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Wallace D. Wattles Ultimate Collection — Chapter-91: Scientific Living and Healing
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- Note: Work: New Science of Living and Healing, section 4 of 9.
SCIENTIFIC LIVING AND HEALING. Table of Contents NOT MANY THINGS are harder to over come than the persistent auto- suggestion that life is of material origin, and that vital power comes from food. It takes a great deal of argument to make the average man (especially if he is a woman) understand that his strength is renewed in sleep, and that he grows weaker, not stronger by eating. Possibly not many of our readers are firmly grounded in this faith as yet; I shall have to argue it a little further for you, even at the risk of repeating myself. Let me call your attention, first, to the fact that loss of appetite nearly always accompanies severe sickness. Now, if strength comes from food, why does nature “go back on us” just when we need strength most? Why does she not make the sick man ravenous with hunger, as she does the woodchopper? The latter needs food in large quantities to replace the tissues destroyed by his strenuous toil; he has digestive power, and hunger is given to him. Why should not hunger be given to the sick man, so that he can generate vital power from the food, build up his strength and get well? The appetite is taken away in severe sickness because nature needs all her power for the work of restoring normal conditions, and there is none to spare for the labor of digestion. The digestion of food is work, and hard work; the sick man's brain has not the power for it. So nature says, “Keep out; we are busy inside; when we are ready for food we will let you know.” Sick horses never eat; but sick people-—or at least their friends and physicians— seldom have horse sense. When the appetite is taken away it is considered a sign that nature requires “light” foods; or that the earth should be ransacked for tempting dainties to create an appetite; whereas, nature simply wants to be let alone. Food given when the tongue is coated and the appetite gone is seldom digested; it
decomposes, and the condition within the stomach of the unfortunate one becomes something horrible to think about; a putrid, poisonous mass, the dreadful odor of which can often be distinguished throughout a large apartment The person who fasts loses weight, but the loss all falls upon those tissues which can best be spared; and even in death by starvation, the brain and nervous system lose no weight at all. That is, the brain eats up the other tissues; and death does not come until the skeleton condition is reached, and there is nothing more for the brain to absorb. The brain must be sustained; when there is no other food it draws its nourishment from the body itself. The sick man loses in weight by just this process; and it is the intention of nature that he should do so. I am not speaking of the sick man who has hunger, you understand, but of the severely sick one who has none. Nature desires his brain to live on its stored-up resources for a few days; she wants to economize power. And if you feed him he generally keeps right on losing weight; and the more you feed the faster he loses which is proof positive that he does not assimilate food. If he did, how could he lose weight? He lies still, and is not destroying any tissue; if he assimilated food he could not fail to gain in weight. And, I repeat, the patient who is fed generally loses weight and strength faster than the one who eats nothing at all; proving that the disposition of the food is a tax on his energy. It would be as logical, and as scientific, to set the sick man chopping wood as to feed him; working his stomach is as bad for him as working his arms would be. Even when the sickness is chronic, and there if some appetite, the greatest care should be used not to overeat. Where little or no exercise is taken, the amount of food required is very small indeed, and there is nothing to gain and everything to lose by eating more than is readily assimilated. Very, very many invalids are kept weak and low because their brain power is wasted by overeating; sick or well, if you are eating more than is required to maintain your body you are robbing yourself of vital power, and charging your system with deadly poison besides. In case of severe sickness, do not offer the patient food nor mention it in his presence; put him in a cool, airy room and make him as comfortable as possible; give him a chance to sleep; do not let him be talked to, or fussed over; keep out the neighbors, the doctor and the preacher; and if the disease is curable, he will get well. The scientific use (or non-use, as the case may be) of air, water, food, exercise, sleep and thought will cure any disease that is curable at all. Be sure you do not mention food until the sick one asks for it with well-
developed hunger. Do not fear that he will suddenly starve to death, and drop off all in a minute when your back is turned. He will starve faster if you feed him than if you do not. Trust nature; when she is ready for food she will let you know. If the sickness is not severe, and there is little appetite, bear in mind that the way to conserve brain power is to eat no more than is actually demanded, and that a sick person, who exercises little needs very little indeed. One egg makes a pretty fair day's ration for the average sick person—even for one who is “up and around”; and if most of the sick who art trying to eat all they can, and racking their brains and those of their friends to think of “something they can eat,” would cut their day's food down to one egg, or its equivalent in weight and value, they would surprise themselves and their doctors by an immediate gain in weight and strength. Save your brain power, and get strong and well. Let us now give a little thought to the phenomena we see in the class of diseases called catarrhal—coughs, colds, hayfevers, etc. In many cases an enormous quantity of matter is expectorated or discharged; and the question I wish to press upon you is, Where does it all come from? Clearly, nothing can come out of the body through the mouth, which has not been put into it -, and as things are generally put into the body through the mouth, is it not apparent that what is blown out of the head must have gotten into the body by way of the stomach? Is it not an unavoidable conclusion that catarrhal discharges are taken from the food consumed; that they are simply food matter gone wrong? If there is a discharge from the body we know that one of two things must be true; either the tissues are breaking up and coming away, or the discharge comes from the dining tables. This is the process of “taking cold.” A pound of food is needed in the system, and we eat, say, two pounds. Digestion being good, the whole quantity is taken into the blood. Nature has use for only one pound, and she uses that, repairing bone, muscle and nerve. The other pound she has no use for, but it has been forced upon her, and she must dispose of it. She may deposit a little of it on the body in the form of fat, and eliminate more through the kidneys, lungs and skin; but there will still be some ounces left to decay in the blood—for food matter will decay in the blood. So there is a little rotten matter—sewage— left in the blood as the result of that meal. At the next meal the process is repeated; and at the next, and the next The quantity of decaying waste in the blood gets greater, until at last the arterial flow is like a stream into which the sewage of a city is
