HOW TO BE ALWAYS WELL IV



“He finally adopted my diet and we rode the distance from Rochester, N.Y., to Toronto in two and a half days, a distance of 225 miles. We made the ride from Rochester to Buffalo in one day, a distance of ninety miles, against a violent head wind and on a holiday. And he who has ever bicycled on the motor-thronged American highways, on a holiday, will know what we were up against.

Heavily laden bicycles, thronged highways, wind so strong, head on, that often we were forced to the speed of a slow walk, make strenuous going, yet we made ninety miles. We then completed our run to Toronto in one and a half days, arriving home exactly at noon, June 1st, nineteen days out, during which we covered 1,300 miles.

“Let me say that my competitor was a former bicycle racer in England, that he had never ceased to ride a wheel; that I had not ridden a wheel for over thirty years, that I had only ridden ninety-seven miles about Toronto in preparation for the contest, and that I completed our contest upon a second-hand bicycle for which I paid 22.00 dollars.

“Let me say, too, I never was so fit in my life my life as when I returned, and I have inserted a photo taken on my return as evidence of that fitness.

“Now this young man was thirty and I was sixty-five. He was of the long, slender, lithe, red-haired, grey-eyed, tireless type. He was a practised cyclist, thirty pounds lighter, thirty-five years younger. Why did he not win? The answer is, largely food – natural food – and a natural living regimen.

His food consumed his energy. Mine imparted energy. His food intoxicated or poisoned his tissues, loaded them with fatigue poisons and devitalized them. Mine energized and sustained my tissues and vitalized them.

“I am inclined to be as good a sport as he was and I, therefore, am of the belief that if he had used my diet he would have run away from me.

“Now, I do not tell these things in any spirit of boastfulness or vain gloriousness. I tell them only as an evidence of what may be accomplished by anyone whose organs are not so far diseased as to be beyond the possibility of recovery by natural means.”.

“The people are not looking to the doctors for advice about how to live so as to be and remain well. The people simply wish to follow the dictates of their sweet wills as to living habits and pay the doctor to get them relieved from the sad results of such living habits, not by telling them what to do but by giving them something to take, so that they may keep on with their folly- devised habits.

“A few years ago I had a rather startling demonstration of this fact. A clergyman had been sent to me by another physician. He came over a thousand miles to consult me. He seemed unusually intelligent and I thought I could take the chance to tell him how to live himself into wellness. Notwithstanding that my waiting room was filled with waiting patients, I took two hours to tell him how it might be done.

When he had finally taken his leave and was outside in the corridor, he almost immediately poked his head back inside the door and said: By the way, doctor, do I owe you anything for this? I motioned for him to come in and then I said: Sit down for a minute. Now, just why do you ask me whether you owe anything? His reply was: Well, I don;t just know, but – I suppose it was because you – didnt give me anything.

I said” I suppose if I had looked at your tongue, felt your pulse, palpated your abdomen, asked you a few questions and written you a prescription in Latin youd have been quite pleased to pay me dollar 1.00 to 10.00, even if the prescription cost you another 3.00 dollars? Yes, I suppose I would, he replied. To this I replied: But because I have spent two hours of my time and a lot of my other patients time trying to teach you how to become well and remain well by simply taking Gods medicine that costs nothing, you think I am not entitled to any remuneration? His reply was, O, I never thought of that.

So you see what the medical man is up against. The average patient who goes to a doctor would, if he were given simply good-living to a doctor would, if he were given simply good-living advice, go immediately to another doctor with some sense who would give him something to take. I know, for I have been through the sad experience.

It had always been my fortune, good or bad, that I would try to follow my convictions. I had been a most consistent follower of the conventional medical treatment. If I felt depressed I took a stimulant drug. If I felt nervous I took a sedative drug. If I was constipated I took laxative. If I had a headache and was constipated, I took a purgative or cathartic drug. If I suffered from indigestion, I took pepsin and hydrochloric acid or, perhaps, pancreatin or a bitter tonic or an alkali drug, all depending upon the manifestations or symptoms. If I had a cold I took a drastic purge and quinine or belladonna or both.

