An Encyclopedia Of The Practice Of Medicine Based On Bacteriology is a compilation of diseases and their treatments based on holistic, nutritional, naturopathic, homeopathic, vitamin/mineral supplementation, herbology, diet, rest and recovery, manipulation of the body such as massage, and the use of ELECTRICITY(!) in the years prior to 1891. This was before the Rockefeller takeover of medicine.
Notice that in these pages (book pdf below) pharmaceuticals are not mentioned. No prescriptions, vaccines, or synthetic based or patented drugs used in the treatment of disease.
As an example “Neurasthenia” is presented below but also in the 1,472 pages of this book there are over 450 different types of disease conditions also presented along with corresponding treatments used to alleviate these ailments without the use of drugs, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, etc., and by just using all-natural based (easy to use) methodologies!
This book presents a very insightful look into how the practice of Medicine has actually deteriorated over the 20th century from natural healing practices that cured ailments of the human body to now how it is just a system of disease management in order to profit off of human affliction.
– Excerpt –
Neurasthenia
A partial death of the nervous system, or as it is termed nerve exhaustion; a most common condition, one incidental to all nervous diseases; one that is dovetailed into them, blended and enumerated under different heads; in an infinite variety of forms, in all affections that are common to men and women who have exhausted their vital force; affections that are generally looked upon by the profession as modified forms of idiosyncrasies, crankiness, hysteria, morbid thoughts, increased sensibility, depraved appetite, perversion of special nerves or senses, or parts of the nervous organism; giving rise to neurosis of mucous membrane, glands, skin, organs; special modifications impress the nerves that supply the organs of circulation, giving rise to nervous headache, nervous palpitation of the heart; abdominal pulsation, due solely to nervous influences, which has too often been mistaken for abdominal aneurism; besides we have nervous cough, asthma, a spasmodic contraction of the bronchial tubes; aphonia, weakness of the laryngeal nerves; musca volitantes, tinnitus aurium, and many other marvelous nerve disorders. In this condition of nervousness, there is very apt to exist restlessness, mobility, with or without undue excitability of nerves.
The brain presides over nutrition, secretion, excretion, digestion and assimilation. If the integrity of that organ is impaired the whole body is out of gear and a degradation of the primary elements concerned in its nutrition takes place.
Causes. – The causes that give rise to general nervous debility in individuals and nations are very numerous, as the increased necessities and activities of civilization – a condition very wearing to the brain, unless muscular work be in excess. The condition of early precocity in children, fostered and nursed by a perniciously too early education; by children’s magazines, rushing the immature brain of childhood into excessive development by over-culture. To this hot-bed of civilization, we add care, worry, overwork, struggle, intense tension, the brain being overtaxed at the expense of the physical. There are causes in our country, in our highly oxygenized and ozonized atmosphere.
There is no climate, no portion of the earth, so productive of neurasthenia as North America. There is every essential in it to produce increased brain activity, active cell development, and no one living under its influence can escape becoming neurasthenic; its exhausting faculty added to great mental efforts, together with the almost universal use of tobacco, alcohol, excesses, effect the result.
The mighty momentum of all that is great in science, in arts, in practical utility, sways the ever active brain of the American who, if left to himself, will soon become the prototype of the noble Roman.
While glancing at these and other causes, we must ever bear in mind that the human body is but a reservoir of nerve force, which is constantly escaping, while at the same time it is constantly renewed from the center of all force. A healthy man between twenty-five and fifty-five years of age has a large amount of nerve force in reserve, and is not much if any way exhausted by the ordinary tear and wear of the body. He has, so to speak, always a margin left behind and beyond that required for his ordinary avocation, on which in powerful emergencies he can draw with no other effect but slight fatigue, which disappears under rest, sleep and food; whereas an individual suffering from neurasthenia have a very meager amount of nerve force in reserve; the slightest exertion, mental or physical, will drain it off.
Symptoms. – In appreciating the condition of nervous debility we must look closely at the nerve centers. True the entire nervous system is a unit, a whole, but for the sake of description or a perfect elucidation of symptoms, we map it out into three great centers, the brain proper, spinal cord, and great sympathetic, – they form a trinity, a three in one – one emanation of Deity. This microcosm, in a highly civilized and sensitive man is a perfect center of reflex action, and it is this that in some measure accounts for the variety and intensity of the symptoms.
