supply to this great river of water that
washes life out in but a few hours in cases of cholera and other
diseases. The person is very cold at such times, breath and lung far
below the normal, and fully enough to condense gases to water.
THE LAW OF FIVES.
Lungs have five lobes, three on right lung, and two on left. Liver has
five lobes, three on right lobe, and two on left lobe. Nerves have five
qualities, nutrition, sensation, motion, voluntary and involuntary.
Nerves have five senses, seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting.
Since all principles differ in qualities or kinds of service, would it
be amiss for us to inquire a little farther why the lungs and liver are
provided with five divisions each, if not to do five kinds of work, and
different from all other kinds in many ways?
FEEBLE ACTION OF HEART.
I want to draw your attention to the facts that there is no method known
by which electricity or magnetic forces can be weighed. When we find the
nerves that connect the heart and lungs to brain limited by pressure
from twist or slip of neck, do we not see cause for croup? How would we
reason to convey electricity without a connected wire? Not at all, we
would know no electric force could reach to any point unless a continued
connection was made. Now to the point; suppose the vagus nerve should be
oppressed to a condition to cut off part of the electricity, would we be
surprised if the heart should be feeble in action. I think much of the
diseases of the "_heart_" are not of the organ but from a feeble supply
of electricity that is cut off in medulla or heart nerves, between heart
and brain. Why singing and roaring of ears in heart diseases, if there
is no waste of pectoral electricity?
THE HEART.
With the knife of reason in hand and the microscope of mind of the
greatest known power properly adjusted, we cut and lay open the breast
of man. Here we dwell indefinitely. This is the engine of life, the
self-propelling machine which has constructed all that is necessary to
its own convenience and comfort. It has brought and deposited its own
nourishment in the coronary arteries, whose duty is to construct and
enlarge the heart from time to time as its demands increase. We see its
main trunk of supply placed lengthways with the spinal column for the
purpose of constructing a manufactory of nutriment. We pass from the
heart upward about one foot, here we find it has constructed a battery
of force and sensation, and contains all power necessary to carry on
construction to the completed man.
In that brain or battery is found all the motor and sensory elements of
life, with nerves to transmit all nerve powers and principles found in
the human body. There is not a known atom in the whole human make-up
that has not been propelled by the heart through the channels by which
it has provided for such purpose. Every muscle, bone, hair, and all
other parts without an exception have traveled through this system of
arteries to their separate destinations. All are indebted to the heart
for their material size, and all qualities of motion and life sustaining
principles of the human body.
If the carotid artery should tire out and not be able to perform its
duty the brain would tire out also, and cease to operate. Should the
descending aorta come to a halt from any cause, all parts of the body
depending upon that vessel would suffer a total loss of blood supply.
Equally so with any other principal artery of limb or body, all mark a
failure equal to the suspended supply. The parts and principles of the
human body depending upon the heart are numerous beyond computation.
Every expulsive stroke of the heart throws into line armed and equipped
for duty thousands and millions of operators, whose duties are to
inspect, repair injuries and construct anew if need be from the crown of
the head to the sole of the foot. With the best eye of reason we see but
dimly into the breast of man which contains the heart, the wonder of man
and the secret of life.
I have given these bulky descriptions of the forest and ocean to
prepare the mind of man to begin the inspection of the machinery that
has constructed the body of which he is the indweller. If we cannot
swallow all, we can taste.
FROM NECK TO HEART.
The hearts of all animals should call the most careful attention of the
student of nature. He finds in it the first act of life; from it go all
parts or by it all parts of the body are made, and the student of nature
soon learns that at the heart he finds the first evidence of the power
of life to continue and give useful shape to matter. Its first work is
to complete itself in material form with necessary chambers to hold
blood and with tubes to convey to all places of need. He sees vessels
leaving the heart to form brain, lungs, liver, trunk and limbs, and with
each and all he can see the nerves of motion, sensation, nutrition, the
voluntary and involuntary--all working in perfect harmony and content to
do their part in the economy of life. Without that union in action a
confusion will show in form of abnormality which is known as disease. On
its work all nerves do depend for force and strength to build and
renovate the body in all its bones, muscles and nerves--thus all
channels to and from the heart must be cleared from all hindrance. No
nerve can do its part unless it be well nourished. If not it will fail
to execute its part for want of power--for by it all blood must move.
These nerves are found in plexuses in all parts of the body; they are
abundant in the skin, fascia, muscle, lymphatics and all organs great
and small. The Osteopath must know or learn that no infringement can be
tolerated in any part. Nature's demands are surely absolute, and require
that the last farthing shall be paid in full. Now for a start--we will
explore the neck; here we have the great and small occipital and the
cervical group all receiving from the brain and feeding parts below.
Thus we must stop at the neck and read the lessons that can be found
there, and learn them well; or we will find that we will not be able to
meet diseases only to be defeated. We must have the fight during the
four seasons of the year. In the cold seasons we will find lung and
other diseases--croup, pneumonia, diphtheria, sore throat. All these do
their mischief through the nerves of the neck.
Where is or who is the great thinker who knows and can tell all of the
duties and actions of the nerves of the neck, or what nerve failed and
slept while a tubercle was formed in the lungs? Which nerve slept while
fat is heaped up in useless piles in the body? Let us wake up!
Consumption does not come without a cause. What plexus is overcome and
allows the lungs to waste away? To what ganglion of the spine would the
finger of reason point, and say, "that is the cause of _phthisis
pulmonalis_?" In our search we find a division of nerves run from the
brain through the regions of the neck, and find a point at which a
branch leaves a greater nerve on a line that leads to the lungs. We will
likely find a ganglion at which place all or much of one or both lungs
are supplied. Then we, by reason, would see that freedom of action
cannot be. If some substance should intrude by pressure on any nerve in
that region, we must judge by conditions if that pressure has cut off
nutrition equal to feeble condition of the lungs.
DYSPEPSIA OR IMPERFECT DIGESTION.
In our physiologies we read much about digestion. We will start in where
they stop. They bring us to the lungs with chyle fresh as made and
placed in thoracic duct, previous to flowing into the heart to be
transferred to lungs to be purified, charged with oxygen and otherwise
qualified, and sent off for duty, through the arteries great and small,
to the various parts of the system. But there is nothing said of the
time when all blood is gas (if ever) before it is taken up by the
secretions, after refinement, and driven to the lungs to be mixed with
the old blood from the venous system. A few questions about the blood
seem to hang around my mental crib for food. Reason says we cannot use
blood before it has all passed through the gaseous stage of refinement,
which reduces all material to the lowest forms of atoms, before
constructing any material body. I think it safe to assume that all
muscles and bones of our body have been in the gas state while in the
process of preparing substances for blood. A world of questions arise at
this point.
QUESTIONS OF GAS.
The first is, Where and how is food made into gas while in the body? If
you will listen to a dyspeptic after eating you will wonder where he
gets all the wind that he rifts from his stomach, and continues for one
or two hours after each meal. That gas is generated in the stomach and
intestines, and we are led to believe so because we know of no other
place in which it can be made and thrown into the stomach by any tubes
or other methods of entry. Thus by the evidence so far the stomach and
bowels are the one place in which this gas is generated. Now comes
question two: As I have spoken of the stomach that generates and ejects
great quantities of gas for a longer or shorter time after meals, this
class of people have always been called dyspeptics. Another class of the
same race of beings stand side by side with him, without this gas
generating. He, too, eats and drinks of the same kind of food, without
any of the manifestations that have been described in the first class.
Why does one stomach blow off gas continually, while the other does not?
is a very deep, serious and interesting question. As number two throws
off no gas from the stomach after eating, is this conclusive evidence
that his stomach generates no gas? Or does his stomach and bowels form
gas just as fast as No. 1? and the secretions of the stomach and bowels
take up and retain the nutritious matter and pass the remainder of the
gas by way of the excretory ducts through the skin? If the excretory
ducts take up and carry this gas out of the body by way of the skin, and
he is a healthy man, why not account for No. one's stomach ejecting this
gas by way of the mouth, because of the fact that the secretions of the
stomach are either clogged up or inactive, for want of vital motion of
the nerve terminals of the stomach. Another question in connection with
this subject: Why is the man whose stomach belches forth gas in such
abundance also suffering with cold feet, hands and all over the body,
while No. 2 is quite warm and comfortable, with a glow of warmth passing
from his body all the time? With these hints I will ask the question:
What is digestion?
