AS A REMEDY.

Under the auspices of the Technology Club there was a meeting of about 100 of New York’s most eminent doctors held a few evenings ago at the offices of Dr. —— to listen to a lecture on the subject of radium, and to consider and demonstrate as far as possible the application of this strange metal to the curing of disease. The opening remarks of the noted physician who was entertaining the assembly were as follows:

“There is nothing dawning upon the profession with more certainty than that medicine as a curative agent is passing. The most learned men are depending less and less each year upon drugs as a means of combating disease. The best men in the profession are changing both their views and their practice. For many hundred years consumption has been treated with drugs, and nobody has ever been cured by them. To-day we send patients into the open air, where they are kept winter and summer, sleeping in tents, and they get well.”

We are perfectly willing to accept this statement as true. We are willing also to believe that all disease is a mere result of violating natural law, and that the only true remedy is found in obedience. We believe that foods occupy the same place in building a man that bricks, iron, stone and timber do in building a house. We believe that the kind of material (foods) used will determine to a very large extent the kind of man you will have when you get him done.

We believe further that the kind of material with which you keep him repaired and fed will determine wholly whether he will be sick or well. If “more than 90 per cent. of all human ills have their origin in the stomach and intestinal organs, and are caused by incorrect habits of eating and drinking,” then those human ills certainly can be cured by removing the cause and selecting such foods as will counteract these abnormal conditions.

In combating this tremendous per cent. of disease, we must depend upon foods in their natural or elemental state, because their food and chemical properties have not been changed. We know—or should know what they are. We cannot rely upon foods whose chemical properties and nutritive values have been changed and dissipated by heat.

The change that has taken place in them is measured entirely by the amount of heat to which they have been subjected. Certain protoplasmic or plant life is destroyed at 145 degrees F. This destruction continues on up to 212, the boiling point. If the article is removed then, and put into an oven or a dry heat, it can be carried on up to 300 or 400 degrees, where it becomes a mere bit of ashes or charcoal,—totally destroyed.

At every step on the way from 145 degrees to 400 degrees the article becomes of less and less value as food, and less and less reliable as a remedy or an element of construction of tissue and builder of life.

We know that indigestion, our national ill, can be cured by the proper selection of uncooked foods. We know that constipation, its consequence, can also be cured by their use. We know that irritation of the mucous membrane or lining of the stomach, that hyperpeptia, or fermentation, and the desire for over-eating can all be cured by the use of uncooked foods. We know that where there is no indigestion, fermentation and constipation in the motive machinery of the body, the blood is pure and rich, and that pure blood builds every organ and inch of the body to its highest capacity.

We know that, as compared with cooked foods, it only takes about half the quantity of uncooked food to sustain life.

We believe that with these evils eliminated from the human system the ninety per cent. of ills referred to would nearly all disappear.

In treating abnormal conditions which we are pleased to call disease, by proper feeding, it requires the knowledge of a food expert—one who is acquainted with the chemical properties and the process of the conversion of food into energy in the human body.

For instance, a great majority of stomach troubles are caused by the eating of too many starchy foods. This causes hyperpeptia, or fermentation. The consumption of too much starch also causes calcareous or limy deposits to collect in the 2,000 miles of tubing in the body called veins, capillaries and arteries. These deposits create stiffness and rigidity in the joints and muscles.

This condition is specially manifest in the morning, after the body has lain in a horizontal position for six or eight hours. This condition marks the real difference between youth and age. It can be remedied by the elimination of cereal starch from the dietary and the substitution of such foods as will be remedial and counter-active.

In foods can be found nearly every chemical and medicinal element that is contained in medicines, and in this form they can be taken as nature intended them, instead of being extracted, concentrated, and rendered artificial and unnatural, as nearly all medicines are.

In none of the varied forms of matter on this globe is the warfare of construction and destruction more seriously waged than in the human body. What we call health is but a condition where the powers of construction are made to excel the powers of destruction. By correct eating and the pursuit of natural habits, this condition can be maintained for a great number of years; but when we aid the forces of destruction by taking into the body such things as tea, coffee, tobacco, distilled and ardent spirits, and the host of table condiments that are in daily use, all of which possess only the elements of destruction, we must not be disappointed when we find ourselves devoid of energy and vitality and landed well over into the great throng of the diseased.