An individual or race suffering from general nervous debility usually manifests itself in a strong nervous temperament, with sharp cut features. They suffer from languor, lassitude, debility, being easily exhausted on the slightest exertion; they have no reserve of vital force, no margin upon which they can draw, the fountainhead is empty or drained off. They may do more work, exert more nerve force in a short time than a strong man, but they are more easily exhausted than the vital; may eat and digest with little expenditure of vital force, but they cannot bear labor nor fatigue, nor privation, nor loss of sleep. It may not shorten life, nor destroy its usefulness, but the individual has not the tone, or vigor, or vivacity of the vital; they have lost the stamina for essential work.
Neurasthenia may exist in an individual for many years, and the affected party be unconscious of its existence. The leaves, blossoms, twigs, branches may begin to fade, while the tree remains sound and strong; and the true condition is not realized until the disease, in its progress downwards, attacks some of the main branches or trunk, or until some vital organ is smitten; until pneumonia, cardiac and kidney disease, nervous dyspepsia, insomnia, physical and mental prostration, attract the individual’s attention. The fatigue, pain, worry, want of rest, the wreck produced by mental toil is marvelous.
The symptoms of neurasthenia are very varied, being often central in the brain proper, but the largest number are reflex, taking place through the motor and sensory nerves; the sympathetic and vasomotor, the irritation being transmitted to weakened parts in the cord and bulb. When the mental wreckage is great, fear is a predominant symptom, fear of society, fear of solitude, of place, of disease, of morbid impulses; suicide, mental depression, wakefulness, headache, impaired memory, deficient mental control, palpitation, aneurbsis, neuralgic pains, dysentery, spinal irritation, cardiac insufficiency, etc. – neurosis somewhere.
Effects. – The grand predominating effect of neurasthenia is general vital deterioration. The intellectual torpor of a semi- civilized state is more favorable for brain vitality, national growth and vigor, than one highly civilized. We have an excellent illustration of this in an Irish woman, she keeps all her vital force in reserve, she will do any amount of hard work, even drudgery, unblessed, uncared for by exhausting sentimentalism, without being able to read or write, or calculate past, present or future. In her daily toil, she seldom brings out all her available vital force; whereas, the sensitive, highly civilized American woman, with a small amount of inherited vital force, living an indoor life; her mind highly active, subsisting upon pernicious literature; real or imaginary stories, the effeminating journals of the day, attending theaters, receptions, balls, subject to worry, care; she has no reserve of vital force, it is exhausted as generated; whereas the Irish woman has a large amount of vital force, a full reservoir, an excess – a battery of potential vitality, with great power of resistance; while the neurasthetic is endowed with the most meager supply.
The brain of man owes its healthy existence to the quantity of phosphorus it contains, if this is economized, independent of its scantiness in modern food, it might sustain him probably as long as life lasts and health holds out; but let the brain starve, health fails, nature can supply no more; then, unless the patient can obtain phosphated food, as ozonized tincture of oats, or the animal phosphorus of kephaline, degenerative changes will take place in the gray substance of the cerebrum; the cells of that part will become granular and deposits of granules scattered through its substance; these changes take place in all parts of the brain and spinal cord, when the phosphorus in the brain is exhausted. Brain workers, merchants, professional men, know this; they feel it in their languor, tired brain; those are the victims of excessive brain exhaustion. How far this granular change in the nerve cell is compatible with healthy mental action, we cannot yet say. But we do say, and nothing can invalidate it, that unless our brain-workers obtain more phosphorus, white softening, paralysis and insanity will become more common.