CHAPTER VI.
THE LYMPHATICS.
Importance of the Subject--Demands of Nature on the
Lymphatics--Dunglinson's Definition--Dangers of Dead
Substances--Lymph Continued--Solvent in Nature--Where Are the
Lymphatics Situated?--The Fat and Lean.
IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT.
Possibly less is known of the lymphatics than any other division of the
life-sustaining machinery of man. Thus ignorance of that division is
equal to a total blank with the operator. Finer nerves dwell with the
lymphatics than even with the eye. The eye is an organized effect, the
lymphatics the cause; in them the spirit of life more abundantly dwells.
No atom can leave the lymphatics in an imperfect state and get a union
with any part of the body. There the atom obtains form and knowledge of
how and what to do. The lymphatics consume more of the finer fluids of
the brain than the whole viscera combined. By nature, coarser substances
are necessary to construct the organs that run the blast, and rough
forging divisions. The lymphatics form, finish, temper and send the
bricks to the builder with intelligence, that he may construct by
adjusting all according to nature's plans and specifications. Nature
makes machinery that can produce just what is necessary, and when
united, produces what the most capable minds could exact.
The lymphatics are closely and universally connected with the spinal
cord and all other nerves, long or short, universal or separate, and all
drink from the waters of the brain. By an action of the nerves of the
lymphatics, a union of qualities necessary to produce gall, sugar,
acids, alkalies, bone, muscle and softer parts, with the thought that
elements can be changed, suspended, collected and associated and produce
any chemical compound necessary to sustain animal life, wash out, salt,
sweeten and preserve the being from decay and death by chemical,
electric, atmospheric or climatic conditions. By this we are admonished
in all our treatment not to wound the lymphatics, as they are
undoubtedly the life giving centers and organs. Thus it behooves us to
handle them with wisdom and tenderness, for by and from them a withered
limb, organ or any division of the body receives what we call
reconstruction, or is builded anew, and without this cautious procedure
your patient had better save his life and money by passing you by as a
failure, until you are by knowledge qualified to deal with the
lymphatics.
DEMANDS OF NATURE ON THE LYMPHATICS.
Why not reason on the broad plain of known facts, and give the why he or
she has complete prostration. When all systems are cut off from a chance
to move and execute such duties as nature has allotted to them, motor
nerves must drive all substances to and sensation must judge the supply
and demand. Nutrition must be in action the time and keep all parts well
supplied with power to labor or a failure is sure to appear. We must
ever remember the demands of nature on the lymphatics, liver and
kidneys. They must work all the time or a confusion for lack in their
duties will mark a cripple in some function of life over which they
preside.
DUNGLINSON'S DEFINITION.
Dunglinson's scientific definition of the lymphatics is very extensive,
comprehensive and right to the point for our use as doctors of
Osteopathy. He describes the lymphatic glands as countless in number,
universally distributed all through the human body, containing vitalized
water and other fluids necessary to the support of animal life, running
parallel with the venous system, and more abundantly there than in other
locations of the body, at the same time discharging their contents into
the veins while conveying the blood back to the heart from the whole
system. Is it not reasonable to suppose that besides being nutrient
centers, that they accumulate and pass water through the whole secretory
and excretory systems of the body, in order to reduce nourishment to
that degree from thick to thin, that it may easily pass through all
tubes, ducts and vessels interested in distribution, as nourishment
first, and renovation second, through the excretory ducts. The question
arises whence cometh this water?
DANGERS OF DEAD SUBSTANCES.
This leads us back to the lungs as one of the great sources of which you
have been informed under the head of "Lungs, Gases and Water." With this
fountain of life saving water provided by nature to wash away impurities
as they accumulate in our bodies, would it not be great stupidity in us
to see a human being burn to death by the fires of fever, or die from
asphyxia by allowing bad or dead lymph, albumen, or any substance to
load down the powers of nature and keep the blood from being washed to
normal purity? If so, let us go deeper into the study of the life-saving
powers of the lymphatics. Do we not find in death that the lymphatics
are dark, and in life they are healthy and red?
LYMPH CONTINUED.
What we meet with in all diseases is dead blood, stagnant lymph, and
albumen in a semi-vital or dead and decomposing condition all through
the lymphatics and other parts of the body, brain, lungs, kidneys, liver
and fascia. The whole system is loaded with a confused mass of blood,
that is mixed with much or little unhealthy substances, that should have
been kept washed out by lymph. Stop and view the frog's superficial
lymphatic glands; you see all parts move just as regular as the heart
does; they are all in motion during life. For what purpose do they move?
if not to carry the fluids to sustain by building up, while the
excretory channels receive and pass out all that is of no further use to
the body. Now we see this great system of supply is the source of
construction and purity. If this be true we must keep them normal all
the time or see confused nature in the form of disease, the list
through. Thus we strike at the source of life and death when we go to
the lymphatics.
With this fountain of life-saving water, provided by nature to wash away
impurities as they accumulate in our bodies, would it not be great
stupidity in us to see a human being burn to death by the fires of
fever, or die from asphyxia, by allowing bad or dead lymph, albumen or
any substance to load down the powers of nature to keep the blood washed
to normal purity? If so let us go deeper in the study of the
life-sustaining powers of the lymphatics.
NATURE'S SOLVENTS.
The brain flushes the nerves of the lymphatics first, and more than any
other system of the body. No part is so small or remote that it is not
in direct connection with some part or chain of the lymphatics. The
doctor of Osteopathy has much to think about when he consults natural
remedies, and how they are supplied and administered, and as disease is
the effect of tardy deposits in some or all parts of the body, reason
would bring us to hunt a solvent of such deposits, which hinder the
natural motion of blood and other fluids in functional works, which are
to keep the body pure from any substance that would check vital action.
When we have searched and found that the lymphatics are almost the sole
requisite of the body we then must admit that their use is equal to the
abundant and universal supply of such glands. If we think and use a
homely word and say that disease is only too much dirt in the wheels of
life, then we will see that nature takes this method to wash out the
dirt. As an application, pneumonia is too much dirt in the wheels of the
lungs, if so we must wash out; no where can we go to a better place for
water than to the lymphatics. Are they not like a fire company with
nozzles in all windows ready to flush the burning house?
WHERE ARE THE LYMPHATICS SITUATED?
A student of life must take in all parts, and study their uses and
relations to other parts and systems. We lay much stress on the uses of
blood and the powers of the nerves, but have we any evidence that they
are of more vital importance than the lymphatics? If not let us halt at
this universal system of irrigation and study its great uses in
sustaining animal life. Where are they situated in the body? Answer by,
where are they not? No space is so small as to be out of connection with
the lymphatics, with their nerves, secretory and excretory ducts. Thus
the system of lymphatics is complete and universal in the whole body.
After beholding the lymphatics distributed along all nerves, blood
channels, muscles, glands and all organs of the body, from the brain to
the soles of the feet, all loaded to fullness with watery liquids, we
certainly can make but one conclusion as to their use, which would be to
mingle with and carry out all impurities of the body, by first mixing
with such substances and reducing them to that degree of fluids in
fineness, that could pass through the smallest tubes of the excretory
system, and by that method free the body from all deposits of either
solids or fluids, and leave nourishment.
THE FAT AND LEAN.