emptied, foul and thick with decaying refuse, which all comes from the dining table. At last the stream gets so thick that nature must call a halt; she cannot carry on the processes of bodily renewal with that foul blood; it must be purified. So there is a chill; a congestion in some part of the mucous membrane, and the impurities begin to be strained off. When you take cold you cough up and blow out the surplus food you have been eating; it would kill you if you did not get rid of it. The cold is an effort of nature to save your body from dissolution. It is not caused by drafts or exposure; it is caused by overeating. If you do not overeat you may sit in drafts, or sleep in them, or expose yourself as you please, and you will not take cold. You “catch” cold at the table; you cannot get one anywhere else. That is where we get catarrh, which is a chronic cold. A year of scientific living will cure the worst case of catarrh that ever happened, climate or no climate. And this is the way the new physiology accounts for catarrh, and catarrhal diseases. You may easily avoid these ills if you only realize that you do not have to stuff yourself with large quantities of food in order to generate vital power. Your life is more than meat. It is not drawn from material things, and food does not contribute to life or strength in any way. You need food only to supply the spirit with material from which to construct a body, and the quantity required is very, very much less than most of you have believed. Let us talk a little now about “germ” diseases. The people of the city of Chicago have dug great tunnels out under the lake a mile or so, to get pure water. They want to get far away from the water of the river, which is thick with rotting sewage, like the blood of a glutton. There are plenty of disease germs in the river, but none out in the lake; disease germs cannot live and propagate in water which does not contain sewage; and it is also a fact that they cannot propagate in blood which does not contain sewage. If your blood is like the pure water of Lake Michigan no disease germ can live in it; but if it is like the Chicago river it will be a breeding ground for any organism that may be introduced into it This is bedrock, scientific fact. If your blood is pure yon are immune to germ diseases; you cannot have typhoid, la grippe, smallpox or diptheria, nor can you catch cold. Disease germs can only propagate in impure blood, and blood is made impure by overeating, and by not breathing enough. How much more sensible and scientific to purify the stream than to try to neutralize the germs by loathsome counter-poisons!
Let me close this chapter outlining a sane regime of living. We do not need food on arising in the morning. We have slept, and the brain is fully charged with power; there is no demand for food, for there has been no destruction of tissues. No one is really hungry in the morning; the appetite for breakfast is a forced and unnatural one. Most people do not eat breakfast because they are hungry, but for fear of collapse later in the day; they think to store up energy in the stomach against a future need. Drop off the breakfast altogether, and as soon as you get your mind adjusted to the plan you will find that no matter whether your work is mental or physical you can do more of it “on an empty stomach” and do it better. At noon, eat a moderate meal of any plain hearty food that your taste may call for; and eat a very light supper between six and seven o'clock. If you are a brain worker, make your dinner very light also; by “light” I mean small in quantity, not of chaffy materials. Bo not bother your head about carbohydrates and nitrogens; eat what you like best. The invalid and the brain worker need exactly the same foods that the woodchopper needs, but not nearly so much. Tour taste is the safest guide as to what you shall eat; let it be beans, potatoes, sauerkraut, hog and hominy—anything that will stay on a Christian stomach, if you desire it, but not too much! And above all things, never eat when you are not hungry. Life is an energy which is stored in the brain during sleep. If we understand that material food plays no part in the generation of this energy, and govern our appetites accordingly, we shall have perfect health. If we live according to the simple law of life no material thing can harm us. We are spiritual beings; we get our life in the Great Silence, out of which we came. We shall live after we cease to eat, for we do not live by eating now; our physical bodies are kept up by a mysterious power which comes to us while we are unconscious. God is Spirit; and He giveth life to all.
It is notorious that a single successful effort of moral volition, such at saying “No” to some habitual temptation, or performing some courageous act, will launch a man on a higher level of energy for days and weeks, will give him a new range of power. The emotions and excitements due to usual situations are the usual inciters of the will. But these act discontinuously; and in the intervals the shallower levels of life tend to close in and shut us off. Accordingly the best knowers of (he human soul have invented the thing known as methodical, ascetic discipline to keep the deeper levels constantly in reach. Beginning with easy tasks, passing to harder ones, and exercising day by day, it is, I believe, admitted that disciples of asceticism can reach very high levels of freedom and power of will. Ignatius Loyola's spiritual exercises must have produced this result in innumerable devotees. But the most venerable ascetic system, and the one whose results have the most voluminous, experimental corroboration is undoubtedly the Yoga system in Hindustan. —WILLIAM JAMES, “Energies of Men”