General Remarks. – Man, the embodiment of the Great I Am, in whom he lives and moves and has his being, his body, with his instinctive, moral and intellectual nature – embraced in the sympathetic with its numerous ganglia or little brains, the generators of nerve force, constitutes a bundle of nerves, reflex in their character, that rebound upon each other, reflecting irritation to the medulla oblongata, which force thence is reflected to weakened parts, so that any irritation set up in one part is liable to produce an irritation in another. There are certain organs, which, on account of their importance, complexity of their nerves, and from the fact that they are indispensable to the functions of life, are preeminently the seat or center of reflex action; the cord, the heart and blood vessels, through their abundant, complex and sensitive nerve supply, keenly feel any irritation from any source. The circulation is kept unbalanced, waves of irritation, under a myriad of causes, explain the fugitive character of the symptoms. There is a power within the human body, partly physical, partly mental, of working off or tolerating disease. A vigorous man physically and intellectually, with a certain mental organization, will bear pain, suffer shocks well – states which would make a weak man a chronic sufferer, a lifelong invalid, rendering his existence a cipher. Strong, vital constitutions will bear suffering, ward off disease, and by the inherent element within them will prevent degradation under which others would succumb.
Neurasthenia is as jealous as a woman, it allows no rival. Let there be malaria, syphilis, gout, any form of blood poisoning, the nerve debility entrenched in the constitution of the individual will hold its own and ever be on the top, in spite of all diseases, but being paramount, it modifies every affection known to the human race.
Varieties of Neurasthenia. – Nervous debility is a devitalized state, a disease, which has its cause, its symptoms, its effects, its antidote, and when thoroughly entrenched in any individual will hold its own position, often in spite of every effort. It is true it may be aggravated, complicated, modified by every known disease, and its presence in the individual makes other diseases more difficult to eradicate or overcome.
The action of the mind upon the body in health and disease, is a problem that has caused much perplexity to all medical men, and still more the enormous capacity of those affected with neurasthenia for mental exercise and work.
Neurasthenia, like insanity and other mental states, is divisible into a vast number of varieties, such as hypochondriasis, or crankiness, a demonstrable form of cerebral disease; certain idiosyncrasies, which are purely mental wrecks; the infinite number of forms of neurosis of every organ, gland and structure of the body. The most marked or noted of all forms of neurosis is the sexual – pruritus is very common; painful connection is most distressing; continence or incontinence of urine annoying.
Strange, undefinable sensations amounting to numbness or even pain; inharmonious states, incompatibility, loathing, disgust, complete perversion of the sexual appetite, which gives rise to callousness, imaginary impotency; or farther, where the neurasthenia has progressed to a wiping out of the typical fissures of the brain.
Neurasthenia of Brain, Spinal Cord and Great Sympathetic
A poverty of vital force, a want of nutrition is often applied to tissues or organs when their vitality is impaired, irrespective of any disease of the blood, such as anaemia of a nerve in neuralgia, a starved heart in rheumatism and gout; atrophy of a muscle, owing to an insufficient blood supply; anaemia of the uterus, etc. In cerebral anaemia the quantity of blood in the brain is reduced below the natural standard, or the quality of the circulating fluid is impoverished. In either case the nutrition of the organ is interfered with. In the one case there may be a loss of blood, or the blood cannot permeate the nerve centers, or there may be a lack of blood formation. Insufficient nutrition is the cause of anaemia of the brain, spinal cord and sympathetic, and this may be brought about by worry or struggle for existence, or it may be due to insomnia, to sameness, monotony, isolation, or to irritation reflected, to diseases within the body, or to disorders of digestion or assimilation interfering with nutrition. It is well known that under a condition of worry, sorrow, grief or other depressing passion, the blood becomes poor in quantity and quality from deficient nerve supply, and is unfit to nourish the brain, and the great centers suffer from the shock incidental thereto as well as from poor blood, and with it the whole body suffers.
In cerebral anaemia from impoverished nutrition, there is not only a decrease in the red corpuscles of the blood, but the power of the heart and blood-vessels is lowered; there is a deficiency of the functional energy of all organs, due to a want of blood and innervation; strength of will, vigor of intellect and the vital capacity of execution and determination are impaired, and the individual is capable of no effort. The mental inertia or depression is generally accompanied with lassitude and a feeling of utter incapacity for muscular and mental exertion of any kind.