A question: Why is he too fat and she only skin and bone, while a third
is just right? If one is just right, why not all? If we get fat by a
natural process why not reverse the process and stop at any desirable
point in flesh size? I believe the law of life is simple and natural in
both respects if wisely understood. Have we nerves of motion to carry
food to all parts, organs, glands and muscles? Have we channels to
convey to all? Have we fluids to suit all demands? Have we brain power
equal to all force needed? Is blood formed sufficiently to fill all
demands? Does that blood contain fat, water, muscle, skin, hair and all
kinds to suit each division, organ, and nerve? If so and blood has
builded too much flesh, can it not take that bulk away by returning
blood to gas and other fluids? Can that which has been done be done
again? If yes be the correct answer, then we should hope to return
blood, fat, flesh and bone to gas and pass them away while in gaseous
condition, and do away with all unnatural size or lack of size. I
believe that it is natural to build and destroy all material form from
the lowest animated being to the greatest rolling world. I believe no
world could be constructed without strict obedience to a governing law,
which gives size by addition and reduces that size by subtraction. Thus
a fat man is builded by great addition, and if desired can be reduced
by much subtraction, which is simply a rule of numbers. We multiply to
enlarge, also subtract when we wish a reduction. Turn your eye for a
time to the supply trains of nature. When the crop is abundant, the
lading would be great, and when the seasons do not suit, the crops are
short or shorter to no lading at all. Thus we have the fat man and the
lean man. Is it not reasonable as a conclusion of the most exacting
philosophy that the train of cars that can bring loads of stone, brick
and mortar until a great bulk is formed, can also carry away until this
bulk disappears in part or all? This being my conclusion I will say by
many years of careful observation of the work of creating bodies and
destroying the same, that to add to is the law of giving size, and to
subtract from is the law of reduction. Both are natural, and both can be
made practical in the reduction or addition of flesh, when found too
great in quantity, or we can add to and give size to the starving muscle
through the action of the motor and nutrient system conveyed to, and
appropriated from the laboratory in which all bodily substances are
formed. Thus the philosophy is absolute, and the sky is clear to proceed
with addition and subtraction of flesh. I believe I am prepared to say
at this time that I understand the nervous system well enough to direct
the laboratory of nature and cause it through its skilled arts to
unload, or reduce, he who is over-burdened with a super-abundance of
flesh, and add to the scanty muscle a sufficiency to give power of
comfortable locomotion and other forces, by opening the gate of the
supply trains of nutrition.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DIAPHRAGM.
Investigation--A Struggle With Nature--Lesson of Cause and
Effect--Something of Medical Etiquette--The Medical Doctor--An
Explorer for Truth Must Be Independent--The Diaphragm Introduced--A
Useful Study--Combatting Effect--Is Least Understood--A Case of
Bilious Fever--A Demand on the Nerves--Danger of Compression--A
Cause for Disease--Was a Mistake Made in the Creation--An
Exploration--Result of Removal of Diaphragm--Sustaining Life in
Principles--Law Applicable to Other Organs--Power of
Diaphragm--Omentum.
INVESTIGATION.
Let us halt at the origin of the splanchnic and take a look. At this
point we see the lower branches; sensation, motion, and nutrition, all
slant above the diaphragm pointing to the solar plexus which sends off
branches to pudic and sacral plexus of sensory system of nerves; just at
the place to join the life giving ganglion of sacrum with orders from
the brain to keep the process of blood forming in full motion all the
time. A question arises, how is this motion supplied and from where? The
answer is by the brain as nerve supply, heart as blood supply, all of
which comes from above the diaphragm, to keep machinery in form and
supplied with motion, that it may be able to generate chyle to send back
to heart, to be formed into blood and thrown into arteries to build all
parts as needed, and keep brain fed up to its normal supply of power
generating needs. We see above the diaphragm, the lungs, heart and
brain, the three sources of blood and nerve supply. All three are
guarded by strong walls, that they may do their part in keeping up the
life supply as far as blood and nerve force is required. But as they
generate no blood nor nerve material, they must take the place of
manufactories and purchase material from a foreign land, to be able to
have an abundance all the time. We see nature has placed its
manufacturies above a given line in the breast, and grows the crude
material below said line. Now as growth means motion and supply, we must
combine in a friendly way, and conduct the force from above to the
region below the septum or diaphragm, that we may use the powers as
needed. This wall must and does have openings to let blood and nerves
penetrate with supply and force to do the work of manufacturing.
A STRUGGLE WITH NATURE.
After all this has been done and a twist, pressure or obstructing fold
should appear from any cause, would we not have a cut off of motion to
return chyle, sensation to supply vitality, and venous motion to carry
off arterial supply that has been driven from heart above? Have we not
found the cause to stop all processes of life below diaphragm? In short,
are we not in a condition to soon be in a complete state of stagnation?
As soon as the arteries have filled the venous system, which is without
sensation to return blood to the heart, then the heart can do nothing
but wear out its energies trying to drive blood into a dead being below
the diaphragm known as the venous system. It is dead until sensation
reaches the vein from the sacral and pudic plexus.
LESSON OF CAUSE AND EFFECT.
Previous to all discoveries that have been made a demand for the
usefulness of such discovery, is felt and talked of for years, centuries
and cycles of time. Its discovery is an open question and free to all,
because in this fact all are interested. That lack may be felt and
spoken of by all agriculturists, and the inquiry directed to a better
plow, a better sickle or mowing machine with which to reap standing
grain. The thinker reduces his thoughts to practice, and cuts the grain,
leaving it in such condition that a raker is needed to bunch it previous
to binding.
His victory is heralded to the world as king of the harvest, and so
accepted. The discoverer says, "I wish I could bunch that grain." He
begins to reason from the great principle of cause and effect, and
sleeps not until he has added to his already made discovery, an addition
so ingeniously constructed that it will drop the grain in bunches ready
for the binder. The discoverer stands by and sees in the form of a human
being hands, arms and a band; he watches the motion then starts in to
rustle with cause and effect again. He thinks and sweats day and night,
and by the genius of thought produces a machine to bind the grain. By
this time another suggestion arises, how to separate the wheat as the
machine journeys in its cutting process. To his convictions nothing will
solve this problem but mental action. He thinks and dreams of cause and
effect. His mind seems to forget all the words of his mother tongue but
cause and effect. He talks and preaches cause and effect in so many
places that his associates begin to think he is mentally failing, and
will soon be a subject for the asylum. He becomes disgusted with their
lack of appreciation, seeks seclusion and formulates the desired
addition and threshes the grain ready for the bag. He has solved the
question and proved to his neighbors that the asylum was built for them,
not for him. With cause and effect which is ever before the
philosopher's eye, he ploughs the ocean regardless of the furious
waves, he dreads not the storms on the seas, because he has so
constructed a vessel with a resistance superior to the force of the
lashing waves of the ocean, and the world scores him another victory. He
opens his mouth and says by the law of cause and effect I will talk to
my mother who is hundreds of miles away. He disturbs her rest by the
rattling of a little electric bell in her room. Tremblingly the aged
mother approaches the telephone and asks "Who is there?" And is
answered, "It is me, Jimmie," and asks, "To whom am I talking?" She says
"Mrs. Sarah Murphy." He says, "God bless you, mother; I am at Galveston,
Texas, and you are in Boston, Mass." She laughs and cries with joy; he
hears every emotion of her trembling voice. She says to him, "You have
succeeded at last. I have never doubted your final success,
notwithstanding the neighbors have annoyed me almost to death, telling
me you would land in the asylum, because no man could talk so as to be
heard 1000 miles away; his lungs, were too weak, and his tongue too
short."
Now, friends, I have given you a long introductory foundation previous
to giving you the cause of disease, with the philosophy that I have
given upon cause and effect. I think it absolutely clear and the effect
so unerring in its results, that with Pythagoras I can say "Eureka."
SOMETHING OF MEDICAL ETIQUETTE.
To know we have found a general cause for disease, one that will stand
the heights and depths of direct and cross examinations, as given by the
high courts of cool headed reason, has been the mental effort of all
doctors and healers, since time began its record. They have had to treat
disease as best they could, by such methods as customs had established
as the best known for such diseases; notwithstanding their failures and
the great mortality under such a system of treatment. They have not felt
justified to go beyond the rules of symptomatology as adopted by their
schools, with diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. Should they digress
from the rules of the etiquette of their alma maters they would lose the
brotherly love and support of the medical association to which they
belong, under the belief that, "A bad name is as bad as death to a dog."
THE MEDICAL DOCTOR.
He says that in union there is safety, and resolves to stick to, live
and do as his school has disciplined all its pupils, with this command,
"The day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Stick to the
brotherhood."
AN EXPLORER FOR TRUTH MUST BE INDEPENDENT.
