HEALTH AND PLAIN LIVING


To ensure this we should by exercise ensure that every muscle and part of our wonderful bodies are made use of. They were all given us for a purpose, and we cannot possess anything in this world for long that we do not make use of, that will not eventually cease to be of any service to us.


DUMAS wrote : “I firmly believe God gave as much attention to every animal he endowed with life-as He did to man.” To believe this will prove other than detrimental to each one of us, and help us to see a greater meaning and vision in the commands : “Thou shalt not kill” and “Do unto others as ye would they do unto you”, and the longer one lives and proves by their living that animal food is quite unnecessary, they should more and more become living examples that Health and Plain Living go together.

There is, however, no more wonderful machine than our digestive organs, and they often receive less thought, care and attention than we give to any other. If this is the case, how can we expect that mistakes will not be made ?.

In A Modern Utopia, H.G. Wells wrote : “In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughter-houses. And in a population that is all educated, and at about the same level of physical refinement, it is practically impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. We never settled the hygienic aspect of meat-eating at all. This other aspect decided us. I can still remember as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughterhouse.”.

This may require faith to believe, but it is the poetic realization of the good time that is to be, when Perfect Health through Plain Living will have become a reality. It would have been quite as hard, however, to have got the writers grandfather, who was living in the Isle of Wight, to have believed that the time would come when it would be possible for him or others to speak from England to his brother residing in California, and for a conversation thus to take place.

Faith, however, has removed this mountain of difficulty of the past, and will yet remove greater difficulties in the future. I remember my grandfather being thoroughly upset by receiving from this same brother a typewritten letter, the first he had ever seen his expressed complaint being that if his brother had not regard enough for him to write him a letter with his own hand, he would rather not receive a letter from him at all.

Regarding mistakes, one of the saddest cases I ever knew brought this truth friends I ever had, and a staunch Vegetarian. He was over seventy when he died, although his mother never thought she would rear him. I had never known him to be ill. At his funeral, through his son, I was surprised to learnt that the had died through having suffered for many years with constipation in spite of the fact that he had always been a very plain liver.

White flour, white rice, white bread and such like impoverished foods were the cause of all the trouble, while neither father nor son appeared to know the reason why and the doctors who had attended him asked no questions, and doubtless were quite as ignorant as they, that living on such starchy lop-sided foods had brought about the trouble. As my beloved friends was the only one in the family who was a Vegetarian and I believed he had made a confident of me, that funeral left to me sad memories. Although I was of the opinion that plain food had added at least fifty years to his life, I believed he should have lived many years longer.

Although I have heard of many such like sad cases since, I have received, I am pleased to say, many letters of thanks from those living in all stations of life, to the effect that “Once they were ill, now they are well.” Plain Living had done it, combined with faith and a determined spirit to attain unto health and fitness.

With the first warning bell, dont rush off to consult the nearest doctor. Do your best to remedy matters yourself and most likely the need for a doctor will have disappeared. If, however, the knowledge you possess, together with the help that a Diet Guide for every complaint may render, as supplied with Health Food Manufacturers catalogue, prove insufficient to bring about the desired results, dont think drugs will remedy matters, but consult a Homoeopathic or Nature Cure doctor in whom you have every faith, giving him, in common fairness to both him and follow hid advice and instructions.

Before doing this, however, be determined you will do your part, by wise feeding. right exercising, etc., to secure a clean body inside and out. With such a body pure blood only can flow through its veins, which does not provide suitable lodgement for any disease or complaint. This fact solves many apparent misunderstandings. We dont by chance catch common colds, influenza or any of the 101 complaints or “diseases”. Neither is the prime cause of lumbago owing to the fact that we happened to stoop once too often to lace up our shoes.

It is the unsatisfactory condition of our bodies which brings about the trouble. These are only different methods we force Nature to take to throw off the impurities that may have been accumulating for many weeks, months, years or perhaps the greater part of a lifetime. Regarding which we may have received endless unheeded warnings. In spite of this, when the day of reckoning comes the victim thinks Nature is very unkind.

Plain Living and Health follow each other, but Plain Living must be put into practice. It is of no use trusting to heredity for help.

One of the many tendencies we may inherit is being troubled with the presence of phlegm ; we may blame the fog, wind or the cold wintery weather for bringing about the trouble, but it is not. these only force Nature to get rid of the trouble named. Our business is to do our part by working with Nature to remove and prevent the accumulation of same on the inside linings of our bodies, as we should any other disfigurement on the outside where it can be seen or not seen by the eyes of others. To do this a restricted diet of sweet things and starches will greatly help.

Another is lumbago. It is useless blaming the stooping to lace up ones shoes for the trouble when too late, but with the slightest pain in the spine do anything and everything as instructions previously given in “HEAL THYSELF” to remove the accumulated impurities by creating perfect circulation by friction, which will prevent endless trouble and pain arising later. One other help is a rubber hot water bottle. Place the bottle over the affected part, and change the position, if you remain awake long enough, to any and all others where you may have received the slightest warning that all is not as it should be.

Good Engineers not only stroke their fires with the right fuel, but they see that their machines have unrestricted play. Our bodies surely deserve equal care and attention.

PLAIN LIVING, however, is something more than a question of eating and drinking. I think it is learning how to work with Nature instead of against.

To ensure this we should by exercise ensure that every muscle and part of our wonderful bodies are made use of. They were all given us for a purpose, and we cannot possess anything in this world for long that we do not make use of, that will not eventually cease to be of any service to us.

NERVOUS DISEASES. As the writer was born a bundle of nerves, he has much to be thankful for in having adopted Plain Living many years ago. He was surprised recently, however to read the opinion with statistics to support it, of an eminent doctor, that Nervous Debility accounted for 75 per cent. of the total diseases. There was also mentioned the fact that this state of things had so affected a Harley Street practitioner that he had decided to change his medical profession for that of the ministry.

Following this might be quote the opinion of another medical man recently reported in the daily press, which read as follows : “So few are the diseases we can really cure that one is tempted to believe that if all doctors went on strike for a year, the effect on the death-rate would be inappreciable. In most cases of illness the doctor is really a mental poultice ; he is a source of comfort, confidence and consolation to the patient and his friends ; but if he is honest with himself he will admit that the number of patients who would have died but for his attendance is lamentably small.

James Henry Cook
Henry W.J. Cook was born in Edinburgh in 1870, the eldest son of Dr Edmund Alleyne Cook.

Henry followed in his father's footsteps, obtaining his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from Durham in 1891. At the age of 27 he arrived in Melbourne in April 1894 aboard the Port Albert. He was registered as a medical practitioner in Victoria on 4 May 1894.

It appears that Dr Cook already believed in homœopathy, possibly because of his father's influence, as in 1895 Dr Cook took the position of Resident Surgeon of the Melbourne Homœopathic Hospital . (This position was previously held by Dr James Cook, unrelated, who resigned in March 1895). He was listed in the 1896 & 1897 editions of the Melbourne Post Office Directory as being Resident Medical Officer at the Melbourne Homœopathic Hospital, but not in the 1898 edition.

In 1901 he moved to Sale in Eastern Victoria, where he ran a practice in York Street. By 1909 his practice was at Wyndham Street, Shepparton.

By 1919 he had moved to 2 Studley Park Road, Kew, where he died on 7 May, 1923.