The causes of anaemia of the nerve-centers are very varied, and embrace to a certain extent a long list of diseases, such as concussions, the action of the sun, chronic inflammation, softening; the action of whiskey, opium, chloral, tobacco; mania, monomania, dementia, melancholia, nervous dyspepsia, hysteria, epilepsy, catalepsy, ecstasy, somnambulism, paralysis, convulsions, headaches, etc., in addition to worry, tire, exhaustion, study, mental strain incessant; masturbation, sexual excesses, deteriorating influences of civilization, overstimulating the nerve power; defective assimilation of brain elements, improper reading, deleterious trades; solitariness or sameness, which wipe out the typical fissures of the brain and thus lower its quality; too early an education, which causes a defective power of assimilation in the brain, protracted inhalation of air deficient in oxygen, whereby the centers are not vitalized. Nerve tire; to which may be added civilization, refinement, culture, which create new and abnormal responsibilities, new anxieties, every one of which brings on additional mental strain. The mind of highly civilized man is ever on the alert. The brain has no rest; nutrition of other tissues is diverted to repair the waste of nerve-tissue, and sooner or later inevitably comes the anaemia or exhaustion. It is undeniable that anaemia of nerve-centers increases with civilization, and that diseases of the brain, spinal cord and ganglionic nerves are alarmingly on the increase.
Among the most prominent of these causes is worry, struggle, real or imaginary; this gives rise to a grave loss of nervous energy and anaemia of nerve-centers. By it the united brain, in tone, strength, capacity is seriously impaired; by its wearying, gnawing, exhausting influence, the organ is devitalized and irretrievably suffers; by it the whole machinery is thrown out of gear, and exercise, recreation and amusement become painful and destructive. The victim of worry is on a precipice; if he escapes, it is something providential. Worry is disorder, and nature abhors it. The energy employed in any pursuit under a state of worry gives a small result and speedily becomes exhausted. Under it the faculty of recuperation is arrested; the failure of the appetite soon takes place and the effort to work is laborious; the task of fixing the attention grows increasingly more difficult; thoughts wander; memory fails; reason becomes feeble; prejudice takes the place of judgment; brain disturbance very apt to supervene and a crash is likely to follow, with mental disquietude and distraction.
Treatment. – In cerebral anaemia our usual medical treatment is almost useless, and this very fact necessitates a complete change of procedure, a change that involves not only great expense but considerable inconvenience, as it involves the removal of the patients from the unwholesome moral atmosphere in which they have been living, away from sympathizing friends and neighbors; by a renewal of the patient’s vitality by baths, brain food, and other nutrition, and causing its assimilation by positive muscular exercise; by resorting to peripheral stimulation, thus stimulating the reflex centers, causing an increased cutaneous circulation, and thus improving nutrition. The treatment is physiological, and up to the latest discoveries in medicine, and involves the following heads:
Seclusion and Rest. – This is absolutely indispensable to carry out the entire treatment in its most minute detail; the entire seclusion of the patients under a competent nurse, and their removal from old scenes, associates, and the morbid atmosphere of invalid habits which encircles them. Unless the patient is entirely removed from the injudicious sympathy and constant waiting on of friends, it is impossible to obtain the necessary control over them which is requisite for a cure. This point is to be made absolute; sever the connection between them even if it seems harsh and strange; no compromise on this point can be made, and if it is impossible to secure the removal, the isolation and perfect seclusion of the patient, better to have nothing to do with the case and its peculiar treatment, for even if they are isolated in a separate room in the same house under a competent nurse and visited by no one but the medical attendant, the case does not do so well as when apart.
There should then be a perfect separation from all moral and physical surroundings; the change is beneficial, and aids immensely in the cure. Following this is rest in bed, absolute repose, no reading, talking, looking at pictures, no sewing or knitting, not even allowed to feed themselves for at least six or eight weeks. Under this condition of rest the whole system becomes regenerated, and new tissues begin to form; it acts like a brain or nerve food; it restores lost energy, refreshes the nerves tired by worry, excitement or strain, and gives renewed vigor to the whole body. After this condition of absolute repose has existed for six or eight weeks, it may be broke or lessened, and then the patient be permitted to sit up several hours daily, and gradually this is to be extended. The old diseased habits are to be discarded and a new life to be inaugurated while the above is being faithfully carried out: the essential part of the treatment is also being fulfilled in the form of –
Massage. – Simultaneously with the condition of seclusion and rest being commenced, this, the really indispensable part of the treatment, should also be inaugurated: the entire surface of the body of the patient morning and evening to be thoroughly sponged off with castile soap and water, and well dried by the nurse, and thus made ready for the massage. This is to be performed by a young, healthy, vigorous person, full of vital force, intelligent, and well posted in his or her work. Massage should be commenced the first day, half an hour in the morning, and same length of time in the afternoon, the duration of time increased daily, until two and a half hours are thus occupied morning and evening, making five hours altogether daily, and after its performance each time, one-half or three-quarters of an hour of electrical manipulation to follow. This massage is to consist in taking a leg and thigh, beginning at the toes, foot, leg up to groin, first rubbing from the extremity up; then grasping the parts between both hands, from foot up, moving each joint as you go along; then a careful, painstaking kneading from the sole of the foot up, manipulating the joints well; this is to be followed by beating or patting with the fingers of both hands coming down on the part at the same time, and the whole to be followed by a rubbing with the points of the fingers, always moving the joints. After one limb has been well done, then the other; then one arm, then the other; the back, and laterally the abdomen, spending upon each a little over half an hour.
