THE great firm of John Murray has just published a volume, New Livers for Old-How to Cure the Incurable, at 7s. 6d. net. It runs to about 380 pages, is well-printed on good paper and tastefully bound, as are all the Murray publications.
Being the author of the volume, I cannot, of course, express an appreciation of it, I am sure the readers of this Journal will be glad to know why it was written and that the book is about.
There are innumerable medical textbooks, orthodox and unorthodox, which discuss the science of diagnosis and the art of healing in an abstract way which is not very illuminating. Science has gravely interfered with the progress of the healing art. Young men who enter the medical profession study medicine and the various sciences connected with it from the scientific point of view, while the practical side is largely neglected.
A young man who has passed his medical examinations with distinction enters sickrooms with fear and trembling, because he has his head filled with scientific notions but has little practical experience. He may be able to discuss calories and vitamins, micro-organisms and enzymes, but he may not be able to bandage a wound, attend a childbirth or give an enema.
In the olden days, boys and young men were apprenticed to a medical man in the same way in which artisans were apprenticed. They accompanied their master to the bedside and, if they were bright, picked up the essentials of treatment in a few months.
I have tried in vain to induce some of my eminent surgical and medical friends to write down their practical experiences, for the guidance of medical men and laymen. One of those whom I urged to do this was my friend and teacher, the late Dr. John H. Clarke. As I could not induce any of the great healers of the present day to write a practical book on how to cure, I reluctantly undertook to write such a book myself, basing it entirely on my own practical experience.
I have come to the conclusion that there are no incurable disease, but, of course, there are incurable patients,. I have seen numerous cancer cures effected by able homoeopaths. The idea that cancer is absolutely incurable is mistaken. Every experienced doctor has seen such miracles happen.
In my latest book, I have described cures of heart disease, migraine, neuralgic headaches, gallstones and kidney stones, gastric and duodenal ulcer, chronic rheumatism and arthritis, exophthalmic goitre, fibroid tumours of the womb, paralysis and disseminated sclerosis, enlarged prostates, etc., etc. All the cures are described, as far as possible, in fullest details, as regards both the dietetic and the medicinal treatment, so as to enable every reader, professional and lay, to profit from any experience.
I do not think for a moment that I have any particular gift, and I imagine that thousands of doctors and laymen ought to do as well as I done or better. I have laid all my cards on the table in the hope of benefiting humanity.
The volume is introduced by the distinguished manipulative surgeon, Sir Herbert Barker, whose name is a household word. He wrote:.
“I have much pleasure in introducing Mr. Ellis Barkers work. I owe much to homoeopathic treatment at Mr. Barkers hands and at the hands of others. Besides, and chiefly, I firmly believe that the methods of treatment discovered by that great medical genius hahnemann are destined before long to be universally recognized and practised by the medical profession, to the great advantage of suffering humanity.
“Of late years orthodox medicine has drifted farther and farther away from Nature. The medical profession seems to be ruled by the surgeon and the laboratory man to a far too great extent. Operations have increased incredibly and, according to some surgeons, many of these are unnecessary and therefore merely mutilations.
“I believe that the art of healing has lost its way and that the future belongs to less risky and more natural measures. The curative powers of wisely chosen natural diet, of air, sunlight, exercise, baths, massage and manipulative surgery are great, especially if, where necessary these natural methods of treatment are reinforced by wisely chosen homoeopathic medicines, which can do much good, as I can testify from long personal experience and which cannot possibly do harm. To these forces, I think, belongs the future of healing.
“The evidence which Mr. Ellis Barker adduces in order to show that very few diseases are incurable, the even the apparently most intractable maladies can be treated and cured is so overwhelming that one is irresistibly imbued with the enthusiasm and conviction which carry the author through chapter after chapter after chapter of his amazing work, and I can only say, as Sir Arbuthnot Lane said of his former book on cancer, that the present volume is a very remarkable production indeed.
“Just such a work as Mr. Ellis Barker has written was never more clamantly called for and more urgently needed than at the present time, when cancer, heart disease and many other maladies are destroying ever-increasing numbers. The oft-times unsatisfactory methods employed by medicine and surgery should be replaced by saner, safer and far more efficacious therapeutic measures.
Mr. Ellis Barker has such truly encyclopedic knowledge of his subject, such a catholicity of understanding and so high a degree of analytical and selective acumen as to render him superlatively fitted to write the book I have the honour to present to the world.
“Humanity already owes the author a very heavy debt of gratitude for other literary efforts. His latest work will only increase the publics obligation to this most able most worthy disciple of the famous founder of homoeopathy.”.
An ideal antiseptic for use in the preservation a food would be a chemical substance which killed or restrained micro-organisms without altering the character of the food and yet was harmless to the human consumer of the food. Such a substance has not yet been discovered.
All the chemical preservatives in common use have a definite physiological (natural) action on the human body, and many of them in large doses are poisonous. They must be employed, therefore, only i such quantities as will be injurious to microbes without being injurious to man. Dr. C. DUKES, The Bacteriology of Food.
James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.