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symptoms that we denominate 'cold' can be relieved more expeditiously if
food is withheld and cold water is given and freely imbibed, and local
fomentations, hot packs, or vapor baths are used to open the pores of the
skin. The desire for food will assert itself just as soon as normal healthy
action is restored.
When a bone is broken the surgeon can only set it. Nature repairs the
injury. Doctors are rapidly coming round to recognize that the involuntary
powers of the self sometimes called the sub-conscious self that operate
below the threshold of the every-day consciousness instinctively, will, if
given free play, restore the patient to perfect health whenever that is
possible; and those who are sick, sad, and suffering can, by preserving a
cheerful, buoyant frame of mind, consciously assist Nature to a very large
extent to build up new cells and healthy tissues until their deranged organs
are practically renewed; for, as Andrew Jackson Davis said in the 'Spiritual
Telegraph,' as long ago as the year 1854: 'The mind can, by its own action,
both cause and cure disease. Even as prominent an organism as a cancer
can be psychologized into being, and cared by the action of the same law.
It is very necessary that modern Spiritualists understand the whole force
of this principle.
DIET: DIFFERENT DOCTRINES.
On the question of diet much has been said and written and
contradictory theories are continually being advanced.
246 A Guide to Mediumship
One writer advises his readers never to go out into the open air until the
system is fortified by a good breakfast, yet many people have been
wonderfully improved in health by abandoning the early morning meal,
because, says Dr. Dewey, during sleep the body is without exercise, and
there is the minimum of waste, and little, if any, to repair on awakening,
and consequently there is no immediate necessity for food.
A newspaper recently stated that 'fruits in general are ill adapted to
sustain human life for any length of time because they contain remarkably
little matter that is convertible, when eaten, into muscle and blood.
Bananas and grapes have two per cent, while apples, cherries, straw-
berries, blackberries, cranberries, lemons, and oranges are able to lay claim
to only one per cent this, too, when skins and seeds are put aside.'
But a teacher of 'Zoism' states that the 'Zoist avoids, as far as
possible, all cooked foods: even cooked vegetables and grains. He eats raw
meal, raw fruit, raw nuts. The raw apple contains more zone than a whole
plateful of cooked food'!
Another 'new school' medical man says: 'There is this to be said about
fruits, that all those containing acids decompose the gastric juice, as they
all contain potash salts in union with free acids. As soon as they reach the
stomach the free hydrochloric acid of the gastric juice unites with the
potash, setting the fruit acid free to irritate the stomach. There is never
any desire for acid fruits through real hunger, especially those of the
hyperacid kinds; they are simply taken to gratify that lower sense
relish& . Because of the general impression that they are healthful, and no
tax, human stomachs are converted into cider mills at will, regardless of
between-meal times. By their ravishing flavor and apparent ease of
digestion, apples still play an important part in the "fall of man" from that
higher estate, the Eden without its dyspepsia& . Tropical fruits are
without acids, and are therefore well adapted to a class of people who
have only the least use for muscle and brain. Acid fruits can only be taken
with apparent impunity
A Guide to Mediumship 247
by the young and old who can generate gastric juice copiously.'
EVERY ONE MUST JUDGE FOR HIMSELF
'The working energy of a pound of pulse (beans, peas, lentils),' says a
'Zoist,' 'is three times as great as the working energy contained in one
pound of beefsteak'; and, according to this same authority, 'raw oatmeal is
the ideal food'; and further, he asserts that 'vegetarianism is the rock upon
which health is built.'
Professor Huxley, however, pointed out that 'mere chemical analysis is,
by itself, a very insufficient guide as to the usefulness and nutritive value
of an article of food. A substance to be nutritious must not only contain
some or other of the food-stuffs, but contain them in an available that is,
digestible form. A piece of beefsteak is far more nourishing than a quantity
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