Electricity. – This should follow the massage, and is to be used simply as a means of exercising the muscles. The interrupted current should be employed twice daily, from half an hour to three-quarters of an hour. The poles armed with wet sponges squeezed out of salt water, so as to to carry the electricity away down into deep parts, are to be placed on the muscles to be operated on in turn, beginning at the leg and going up, taking each muscle in turn. The sponges with the poles should be placed four inches apart and moved slowly up and down the muscle until it contracts fully and freely. This is somewhat painful and annoying, but is of unquestioned utility in long-standing cases of cerebral anaemia, especially where there is wasting or muscular paralysis. It is not to be used about the neck or head, and it should never be rubbed about indiscriminately, but simply applied to the muscles.
Regimen and Diet. – These form an important and essential part of the cure. All this class of patients are but living skeletons, skin and bone; white, anaemic, wasted, emaciated, neither able to sleep nor walk; suffering a living death, mocked at by ignorant physicians who are too superficial to understand their case. And it is perfectly astonishing to see how the treatment tends to recuperate and rejuvenate them. Once the patient is secluded, it is well to cleanse out the bowels and begin with a milk diet exclusively for a few days. This should be given every two hours in sufficient quantities, which they are able to consume and perfectly assimilate, usually from three to four ounces. After two days of the massage, the amount can be increased to eight or ten ounces, so that within the twenty-four hours from two to three quarts of milk will be consumed. There is no difficulty in getting rid of that quantity even if there are dyspeptic symptoms, for they disappear like magic, and flesh, strength and increased weight are visible to the eye from day to day. As soon as the manipulator reaches five hours of massage and an hour and a half electricity daily, one-half in the morning and the other half in the afternoon, then the diet is to be increased by the following additions, which are greedily taken, thoroughly digested and assimilated into brain, muscle and other tissues. The following schedule will give an imperfect idea of the diet list or something near it:
Every evening during the treatment there should be made beef tea, say a pound and a half of fine lean meat, chopped fine, and water sufficient to obtain ten ounces; this should stand over night, so as to be ready for use at five a. m., when, after the patient is sponged off, a portion of it should be taken with a soda cracker. This meat extract should be seasoned to suit the taste, and parsley, if in season, added to it.
At five a. m., beef extract with cracker, to be followed with a bowl of oatmeal porridge and cream.
At nine o’clock a. m., breakfast, consisting of toast and butter, soft-boiled eggs, corn bread, boiled beefsteak and coffee.
At eleven a. m., milk.
At one p. m., dinner, consisting of boiled white-fish, chicken, mutton chop, broiled beefsteak, vegetables, fruit and cream.
At three p. m., milk, to be followed with massage and electricity for three hours; to be followed with beef extract, fish, biscuit or milk.
In other words, a system of feeding consisting of brain elements, and that to excess.
In this treatment, which is so successful, the massage is the dominant agent, and the question is – How does it work? The vital stimulus of the rubbing, patting, kneading, shampooing, is imparted to the superficial nerves. This passes along the nerve tubes by means of the pulp to the gray matter of the spinal cord, where, by the influence of the ganglion through which it runs, the supply of blood to the nerve cell is regulated. In the cell of the gray matter of the cord a vital electrical condition is established which travels along the spinal cord to the brain, which is toned up and receives more blood. Every rub, every vibratory thrill gives a myriad of tonic phenomena, and causes the anaemic capillaries to become filled with blood rich with brain elements, and a renewal of life in the weakened tissue promoted. This treatment, simple as it looks, needs the supervision of a medical attendant of great skill. The time necessary to accomplish a cure is usually about twelve weeks, unless in old cases of paralysis, which may require a longer period.