The explorer for truth must first declare his independence of all
obligations or brotherhoods of any kind whatsoever. He must be free to
think and reason. He must establish his observatory upon hills of his
own; he must establish them above the imaginary high planes of rulers,
kings, professors of schools of all kinds and denominations. He must be
the Czar of his own mental empire, unencumbered with anything that will
annoy while he makes his observations. I believe the reasons are so
plain, so easily comprehended, the facts in its support so brilliant,
that I will offer the same, though I be slaughtered on the altar of
bigotry and intolerance. This philosophy is not intended for minds not
thoroughly well posted by dissection and otherwise of the whole human
anatomy. You must know its physiological laboratories and workings with
the brain as the battery, the lungs as the source or machine that
renovates the blood from all impurities, and the heart as the living
engine or quarter-master, whose duty is to supply the commissaries with
blood and other fluids to all divisions and sub-divisions of the human
body, which is busily engaged producing material suited to the
production of bone and muscle, and all other substances necessary to
keep the machinery of life in full force and action.
Without this knowledge on the part of the reader, the words of this
philosophy will fall as blanks before reaching his magazine of reason.
Thus this is addressed to the independent man or woman that can, will
and does reason.
THE DIAPHRAGM INTRODUCED.
At this point we will introduce the diaphragm, which separates the
heart, lungs and brain from the organs of life that are limited to the
abdomen and pelvis. A question arises at this point; what has the
diaphragm to do with good or bad health? At this time we will analyze
the diaphragm; we will examine its construction, and its uses; we will
examine its openings through which blood passes both above and below. We
will examine the opening through which food passes to stomach. We will
carefully examine the passage or opening for nerve supply to the abdomen
below, to run this great system of chemistry, which is producing the
various kinds of substances necessary to the hard and soft parts of the
body. We must know the nerve supply of the lymphatics, womb, liver,
kidneys, pancreas, the generative organs, what they are, what they do,
and what are demanded of them, before we are able to feed our own minds
from the cup that contains the essence of reason as expressed from the
tree of life.
A USEFUL STUDY.
The diaphragm surely gives much food to the one who would search for the
great whys of disease as reported causes seem to be far back in the fogs
of mystery. It may help us to arrive at some facts if we take each organ
and division and make a full acquaintance of all its parts and uses
before we combine it with others.
COMBATTING EFFECTS.
In all ages, the Doctor has for lack of knowledge of the true cause of
diseases, combatted effects with his remedies. He treats pain with
remedies to deaden pain; congestion to wash out overplus of blood that
has been carried to parts or organs of the body by arteries of blood and
channels of secretions and not taken up and passed out and off by the
excretories. He sees the abnormal size and leaves the hunting of the
cause that has given growth to such proportions and begins to seek rest
and ease for his patient. Then he treats to reduce by medicine to carry
the waste fluids to bowels, bladder and skin, with tonics to give
strength and stimulants to increase the action of the heart in order to
force local deposits to the general excretory system. At this time let
the Osteopathic Doctor take a close hunt for any fold in muscles of the
system that would cause a cut-off of the normal supply of blood or
suspend the action of nerves whose office is to give power and action to
the excretory system sufficient to keep the dead matter carried off as
fast as it accumulates. Let us stop and acquaint ourselves with the true
condition of the diaphragm. It must be normal in place, as it is so
situated that it will admit of no abnormality. It must be kept
stretched, just as Nature arranged that it should, like a drum-head. It
is attached all around to the chest, though it crosses five or six ribs
on its descent from the seventh rib to the sternum at the lower point
and down to fourth lumbar vertebra. It is a continuous slanting floor,
above bowels and abdominal organs, and below heart and lungs. It must,
by all reason, be kept normal in tightness at all places, without a fold
or wrinkle, that could press the aorta, nerves, oesophagus, or
anything that contributes to the supply or circulation of any vital
substance. Now can there be any move in spine or ribs that would or
could change the normal shape of the diaphragm? If so, where and why?
IS LEAST UNDERSTOOD.
The diaphragm is possibly the least understood as being the cause of
more diseases, when its supports are not all in line and normal
position, than any other part of the body. It has many openings through
which nerves, blood and food pass while going from chest to all parts
below. It begins at the lower end of the breast-bone and crosses to ribs
back and down, in a slanting direction to the third or fourth lumbar
vertebra. Like an apron, it holds all that is above it up, such as heart
and lungs, and is the fence that divides the organs of the abdomen from
the chest. Below it are the stomach, bowels, liver, spleen, kidneys,
pancreas, womb, bladder; also the great system of lymphatics of the
whole blood and nerve supply of the organs and systems of nutrition and
life supply. All parts of the body have a direct or indirect connection
with this great separating muscle. It assists in breathing, in all
animals, when normal, and when prolapsed by the falling in and down of
any of the five or six ribs by which it is supported in place, then we
suffer from the effects of suspended normal arterial supply, and venous
stagnation below diaphragm. The aorta meets resistance as it goes down
with blood to nourish, and the vein as it goes back with impurities
contained in venous blood, also meets an obstruction at the diaphragm,
as it returns to the heart through the vena cava, because of the packing
of a fallen diaphragm on and about the blood vessels that must not be
obstructed. Thus heart trouble, lung disease, brain, liver, womb, tumors
of the abdomen and through the list of effects can be traced to the
diaphragm as the cause.
I am strongly impressed that the diaphragm has much to do in keeping all
the machinery and organs of life in a healthy condition, and will try
and give some of the reasons why, as I now understand them. First, it is
found to be wisely located just below the heart and lungs; one being the
engine of the blood, and the other is the engine of the air. This strong
wall holds all substances or other bodies away from any chance to press
on either engine, while performing their parts in the economy of life.
Each engine has a sacred duty to perform under the penal law of death to
itself and all other divisions of the whole being, man. If it should
neglect its work of which it is a vital part, should we take down this
wall and allow the liver, stomach and spleen to occupy any of the places
allotted to these engines of life, a confusion would surely be the
result; ability of the heart to force blood to the lungs would be
overcome and cause trouble.
A CASE OF BILIOUS FEVER.
Suppose we take a few diseases and submit them to the crucial ordeal of
reason, and see if we do, or can find any one of the climatic fevers
that appear with its full list of symptoms and have no assistance from
an irritated diaphragm. For example take a case of common bilious fever
of North America. It generally begins with a tired and sore feeling of
limbs and muscles, pain in spine, head, and lumbar region. At this point
of our inquiry we are left in an open sea of mystery and conjecture as
to cause. One says, "malaria," and goes no farther, gives a name and
stops. If you ask for the cause of such torturous pain in head and back,
with fever and vomiting, he will tell you that the very best authorities
agree that the cause is malaria, with its peculiar diagnostic tendency
to affect the brain, spine and stomach, and administers quinine and
leaves, thinking he has said and done all.
Reason would lead seekers for cause of the pain above located to
remember that all blood passes first as chyme up to heart and lungs,
directly through the diaphragm, conducted through the thoracic duct,
first to heart, thence to lungs, at the same time rivers of blood are
pouring into the heart from all of the system. Much of it very impure,
from diseased or stale blood. Much of the chyle is dead before it enters
the great thoracic duct and goes to the lungs without enough pure blood
to sustain life. Then disease appears.
As a cut-off the diaphragm, when dropped front and down, and across the
aorta and vena cava by a lowering of the ribs, on both sides of the
spine; it would be a complete pressure over coelic axis, with liver
supply, renal, pelvic, to a complete abdominal stoppage. Then we have
over-due blood for other parts to send off dead corpuscles by asphyxia,
with no hope that it can sustain life and health of the parts for which
it was designed. Thus we know that nature would not be true to its own
laws, if it would do good work with bad material.
A DEMAND ON THE NERVES.
Why not reason on the broad scale of known fact, and give the "why" he
or she has complete prostration when all systems are wholly cut off from
a chance to move and execute such duties as nature has allotted to them.
Motor nerves must drive all substances to, and sensation must judge the
supply and demand. Nutrition must be in action all the time and keep all
parts well supplied or a failure is sure to appear. We must ever
remember the demands of nature on the lymphatics, liver and kidneys,
that nerves work all the time or a confusion for lack in their duties
will mark a cripple in some function of life over which they preside.
DANGER OF COMPRESSION.
