MAN AND HIS AILMENTS


MAN AND HIS AILMENTS. Environment varies on different parts of the globe. He, who can and does adjust himself to his environment, has the best health. This he must be taught to do, however, I believe that the most important environment to which we must adjust ourselves is that of climate or temperature.


We have gathered here today for various purposes: some come to meet old friends, some for a vacation, some to enjoy the beauty of Swampscott, some for the serious purpose of learning from others a little more about the wonderful system of curative medicine which is called Homoeopathy. Some come, as I do, to try to leave with you anything of value which I might have learned in the past fifty years. In the beginning, I looked forward with visions of and hopes for great accomplishments in fighting the many diseases to which mankind was heir. I now look backward to try to find why we have failed to promote and spread the great scientific method of curative medicine of which we are representatives.

I look back over the years and review not only my own mistakes but those of my friends and co-workers. Our mistakes have not been in our belief in and use of the homoeopathic system, but in our careless thinking, which in turn was due to contamination by the old, established fallacies of orthodox medicine. We, individually, but mostly collectively, were not strong enough to ignore the nonsense with which they overwhelmed us.

Our weakness lay in the fact that few of us realized the nature of mans illness. We still carried in our souls the fear and dread of disease that was handed down to us by our ancestors. We were not reassured, either, by the teachings we received at medical school. And so we took our dread of disease and diagnosis too seriously, and our small doses of medicine not seriously enough.

We seemed to have ignored nature and the vital force entirely and were too often led astray by good, strong drugs which were advertised to be able to knock out and kill any invading disease. We were thus able to be seduced because of our ignorance,to put it plainly; and I mean our lack of knowledge of what sickness actually is. I did not know years ago as I do know now that sickness is unnatural; that it is more difficult to get sick than to remain healthy.

I look back on orthodox medical history and am amazed by its awful blunders. It is almost inconceivable that the great, orthodox medical profession could be guilty of all the crime it has committed through the ages to and including today.

Orthodox medicine today is a greater menace to mankind than is disease. The American public is lured through enticing and alluring advertising, aided and abetted by the family physicians, into buying one thousand million dollars worth of drugs per year- and not a curative medicine among them. As a direct result of this we have in the United States a constantly increasing population of chronic sick which has now reached the number of forty-five million when there should be no chronic sick at all. Nothing like this has ever before obtained in all history, as far as I can determine.

These chronic illness are practically incurable because they are for the most part artificially produced by drugs. This provides a backlog of customers which will keep the family doctors and specialists busy indefinitely. These doctors are not prescribing any curative remedies because they know nothing about medicines that cure. Their job is to palliate as successfully as possible. This in turn makes more incurables–thus establishing a vicious circle.

Sickness of Man

“Sickness to which man is heir”–how often one hears that expression. How silly! Mankind is not heir to any sickness. Mankind can make himself sick, yes; but it is his own doing. If he does it once we can forgive him; if he does it over and over, he is a fool. Sickness of mankind are all so very simple, all self-limited, recovering without help but brooking no interference by meddling doctors. Nature always welcomes help; but it must be real help.

Nature abhors a hostile environment, be it natural or artificial. Whether it concerns temperature, nutrition or social conditions, if one violates natural rules which interfere with the process of living, Nature immediately begins the process of protection and recovery; and in so doing produces certain varied symptoms which the medical profession is prone to call a disease, the name of which is determined by the kind and location of these symptoms.

The allopath, having decided on a name, proceeds to give whatever kind of drug happens to be in style at the moment. The homoeopath is not interested in applying any name, he is guided by the symptoms alone to the choice of the curative remedy. Within a few hours the patient is well along the road to recovery, the cost of the medicine being about a fraction of a penny.

The allopathic drug, however temporarily stylish, interferes with Nature, gives her a double job of curing the original ailment and of getting the drug out of the sick body, all at a cost of many dollars and many days and sometimes, only too often, death to the patient.

Environment varies on different parts of the globe. He, who can and does adjust himself to his environment, has the best health. This he must be taught to do, however, I believe that the most important environment to which we must adjust ourselves is that of climate or temperature.

Man is a warm-blooded animal. In order to live and to stay healthy he must always be warm. The Creator of man in His own good judgement did not provide hair, feathers, or any other heat- conserving covering for a nice, soft, tender skin. He did provide an intelligence which should enable man to provide protection for himself. I presume man emerged on the earth when it was nice and warm.

That kind of climate should be mans natural habitat. Most animals remain in their natural habitat, but man wants to investigate, he wants to roam, he wants to migrate; and so we find him in all sorts of places and all sorts of climates and wearing an assortment of clothing, some of it suitable, some of it unsuitable. The first thing which man provides for himself when in a strange place is shelter and heat. Man must be kept warm. His body temperature must be at 98 degrees or trouble begins. Not only his whole body, but his extremities must be kept warm.

Failure to keep warm will disturb vital equilibrium in varying degrees. The symptoms which Nature produces in her curative process may range from what is diagnosed a common cold to such conditions as bronchitis, pneumonia, cerebro-spinal meningitis, infantile paralysis, rheumatism, acute Brights disease, myalgias, headaches, tonsillitis, mastoiditis, etc. So you see how important it is keep warm. Nature provides an automatic heat regulator which in a suitable climate is all that is needed to maintain proper body temperature. It is called the vaso-motor system and the primary action is to control the flow of perspiration through the pores of the skin. Uncontrolled, the body temperature has a tendency to rise.

The evaporation of the sweat has a cooling effect, just as any wet surface is cooled by evaporation. Now, the sweat contains the most deadly of all poisons produced by the body. I think they are sometimes called histamines. Most people think the bowels and kidneys take care of all the body poisons. They little realize how important it is to keep the skin functioning properly. Nature seems to fear cold more than she does poison. At the first threat of cold the vaso- motor system automatically shuts down the excretion of sweat and therefore the poisons are not eliminated in the natural and proper way.

Some other organ has to assume this burden. How quickly the warning signs may be observed: a sneeze, a tickling in the throat, a tickling cough, then discharge from the nose. Then, unless the environment is corrected, a chill ensues, followed by headache, fever and a lot of other symptoms which will later determine the so-called naming of the disease, in other words a diagnosis. These symptoms, or diagnosis, may vary in different persons in the same hostile environment. They will seldom be exactly the same and so ensues several different diagnoses, all from the same cause.

The true cause will seldom be recognized but will be laid to some germ or virus that the patient has picked up. Now, if people only knew how and why they become sick, they could guard against getting into trouble; but, when they are convinced that germs and viruses which they cannot see or feel are responsible, they are helpless.

Marcel Proust said, “Nature hardly seems capable of giving us any but quite short illnesses, but Medicine has annexed to itself the art of prolonging them.”

All people do not die from taking the miracle drugs and antibiotics but, if they do live,let me assure you that they live in spite of them. However, they are loud in their praises of the wonderful new drug that saved their lives.

Just recently, a group of physicians autopsied a group of five people who had been treated for upper respiratory tract “infections” by penicillin, aureomycin, terramycin, chloromycin, streptomycin. A fungus growth called candida albicans was found in blood, lungs, kidney and heart muscle.

I saw patients die within three hours after taking sulfa and have seen them linger on for three years and then die. I have seen death follow penicillin. I have seen many long drawn-out cases following the same drug. But, will these known facts stop the use of these murderous drugs?

Alonzo J Shadman