Is this treatment reliable? Assuredly it is. Not only reliable, but endorsed by the highest medical authorities, and thousands of hopeless cases of disease have been cured by it. It is no experiment. The nervous system is the controlling agency by which development is perfected, and the animal magnetism of the operator is the mysterious force that rouses it into action. No drug, no remedy whatever can quicken the benumbed and paralyzed limb or faculty like the invigorating stimulus of intellectual animal magnetism. There is an affinity in all cases of debility to absorb or draw from the stronger around, to imbibe their nerve vigor and thus rouse their own dormant activities. The system of cure as laid down above comes right in among a class of diseases in which all remedies fail. For there is no drug or mechanical contrivance that can induce a healthy vibratory action of the nerves with living, thinking matter, and bring a new power to the deadened nerve forces but this.
The disorders of the sympathetic or of the great sympathetic ganglionic system, which in man is so profusely reflected to the face, lungs, heart, spleen, liver, and genito-urinary organs of both sexes, in which the moral nature of man, emotions, desires, affections and passions reside, or what some term his visceral brain or soul, have not as yet been elucidated, and therefore not classified. The immense amount of rich gray matter in the sympathetic ganglia and its connection with the organs of animal life, with the united process of nutrition, blood formation and reproduction, exercise an immense influence on the circulation through the medium of the sympathetic, by which the neuric manipulations are produced, and any deviation from health in any of the organs of chest and abdomen leads to anaemia of cord and brain, especially so if the complex generative system is affected. It may be called reflex irritation, or irritation carried along the sentient gray matter to the cells of the cord, which in time wears them out and the influence of repeated or abnormal vibrations exhausts completely the central cells and the non-vital condition is established, with the weakening and disturbance of the electrical condition of the cord and brain. The superiority of the gray cell of the sympathetic, its intrinsic sentient matter is apparent, its growth and development in man being coeval with his moral responsibility; and when any organ it freely covers is affected, as the uterus, the penis, the left kidney, spleen, mesentery, heart and lungs, then rapid changes do occur on the supervention of the irritation. In such cases we see the rosy hue of the cheeks becoming pale; the graceful gambols of the child giving way to the distortions of chorea; we hear the sad gurgling of the epileptic, or the fierce ravings of mania, or the moanings of melancholia. Once the affections of the sympathetic are classified, we will be better able to treat the diseased manifestations of those organs under ganglionic control.*
*The most brilliant results have been obtained in the treatment and cure of chronic and hitherto deemed incurable, nervous disease, by the use of vitalized massage, electricity, seclusion, rest, over-feeding, glycerite of kephaline, avena sativa. Sanitariums are best adapted for carrying out the treatment in all its details, and affording a complete rejuvenation of the patient. In the United States we have a few which excel, in magnificence in the profound ability of its attending physicians, and in their therapeutic appliances, anything in the world. In the East, The Flower Medical Hotel, 417 Columbus Avenue, Boston, Mass.; in New York State, the Sanitarium of Dr. Gleason, of Elmira; and Dr. Dewey, Clifton Springs; in the West, Prof. Skelton’s Sanitarium, at Bloomfield, Iowa, and Prof. W. T. Burks, M. D., Napa City, California.
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Note that sanitariums were demonized by the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC) when MIC came into existence so as not to be competition with the more profitable drug-based pharmaceuticals. Sanitariums like homeopathic medicine and other forms of natural healing such as herbology were driven out of existence. Obviously the use of electricity in healing was censored even though it was commonly used before the turn of the century.
Sanitariums not to be confused with asylums have also been demonized through the film industry as dark and horrifying places which they were anything but. Sanitariums were at the time a highly respected and recognized way of relieving and curing all kinds of disease and illness.
Excerpt from An Encyclopedia Of The Practice Of Medicine Based On Bacteriology
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