At this time we see by all systems of reason that no delay in passage of
food or blood, can be tolerated at the diaphragm, because any
irritation is bound to cause muscular contraction and impede the
natural flow of blood, first through the abdominal aorta, and even to a
temporary, partial or complete stoppage of arterial supply to the
abdomen. Or the vena cava may be so pressed as to completely stop the
return of venous blood from the stomach, kidneys, bowels and all other
organs, such as the lymphatics, pancreas, fascia, cellular membranes,
nerve centers, ganglionic and all systems of supply of organs of life
found in the abdomen. Thus by pressure, stricture or contraction to the
passage of blood can be stopped, either above or below the diaphragm,
and be the cause of blood being detained long enough to die from
asphyxia, and be left in the body of all organs below the diaphragm.
A CAUSE FOR DISEASE.
Thus you see a cause for Bright's disease of kidneys, disease of womb,
ovaries, jaundice, dysentery, leucorrhoea, painful monthlies, spasms,
dyspepsia, and on through the whole list of diseases now booked as
"causes unknown," and treated by the rule of "cut and try." We do know
that all blood for use of the whole system below the twelfth dorsal
vertebra does pass through the diaphragm, and all nerve supply, also
passes through the diaphragm and spinal column for limb and life. This
being a known fact, we have only to use reason to know that an
unhealthy condition of the diaphragm is bound to be followed by many
diseases. A list of questions arise at this point with the inquirers
that must and can be answered every time by reason only. The diaphragm
is a musculo-fibrinous organ and depends for blood and nerve supply
above its own location, and that supply must be given freely and pure
for nerve and blood or we will have a diseased organ to start with; then
we may find a universal atrophy or oedema, which would, besides its
own deformity not be able to rise and fall, to assist the lungs to mix
air with blood to purify venous blood, as it is carried to the lungs to
throw off impurities and take on oxygen previous to returning to the
heart, to be sent off as nourishment for the system. It is only in
keeping with reason that without a healthy diaphragm both in its form
and action, disease is bound to be the result. A question from our side
of the argument is: How can a carpenter build a good house out of
rotten, twisted or warped wood? If he can, then we can hope to be
healthy with diseased blood, but if we must have good material in
building, then we should form our thoughts to suit the heads of
inspectors, and inspect the passage of blood through the diaphragm,
pleury, pericardium and the fascia, superficial, deep and universal.
Disease is just as liable to begin its work in the fascia and
epithelium as any other place. Thus the necessity of pure blood and
healthy fascia, because all functions are equally responsible for good
and bad results.
WAS A MISTAKE MADE IN THE CREATION?
At a given period of time the Lord said, "Let us make man." After He had
made him He examined him, and pronounced him good, and not only good,
but very good. Did He know what good was? Had He the skill to be a
competent judge? If He was perfectly competent to judge skilled arts His
approval of the work when done was the fiat of mental competency backed
by perfection. Since that architect and skilled mechanic has finished
man and given him dominion over the fowls of the air, the beast of the
field and fishes of the sea, hasn't that person, being or superstructure
proven to us that God, the creator of all things, has armed him with
strength, with the mind and machinery to direct and execute? This being
demonstrated and leaving us without a doubt as to its perfection, are we
not admonished by all that is good and great to enter upon a minute
examination of all the parts belonging to this being; acquaint ourselves
with their uses and all the designs for which the whole being was
created. If we are honestly interested with the acquaintance of the
forms and uses of the parts in detail by close and thorough examination
of the material, its form and object of its form, from whence this
substance is obtained; how it is produced and sustained through life in
kind and form. How it is moved, where it gets its power, and for what
object does it move? A demand for a crucial examination of the skull,
the heart, lungs, of the chest, the stomach, liver and other organs of
the abdomen is made. The septum of the brain, the pericardium of the
chest--the diaphragm of the abdomen which is a dividing septum between
the abdomen and chest. In this examination we must know the reasons why
any organs, vessel or any other substance is located at a given place.
We must run with all the rivers of blood that travel through the system.
AN EXPLORATION.
We must start our exploring boat with the aorta, and float with this
vital current; see the captain as he unloads supplies for the diaphragm
and all that is under it. We must follow him and see what branch of this
river will lead to a little or great toe, or to the terminals of the
whole foot. We must pass through the waters of the dead sea by the way
of the vena cava, and observe the boats loaded with exhausted and worn
out blood, as it is poured in and channeled back to the heart, with all
below the diaphragm. Carefully watch the emptying of the vena azygos
major and minor, with the veins of the arms and head all being poured in
from little or great rivers to the vena innominate on their way to the
great hospital of life and nourishment; whose quarter-master is the
heart; whose finishing mechanic is the lung. Having acquainted ourselves
with the forms and locations of this great personality we are ready at
this time after examination, and found worthy and well qualified to
enter into a higher class in which we can obtain an acquaintance with
the physiological workings separately and conjoined of the whole being.
At this place we become acquainted with the hows and whys of the
production of blood, bone and all elements found in them, necessary to
sustain sensation, motion, nutrition, voluntary and involuntary action
of the nerve system. The hows and whys of the lymphatics, the life
sustaining powers of the brain, heart, lungs, and all the abdominal
system, with their various actions and uses, from the lowest cellular
membrane to the highest organ of the body.
RESULT OF REMOVAL OF DIAPHRAGM.
When we consult the form of the cross-bar that divides the body in two
conjoined divisions and reason on its use, we arrive at the fact that
the heart and lungs must have ample space or room to suit their actions
while performing their functions. At this time a question comes up: What
effect would follow the removal of the fence between heart, lungs and
brain, above that dividing muscle, and the machinery that is situated
below said cross-bar? We see at a glance that we would meet failure to
the extent of the infringement on demanded room for normal work of heart
to deliver below lungs to prepare blood, and the brain to pass nerve
power to either engine above, and all organs below the diaphragm.
SUSTAINING LIFE PRINCIPLES.
The life of the living tree is with the bark and superficial fascia
which lies between the bark of the body of the tree, its periostium. The
remainder of the tree takes the position or place of secreting. Its
excretory system is first upwards from the surface of the ground, and
washes out frozen impurities in the spring, after which it secretes and
conveys to the ground through the trunk of the tree to the roots which
is like unto the placenta attached to mother earth, qualifying all
substances of constructing fiber and leaf, of that part of the tree
above the ground. Each year produces a new tree which is seen and known
by circular rings called annular growths. That growth which was
completed last year is now a stale being of the past and has no vital
action of itself. But like all stale beings its process is a life of
another order, and dependent upon the fascia for its life and cellular
action which lies under the bark, for its own existence as a living
tree. It can only act as a chemical laboratory and furnish crude
material which is taken up by the superficial fascia and conveyed up to
the lungs, and exchanges dead for living matter, to receive and return
to all parts of the tree, keeping up vital formation. With frost its
vital process ceases through the winter season until mother earth
stimulates the placenta, and starts the growth of a new being, which is
developed and placed in form on the old trunk. Thus you see everything
of animal growth as we would call them, is a new being, and becomes a
part of the next being or growth formed.
STALE LIFE.
Should this form of vitality cease with the tree another principle which
we call stale life takes possession and constructs another tree which is
just the reverse of the living tree, and builds a tree after its own
power of formulation from the dead matter, to which it imparts a
principle of stale life, which life produces mushrooms, frogstools and
other peculiar forms of stale beings, from this form of growth.
Thus we are prepared to reason that blood when ligated and retained in
that condition of dead corpuscles, and no longer able to support animal
life, can form a zoophyte and all the forms peculiar to the great law of
association, as tumefactions of the lymphatics, pancreas, liver,
kidneys, uterus, with all the glandular system, be they lymphatics,
cellular, ganglia or any other parts of the body susceptible of such
growths, below the diaphragm. Thus we can account for tubercles of the
abdomen and all organs therein found.
LAW APPLICABLE TO OTHER ORGANS.
This same law is equally applicable to the heart, lungs, the brain,
tissues, glands, fascia and all substances capable of receiving without
the ability to excrete stale substances.
As oedema marks the first tardiness of fluids we have the beginning
step which will lead from miliary tuberculosis to the largest known
forms of tubercles, which is the effect of the active principles of
stale life or the life of dead matter.
POWER OF DIAPHRAGM.
At this point we will draw the attention of the reader to the fact that
the diaphragm can contract and suspend the passage of blood and produce
all the stagnant changes from start to completed deadly tubercle. Also
the cancer, the wen, glandular thickening of neck, face, scalp, fascia
and all substances found above the diaphragm. In this stale life we have
a compass that will lead us as explorers from the North star, to the
South pole, the rising sun of reason, and the evening dews of eternity.
