“Dispense with moderation food to the body and to the mind repose. One must choose in all things a mean just and good.”.
These lines from the Golden Verses of Pythagoras were probably written around 700 B.C. Twenty-seven centuries have gone but the Golden Verses still shine in all their splendor, teaching the highest ethics and affording a complete program for daily living which, if we would only follow, would transform this earth into a paradise.
With all due respect for Hahnemanns psora theory and for some of the theories of modern medical science we must none the less admit than man collectively, if not apparently always individually, is his own destroyer and the creator of his own misery. We must look within, not without for the essential causes of disease.
The unrestrained mind follows desire and what do we find? Excesses on every hand. The purpose of food is to build, nourish and sustain the body, but how many of us confine our eating to the real needs of our daily living? Excesses in food and drink and perversions of the appetite will in time over-tax the organs of elimination and dam up the tissues. Slowly and insidiously the process goes on, the gouty joints, the enlarged liver, the obesity, the did not come in a day.
Many are the factors that go to make up the totality of the environment, that terrible something that keeps humanity seemingly almost in chains, enslaved and ensnared in the tangled web of destiny.
But there is a brighter side after all. It is not only the wealthy and the leisure class who can control their environment- and most of them make a terrible mess of it, each individual has it in his power every day to make more or less modification and improvement in himself and in his daily living. Man is a creature of habit first, last and all the time. He is routine in the extreme, routine in everything he thinks and does. It is well to step out of the rut once in a while and and walk up the hill alone and in silence. Improvements can be made, the daily grind can be modified, the diet can be changed, habits can be corrected. The trouble is not one will do all these fine things for us.
Some of the great philosophers have eaten neither meat nor fish nor flesh of any kind. They have refused to shed the blood of any creature either in person or by proxy. Partaking of the herbs of the field and he pure fresh fruits of the tree and vine they have cleansed and purified their bodies, rendering them more worthy vehicles for the higher expression of the mind and spirit. On the other hand we read of savage and barbarian chieftains drinking the blood and eating the flesh of their greatest enemies to increase and augment their own daring and ferocity.
Was this entirely a superstition? There is evidence to show that food can affect man not only physically but mentally and morally as well. in certain championship prize fights where a predetermined weight has to be reached to prevent disqualification, after the official weighing-in ceremonies, the contender, who has been running it off and sweating-in ceremonies, the contender, who has been running it off and sweating it off, has been promptly treated to a generous quantity of beef broth and to a large, very rare beef steak.
Why the meat and the broth? why not give him apple sauce and whipped cream? Can it be that the trainer and his advisers think it could possibly make a difference in this the twentieth century? “Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed that he is grown so great?”.
There are certain soils which just meet the nutritional requirements of the natural flora which thrive thereon. The flora has adapted itself to the soil and the climate and in turn the natural fauna of any region has adapted itself to the available flora. Thus there is a correlation between the soil, the flora and the fauna, an interdependence as it were, a circulation between the mineral, the vegetable and the animal kingdoms.
It has been observed and the wild creatures, when there is an abundance of their natural food, are mixed eaters only to a very slight degree. There is apparently in most cases some one food of choice and doubtless that food is best adapted to the needs of the organisms which feed upon it. As the supply of this nutriment becomes more and more limited there is noticed a gradually increasing consumption of the next food in the order of preference and so on until is reached where articles ordinarily rejected will be consumed with avidity, but there is a limit-some apparently valuable foods will remain untouched even to the point of starvation and death.
Eugene passed away at his country home on Spring Hill, Tuscarora Township, Bradford County, PA. He had been in ill health for several months. His wife, the former Caroline Davis, whom he had married in Philadelphia in 1910, had passed away in 1961. They spent most of their marriage lives in Swarthmore, PA.
Dr. Underhill was a member of the United Lodge of Theosophy, a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, and the Pennsylvania Medical Society. He was also the editor of the Homœopathic Recorder.