If I did not sleep I took a hypnotic drug. If I had rheumatism, and I very often had, I took some of the salicylates or some other drug. For high blood pressure, I took the iodides, or other drugs. For my frequent headaches I took some of the coal-tar derivatives or some proprietary migraine tablets. Needless to say, I constantly had one, some, or many of these maladies, really manifestations of one huge physical or physiological disturbance which we doctors had worked out to be manifestations of certain pathological states to which we gave the conventional disease names with which medical art tags these pathological states.”

“I had brought premature old age upon myself. I was dying of old age in what ought to have been middle life. Twenty-five years later I am youthful, vigorous, forward-looking and feel as if I were really just beginning my career, which I actually think is true.

“How did I do it? First of all I corrected my diet, as I shall outline in a later chapter. But I also corrected my exercise habits – rather my habit of not exercising. For many years I had saved myself all I could by refusing to use my energy for any purpose other than just living and doing those physical acts necessary in my attempts make a living. I believed I needed all my energy to keep my organs going. I had not then realized that my vital organs were really vitalized by vigorous exercise of my voluntary muscles in the out of doors, as nature intended them to be.

“I now changed my entire regimen of living. I began by easy stages to get rid of the layers of impeding clothing with which I had insulated my body against the environment. Coincidentally, I began to accustom my skin to cool air contacts and daily baths, at first by sponging the skin with tepid water in a well-aired, previously ventilated room, as already described.

Then I began to open the window a little, top and bottom, and take just a little rapidly-moving physical exercise, at first in bed, then later out of bed, consisting mostly of quickly rubbing the skin with the palms of my hands and slapping it until it tingled, rising on my tiptoes several times and settling slowly back to the soles of my feet. Standing back two and a half feet from a wall and with my palms against the wall, allow my body to fall towards the wall until my chest almost touched it, then push the body back again to arms length from the wall.

Standing with back to mirror and trying to turn the body so as to look my reflection directly in the eyes without moving the feet on floor. Standing with the feet about eight to ten inches apart, hands on sides just above the hip bones, bending the body forward, then, keeping it bent, swing it around to the right side, then on around to the back and on around towards the left side to the point of starting. Then I reversed the movement. A little later I began bending body as far over to the right side as i could, trying to touch the outer side of leg as far below knee as I was able, with my finger tips.

At the same time I threw my left arm and hand upward and over my head. I then reversed the movement. Then I began bending forward trying to touch my toes without bending my knees. I then began opening my window wider, for it was summer time, and, lying flat on my back on my bed, I crossed my arms in front and, grasping each arm just above the elbow with the opposite hand and drawing forcibly upon my arms, I at the same time raised the body to a sitting posture.

Then I slowly allowed my body to resume the recumbent position. In short, I gradually evolved a whole series of movements calculated to develop every muscular group in the body, but I devoted especial care to exercises that developed the muscles about the waist and the abdominal muscles. This was for the good reason that the waist and abdominal muscles are auxiliary supports for all of the intra-abdominal organs. When they are relaxed the abdominal organs often sag and the circulation in them is impaired and this cannot but tend to impair function.

“No need to take more room to describe these exercises, as any good enough ones for all purposes, and I shall describe my whole system in chapter thirty-nine.

Robert G. Jackson
Dr. Robert G. Jackson, was born in 1867. In 1903, he took admission in Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia.
In 1914, when Dr. Robert G. Jackson M.D. was in his 40s, he developed a severe case of arthritis (probably rheumatoid arthritis) and when he was 49, his doctors gave him four years to live. He refused to accept the diagnosis and began to exercise more and sleep with his bedroom windows open. Long before such things were popular, he developed a health food diet of fruits, vegetables and his own line of health foods including Roman Meal bread. This bread was fashioned after the multi-grain bread ate by the Roman legions and included wheat, barley, oats, spelt and rye. Disease,” he said, “was due solely to man’s stupidity.”

Jackson started the Roman Meal Co. to manufacture his special diet foods. He went on lecture tours where he attracted large audiences. He bragged that “I am growing younger every year.” By 1930, at age 72, and in good health, he was a millionaire. He died in 1941 from complications of a broken hip. Roman Meal bread is still available in the United States.