This diaphragm says: "By me you live and by me you die. I hold in my
hand the powers of life and death, acquaint now thyself with me and be
at ease."
OMENTUM.
The truth of the presentation of facts should be the principle object of
every person who takes his pen with a view to give the reasons why
certain witnesses' testimony are indispensable to establish supposable
or known truths. This being the case I have summoned before this court
of inquiry an important witness. He has now taken the oath to tell the
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, of the case before
this court. His name is the Great Omentum. Mr. Omentum, state if you
know of any reason why or how by irritation from a misplacement of your
body or any of its attachments to or about the diaphragm, the spine,
stomach or other places that could cause irritation and thickening by
congestion of your own body to such degree as to impede the flow of
arterial or venous blood, over whose position you occupy much space from
the diaphragm downward? State what effect a falling down of the eleventh
and twelfth ribs on both sides of the spine with their cartilaginous
points turned inward and down; if they should draw the diaphragm down
and across your body? What would be the effect on circulation of the
blood, and other fluids on the kidneys and other organs of the abdomen
and pelvis? Would it not be the foundation for destructive congestion,
and abnormal growth? State if you know if any such ligation would cause
swelling by retention of blood in the spleen, liver, kidneys or other
organs of the abdomen and pelvis? Would it be reasonable to suppose that
you could perform your functions in office with any irritating condition
caused by prolapses of diaphragm? Would not an irritation of your
attachment to the diaphragm, spine or stomach be great enough to impede
the blood on its passage through the aorta to the abdomen, or impede the
flow of blood back and through the diaphragm? If so state how and why?
CHAPTER VIII.
LIVER, BOWELS AND KIDNEYS.
Gender of the Liver--Productions of the Liver--A Hope for the
Afflicted--Evidences of Truth--Loaded With Ignorance--Lack of
Knowledge of the Kidney--How a Purgative Acts--Flux--Bloody
Dysentery--Flux More Fully Described--Osteopathic Remedies--Medical
Remedies--More of the Osteopathic Remedy.
GENDER OF THE LIVER.
Let us abruptly assume that the liver is the abiding placenta of all
animated beings. If this position be true we are warranted and justified
in the conclusion that the germs necessary to form blood vessels and
other parts of the body must look to the liver for the fluids in which
they would expect to construct in form and size. It seems to be nature's
chemical laboratory, in which are prepared by receiving chemical
qualities and quantities to suit the formation of hard and soft
substances, which are to become the parts and the whole of any organ,
gland, muscle, nerve, cell, veins and arteries. In evidence of the
probability of the truth of this position, we will draw your attention,
first to its central location between the sacral and cerebral nerve
centers. There it lies between the "stomach" the vessel which receives
all material previous to being manipulated for all nutrient purposes,
and the heart, the great receiving and distributing quarter-master of
all animal life. It supplies squads, sections, companies, regiments,
battalions, brigades and divisions--to the whole army, and all parts
that are dependent upon the nutrient system.
PRODUCTIONS OF THE LIVER.
The liver seems to be able to qualify by calling to itself all
substances necessary to produce gall. Its communications with all parts
of the body is direct, circuitous, universal and absolute. If pure it
produces healthy gall and other substances, and in fact when healthy
itself all other fluids are considered to be pure, at which time we are
supposed to enjoy good health and universal bodily comfort. With a
diseased liver we have perverted action which possibly accounts for
impure and unhealthy deposits in the nasal passage and other parts of
the body in their own peculiar form. Polypus of the nose, tumefaction of
lungs, lymphatics, liver, kidneys, uterus, and even the brain itself.
Suppose such deposits, composed of albumen and fibrin, prepared in the
liver should be deposited in the lining membranes of veins leading to
the heart, and by some other chemical action this accumulated mass
should come loose from the veins, would we not expect what is commonly
called clots enter the heart, and shut off the arteries, supplying the
lungs, stop the further circulation of blood and cause instantaneous
death called heart failure, apoplexy and so on? Is it not reasonable to
suppose that under those deposits that softening of arteries has its
beginning, which results in aneurisms and death by rupture of such
abnormally formed arteries? Are the lungs not liable to receive such
deposits and form tubercles to such proportions as to become living
zoophytes capable of covering all of the mucous membrane of the lungs,
air passages and cells, and establish a perpetual dwelling of zoophytes
and absorb to themselves for their own maintenance and existence, blood
and nourishment of the whole body unto death? This being the result of
one chemical action of the body and all by and from nature, is it not
reasonable to suppose that the provision by nature is ready to produce
of itself the chemicals of kind, quality and quantity equal to the
destruction of this enemy of life?
A HOPE FOR THE AFFLICTED.
I think before all diseases pass the zenith, after which the decline is
beyond the vital rally, they are curable by the genius of nature's own
remedies, and believe the truths of this conclusion have been supported
abundantly by daily demonstrations. I believe there is hope for the
consumptive equal to one-half if not greater when taken in proper time,
which is at any period of the disease, previous to breaking down by
ulceration or otherwise, lung tissue, and even after this period, hope
is not altogether lost.
EVIDENCES OF TRUTH.
Nature and good sense are terms that mean much to persons who are used
to set aside all else for facts. A fact may and often does stay before
our eyes for all time powerful in truth, but we heed not its lessons.
Instances, at least a few, would not be amiss at this time. Electricity,
the most powerful force known, was never able with all its works to get
the attention of man's thoughts, more than to call it thunder and
lightning, and let it pass from his mind from time to time, till
brighter ages woke up a Franklin, Edison, Morse and others who heeded
its useful lessons enough to make application of its powers for its
force and speed. By the results obtained, they and others have used its
powers and gotten truths as rewards, that they did not know even existed
in or out of electricity or in any of the store-houses of all nature.
But as the winds of time have blown open a few leaves of nature's book,
and their brilliant pages and useful lessons have found a lodging place
in such persons as were endowed with wisdom to see, and patience to
persevere, by their energy and wisdom to-day we have many pages to add
to our books of useful knowledge. We can now talk around and all over
the earth by the power of the dreaded thunder and lightning. By it we
travel, by it we see at night, by it we search on land and sea for
friend or foe; in fact, it is dreaded no more but sought, used and loved
by all who know of its uses in civil life. Thus our enemy has become our
footstool. By the speed of man's ability we know and use the comforts
that nature holds in store for us until we call for and use them.
Other and just as useful questions as electricity await our attention.
Parts and uses of the human body, to-day are to us as little understood
as electricity was at any time. The lung to-day is an unknown mystery,
as to what its power and uses are; we only know that air goes in and out
of the lungs; farther than that we are at sea. We have just as little
knowledge of the heart as the lungs, we find a hollow fibrinous tank
receiving and discharging blood; we are not prepared to say whether the
corpuscle is formed in the heart or not; all else is conjectural and
speculative on the subject the corpuscle. We see channels leading to and
from it, to and from all parts of the body, muscles and glands. We know
it moves when we are alive, we know it is silent in death.
LOADED WITH IGNORANCE.
We pass from there to the liver loaded down with ignorance, from what we
know, cannot tell whether it is male or female, we simply know its size,
location and something of its form and action, but nothing beyond
conjecture. It stands to-day one of the wonders to him that tries to
reason.
LACK OF KNOWLEDGE OF THE KIDNEY.
We will leave this organ of many pounds with an open confession of our
ignorance and take up the kidney. At what time was the man and woman
born that knew and left on record a true and reliable knowledge of the
renal capsule. We do not know whether that is the organ that makes our
teeth, our hair or generates a powerful acid by which lime is kept in
solution, so as not to form stones and such deposits.
HOW A PURGATIVE ACTS.
Nature's method is simple and easily comprehended in delivering
purgative medicines, with their softening powers to dry constipated
fecal matter. For instance: We would give a purgative in the shape of
salts, rhubarb, calomel and other substances of choice. The first
question of the physician is how is this to pass through so densely
packed substance or fecal matter which is in the bowels? At this time we
will be short in the statement. The purgative poisons are taken up by
the the secretions conveyed to the lymphatics. To soften and wash out is
the object of nature. The lymphatics begin the work of washing out by
starting action of the excretories and furnishes the water to soften,
which is injected into the bowels from the mouth to the extremities by a
system of salivation.
FLUX (BLOODY DYSENTERY.)
Flux is common in all temperate climates. It generally shows its true
nature as dysentery after a few hours of tiresome feeling, aching in
head, back and bowels. At first nothing is felt or thought of more than
a few movements of the bowels than is common for each day. Some pain and
griping are felt with increase at each stool, until a chilly feeling is
felt all over the body, with violent pains in lower bowels, with
pressing desire to go to stool, and during and after passage of stool a
feeling that there is still something in the bowels that must pass. Soon
that down pressure partially subsides, and on examination of passage a
quantity of blood is seen which shows the case is bloody flux, as the
disease is called and known in the southern states of North America, or
bloody dysentery in the more northern states. It generally subsides by
the use of family remedies, such as sedatives, astringents, and
palliative diets. But the severity in other cases increases and the
discharges have more blood, greater pain, mixed with gelatinous
substance even to mucous membrane of bowels, high fever all over except
abdomen, which is quite cold to the hand. Back, head and limbs suffer
much with heat and pain, and much nausea is felt at all motions of
bowels. Bowels change from cold to hot, even to 104, at which time all
symptoms point to inflammation of the bowels. The colon in particular,
at which time discharge grows black, frothy and very offensive from
decomposition of blood. Soon collapse and death close out the case,
notwithstanding the very best skill has been employed to save the life
of the patient. The doctor has tried to stop pain by opiates and other
sedatives, tried to check bowels with astringents, used tonics and
stimulants, but all have failed, the patient is dead.
HOW DOES THE OSTEOPATH CURE?
But the question for the Osteopath is: At what point would you work to
suppress the sensation of the colon and permit veins to open and allow
blood to return to heart? Does irritation of a sensory nerve cause vein
to contract and refuse blood to complete circuit from and to the heart?
Does flux begin with the sensory nerves of bowels? If so, reduce
sensation at all points connecting with bowels, stop all overplus, keep
veins free and open from cutaneous to deep sensory ganglion of whole
spine and abdomen. Remember the fascia is what suffers and dies in all
cases of death by bowels and lungs. Thus the nerves of all the fascia of
bowels and abdomen must work or you may lose all cases of flux, for in
the fascia exists much of the soothing and vital qualities of nature.
Guard it well, so it can work to repair all losses or death will begin
in fascia and through pass it to the whole system.
FLUX MORE FULLY DESCRIBED.
"Bloody flux" is a flow of blood with other fluids from the mucous
membrane of the bowels. A disease generally of the summer and fall
seasons, and is more abundant south than north of latitude 40° of North
America. It is so well known in this country by its ravages that to
describe it is almost useless, as bloody fluids pass from bowels in all
cases.
We reason that the veins have contracted by nerve irritation and fail to
convey blood to heart on normal time. By which delay decomposition does
its work. Thus a cause is seen for excreting fluids by motor action of
bowels, when supplied by the excretory system.
OSTEOPATHIC REMEDIES.
An Osteopath to successfully treat flux or bloody dysentery must reason
and address his attention first to the soreness and irritation of
bowels, which he finds suffering with oedema of mucous membrane of all
the glands and blood vessels belonging to the lower bowels. As quiet is
the first thing desired, he will direct his attention to the sensory
nerves of the colon and small intestines, in order to reduce the
resistance of the veins and diminish the arterial action. When he has
diminished sensation of the veins of the bowels, the arterial force
completes its circuit through the veins back to the heart, with much
less arterial action, because venous resistance has ceased and the
circuit is normal, and healthy action is the result.
MEDICAL REMEDIES.
The medicine man addresses his remedies first to the misery, with the
desire to relax the nerves and overcome pain, and obtains this result
through some class of opiates. After a short rest he addresses his
attention to the motor action of the heart, with the view of giving
arteries greater power to force arterial blood through all obstructions,
and tries to stop all excretory wastings by the use of astringents
combined with sedatives and soothing fluids.
MORE OF THE OSTEOPATHIC REMEDY.
The Osteopath will govern sensory and motor nerves by digital
suspension of the abnormal irritability of the sensory nerves on the
various parts of the spine as indicated by the disease.
He uses no injections for the bowels for the reason that the necessary
fluids naturally flow into the bowels to lubricate and quiet, and
proceed at once to repair all irritated surfaces, which is abundantly
supplied by nature from the mouth of the sphincter ani, without which
forethought and preparation, nature's God will prove his incompetency
for the great battle of life.
You administer medicines from the chemistry of the arts by mouth,
injection and otherwise. We adjust the machinery and depend upon
nature's chemical laboratory for all elements necessary to repair, give
ease and comfort, while nature's corpuscles do all the work necessary.
CHAPTER IX.
THE BLOOD.
Uses for Fluids--Blood an Unknown Fluid--Harvey Only Reached the
Banks of the River of Life--Blood Is Systematically
Furnished--Fatality of Ignorance--To Find the Cause Must Be
Honest--Following Arteries and Nerves--Feeding the Nerves--The
Blood on Its Journey--Powers Necessary to Move Blood--Venous Blood
Suspended.
USES FOR FLUIDS.
If a thousand kinds of fluids exist in our bodies a thousand uses
require their help, or they would not appear. Thus to know how and why
they help in the economy of life is the study of he who acts only when
he knows at what places each must appear, and fill the part and use for
which it is designed. If the demand for a substance is absolute its
chance to act and answer that call and obey such command must not be
hindered while in preparation, nor on its journey to local destination,
for by its power all action may depend. Thus blood, albumen, gall,
acids, alkalies, oils, brain fluid and other substances formed by
associations while in physiological processes of formation must be on
time in place and measured abundantly, that the biogenic laws of nature
can have full power with time to act, and material in abundance and of
kinds to suit. Thus all things else may be in place in ample quantities
and fail because the power is withheld and no action for want of brain
fluids with its power to vivify all animated nature which have followed
any fluid found in the body, and followed it from formation to use and
exhaustion step by step until he knows what form a union with one or
many kinds. Thus we can do no more than feed and trust the laws of life
as nature gives them to man. We must arrange our bodies in such true
lines that ample nature can select and associate by its definite
measures, weights and choices of kinds, that which can make all fluids
needed for our bodily uses, from the crude blood to the active flames of
life, as seen when marshalled for the duties of that stands and obey the
edicts of the mind of the infinite.
BLOOD AN UNKNOWN FLUID.
Blood is an unknown red or black fluid, found inside of the human body,
in tubes, channels or tunnels. What it is, how it is made, and what it
does after it leaves the heart in the arteries, before it returns to the
heart through the veins, is one of the mysteries of animal life. It has
been tried to be analyzed to know of what it is composed, and when done,
we know but little more of what it really is, than we know what sulphur
is made of. We know it is a colored fluid, and it is in all parts of the
flesh and bone. We know it builds up heaps of flesh, but how, is the
question that leads us to honor the unknowable law of life, by which it
does the work of its mysterious construction of all forms found in the
parts of man. In all our efforts to learn what it is, what it is made
of, and what enters it as life and gives it the building powers with
that intelligence it displays in building, that we see in daily
observation, is to us such an incomprehensible wonder, that with the
"sacred writers" we are constrained to say, Great is the mystery of
"Godliness." I dislike to say we know but very little about the blood,
"in fact, nothing at all," but such is the truth under oath. We cannot
make one drop of blood because of our ignorance of the laws of its
production. If we knew what its components were, we would soon build
large machinery, make and have blood for sale in quantities to suit the
purchaser. But alas! we cannot with all the combined intelligence of
man, make one drop of blood, because we do not know what it is. Then, as
its production is by the skill of a foreigner whose education has grown
to suit the work, we must silently sit by and willingly receive the work
when handed out for use by the producer. At this point I will say that
an intelligent Osteopath is willing to be governed by the immutable
laws of nature, and feel that he is justified to pass the fluid on from
place to place and trust results.
HARVEY ONLY REACHED THE BANKS OF THE RIVER OF LIFE.
When Harvey solved by his powers of reason a knowledge of the
circulation of the blood, he only reached the banks of the river of
life. He saw that the heads and mouths of the rivers of blood begin and
end in the heart, to do the mysterious works of constructing man. Then
he went into camp and left this compound for other minds to speculate
on, of the how it was made, of what composed, and how it became a medium
of life which sustains all beings. He saw the genius of nature had
written its wisdom and will of life, by the red ink of all truth.
BLOOD IS SYSTEMATICALLY FURNISHED.
Blood is systematically furnished from the heart to all divisions of our
bodies. When we go any course from the heart we will find one or more
arteries leaving heart. If we go toward the head, we find caroted,
cervical and vertebral arteries in pairs, large enough to supply blood
abundantly for bone, brain, and muscle. That blood builds all the brain,
all the bone, nerves, muscles, glands, membranes, fascia and skin. Then
we see wisdom just as much in the venous system, as in the arterial.
Thus the arteries supply all demands, and the veins carry away all
waste material, with returning blood of veins. We find building and
healthy renovation are united in a perpetual effort to construct and
sustain purity. In these two are the facts and truths of life and
health. If we go to any other part or organ of the body, we find just
the same law of supply, arteries first, then renovation, beginning with
the veins. The rule of artery and vein is universal in all living
beings, and the Osteopath must know that, and abide by its rulings, or
he will not succeed as a healer. Place him in open combat with fevers of
winter or summer and he saves, or loses, his patients, just in
proportion to his ability to sustain the artery to feed, and the veins
to purify by taking away the dead substances before they ferment, in the
lymphatics and cellular system. He shows just the same stupidity and
ignorance of support from arteries and purity by the veins when he fails
to cure erysipelas, flux, pneumonia, croup, scarlet fever, diphtheria,
measles, mumps, rheumatism, and on to all diseases of climate and
seasons.
FATALITY OF IGNORANCE.
It is ignorance and inattention to the arteries to supply and the veins
to carry away all deposits before they form tumors in lungs, abdomen or
any part of the system. Thus man's ignorance of how and why the blood
renovates and why tumors are formed, has allowed the knife to be found
in the belts of so many doctors to-day. On this law Osteopathy has
successfully stood and cured more than any school of cures, and has
sustained all its diplomates financially and otherwise. I write this
article on blood for the student of Osteopathy. I want him to put nature
to a test of its merit, and know if it is a law equal to all demands. If
not, he is very much and seriously limited when he goes into war with
diseases. What is to be understood by "Disease?"[5]
[Footnote 5: DISEASE. 1. "Lack of ease. 2. An alteration in the state of
the body, or some of its organs, interrupting or disturbing the
performance of the vital functions and causing or threatening pain and
weakness; malady; affection; illness; sickness; disease;
disorder."--Webster's International Dictionary.]
When we use the word "disease," we mean anything that makes an unnatural
showing in the body by pain, overgrowth of muscle; gland; organ;
physical pain; numbness; heat; cold; or anything that we find not
necessary to life and comfort. I have no wish to rob surgery of its
useful claims, and its scientific merits to suffering man and beast.
Such is not my object, but to place the Osteopath's eye of reason on the
hunt of the great whys that the knife is useful at all, I am sure it
comes often to remove growths and diseased flesh and bone that have
gotten so by man's ignorance of a few great truths. 1st, If blood is
allowed to be taken to a gland or organ, and not taken away in due time
the accumulation will become bulky enough to stop the excretory nerves
and cause local paralysis; then the nutrient nerves proceed to construct
tumors, and on and on until there is no relief but the knife or death.
Had this blood not been conveyed there, it would not be there at all,
either in bulk or less quantities. Had it simply done its work and
passed on we could have no material to grow such abnormal beings. If a
tumefaction appears in one side, and not in the other, why so? and why
is there no growth in one side the same as the other? It takes no great
effort of mind to see that the veins did not receive and carry off the
blood, and a growth was natural, as the condition could not do otherwise
and be true to nature. Thus man's ignorance has made a condition for the
knife. Had he taken the hint and let the blood pass on when its work was
done, he would not have to witness the guillotine of death to his
patients, whose early pains told him a renal vein or some vessel below
the diaphragm was ligated by an impacted colon, or a few ribs pulling
and bringing diaphragm down across vena cava and thoracic duct and
causing excitement or paralysis of solar plexus, or any other nerves
that pass through diaphragm with blood to and from heart and lungs.
TO FIND THE CAUSE.
How to find causes of diseases or where a hindrance is located that
stops blood is a great mental worry to the Osteopath when he is called
to treat a patient. The patient tells him "where he hurts," how much "he
hurts," how long "he has hurt," how hot or cold he is. The doctor puts
this symptom and that symptom in a column, adds them up according to the
latest books on symptomatology, finally he is able to guess at some name
to call the disease. Then he proceeds and treats as his pap's father
heard his granny say their old family doctor treated "them sort of
diseases in North Carolina." An Osteopath feels bad to have to hunt
cause for diseases, and not know how to start out to find the mechanical
cause. He feels that the people expect more than guessing of an
Osteopath. He feels that he must put his hand on the cause and prove
what he says by what he does, that he will not get off by the feeble
minded trash of stale habits that go with doctors of medicine, and by
his knowledge he must show his ability to go beyond the musty bread of
symptomatology and water his patients made, from the cider of the ripe
apples from the tree of knowledge.
MUST BE HONEST.
An Osteopath should be a clear-headed, conscientious, truth loving man,
and never speak until he knows he has found and can demonstrate the
truth he claims to know.
FOLLOWING ARTERIES AND NERVES.
I understand anatomy and physiology after fifty years casual and close
attention, the last twenty years being very continued and close
attention to what has been said, by all the best writers whom I have
perused, many of whom are considered standard guides for the student and
practitioner to be governed by. I have dissected and witnessed the very
best anatomists that the world affords dissect. I have followed the
knife after arteries through the whole distribution of blood of arterial
systems, to the great and small vessels, until the lenses of the most
powerful microscopes seemed to exhaust their ability to perceive the
termination of the artery; with the same care following the knife and
microscope from nerve center to terminals of the large to the infinitely
small fibers around which those fine nerve vines entwine. First like a
bean entwining by way of the right around and up continuing to the
right, and then turn my microscope to the entwining of another set of
nerves which is to the left universally as the hop. Those nerves are
solid, cylindrical and stratified in form, with many leading from the
lymphatics to the artery, and to the red and white muscles, fascia,
cellular-membrane, striated and unstriated organs, all connecting to and
traveling with the artery, and continuing with it through its whole
circuit from start to terminals.
FEEDING THE NERVES.
Like a thirsty herd of camels, the whole nerve system, sensory, motor,
nutrient, voluntary and involuntary; this herd of sappers or hungry
nerves seems to be in sufficient quantities and numbers to consume all
blood and cause the philosopher to ask the question: "Is not the labor
of the artery complete when it has fed the hungry nerves?" Is he not
justified in the conclusion that the nerves do gestate and send forth
all substances that are applied by nature in the construction of man? If
this philosophy be true, then he who arms himself for the battles of
Osteopathy when combating diseases, has a guide and a light whereby he
can land safely in port from every voyage.
THE BLOOD ON ITS JOURNEY.
Turn the eye of reason to the heart and observe the blood start on its
journey. It leaves in great haste and never stops even in the smaller
arteries. It is all in motion and very quick and powerful at all
places. Its motion indicates no evidence of construction even supposable
during such time, but we can find in the lymphatics, cells or pockets,
motion slow enough to suppose that in such cells, living beings can be
formed and carried to their places by the lymphatics for the purposes
they must fill, as bone, or muscle. Let us reason that blood has a great
and universal duty to perform, if it constructs, nourishes, and keeps
the whole nerve system normal in form and function.
POWERS NECESSARY TO MOVE BLOOD.
As blood and other fluids of life are ponderable bodies of different
consistences, and are moved through the system to construct, purify,
vitalize and furnish power necessary to keep the machinery in action, we
must reason on the different powers necessary to move those bodies
through arteries, veins, ducts, over nerves, spongy membranes, fascia,
muscles, ligaments, glands and skin; and judge from their unequal
density, and adjust force to meet the demand according to kinds, to be
sent to and from all parts.
VENOUS BLOOD SUSPENDED.
Suppose venous blood to be suspended by cold or other causes in
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