It has been found that, around middle age, women as well as men are subject to tumors of the organs of the lower abdomen or pelvis.
The uterus of the female and the prostate gland of the male are placed anatomically in similar positions, between the rectum and urinary bladder. In modern civilized life, men as well as women sit too much, or stand up or walk to excess. For the good of these abdominal structures it would be a good thing if men and women were educated, through courses in physical training, to take postural exercises that would help to prevent pelvic congestion. This would help to drain the pelvic blood vessels and lymphatics. (The lymphatics are a complete system of vessels and glands that are vitally concerned with the circulation of the blood, the nutrition of the cells, and the elimination of cellular wastes. The reader may study the lymphatics in any textbook on human physiology and hygiene; there are such books in the public libraries.)
Such education should be a required part of elementary and high school training. It is true that physical training is taught in the public schools and colleges, but courses that would promote knowledge about the hygiene of the pelvic structures would do more good than the bouncing of balls accompanied by yells. A great deal of the conventional kind of physical training depletes the nervous energy of young people, and makes many susceptible to disease.
Every school gymnasium should teach exercises that can be done in the prone and supine positions. Standing on knees and elbows for a few minutes-three or four times a day, should also be taught. Every adolescent boy and girl can be trained to take the knee-elbow position. Such exercises will prevent pelvic congestions because they empty blood vessels that are in a static condition-a condition that tends to cause irritation and inflammation of the genital organs. Diseases of middle age may begin in neglect of the adolescent’s pelvic hygiene.
There is a classical posture exercise known as the knee-chest position, an illustration of which is given below.
The Knee-Chest Position
The knee-chest position is stressed in standard medical textbooks on diseases of women. How many family physicians teach their patients, who have faith and trust in them, to exercise in the knee-chest position as a preventive of pelvic disease or as a step toward curing existing pelvic disease?
There are other exercises that the individual ought to be taught in order to prevent diseases that are peculiar to middle age. Such exercises as rocking the body forward and backward while standing on knees and elbows tends to prevent an abnormal and excessive accumulation of blood and lymph in the pelvic organs. These organs are: the rectum, the bladder, the uterus and prostate, with their connective-tissue structures.
Swimming; and floating are good exercises to help keep pelvic circulation normal, because in swimming and floating the lower part of the body goes through good hygienic exercises. Since swimming and floating are not always practical or possible, one can improvise similar exercises that are even restful, exercises that can be done on a bed or couch.
The motions of swimming and floating can easily be done in a relaxed manner in the privacy of one’s bedroom. There are other hygienic gymnastics that require no special apparatus but simply involve the proper use of the hands, the feet and other parts of the body, which are moved and stretched normally and comfortably in various directions. The well-known “daily dozen” type of exercises that are taught in school gymnastic courses become too much of an effort as one comes along in age and in susceptibility to fatigue. Even standing up can be too great an effort for a tired person.
Human beings are less fortunate, in one physical sense, than are quadrupeds. The latter do not get diseases of the pelvic organs because they are always on their four limbs!The quadrupeds also enjoy physical relaxation better than the upright human species. They relax and rest in various postures that could well be imitated by mankind. Of course, many human children also squat and stretch and turn from side to side, and indeed this proves that the human species is guided by instinct in a measure.
The strains of modern life compel adults of middle age to do a great deal of sitting and also to get tired. For these reasons the exercises stressed above are good for relieving strain and preventing accumulated fatigue, pressure and pains. These symptoms are in many instances premonitory signs of brewing disease.
Even heart disease can be helped by relaxing and restful exercises that are done on the bed. Of course, diseases of the heart and the blood vessels of the body are caused to a large extent by the poisons that civilized men and women habitually take every day in addition to their food. Liquor, tea and coffee, tobacco, pills for headache and for sleep, all contribute to the diseases of middle age.
Medical literature contains much useful information in its text-books on pathology, on gynecology, on genito-urinary diseases. The medical student learns, among other things, about the knee-chest position and about pelvic pathology and its prevention. In practice, when he is a full-fledged physician, he seldom takes time to stress this educational advice for his patients. Instead he prescribes the drugs about which he is kept informed by the pharmaceutical industry. The mail of every physician is flooded with literature on remedies for the diseases that plague mankind, including pelvic tumors.
Where does all this lead to? Every second man or woman between the ages of 45 and 60 has had pelvic surgery. This statement can be substantiated by anyone who makes a survey of friends and acquaintances, checking those who have surgical scars that commemorate some kind of internal tumor.
Surgery is a great and valuable specialty, and when required it can be of real service. But when it can be prevented by proper treatment and by proper hygienic daily living and daily eating, that is also a great service to the individual. Every physician should dedicate him-self to the teaching of personal hygiene in order to prevent disease. People will gladly pay for such service if they are taught its importance. If they are taught that proper care and proper food keep the body from getting prematurely old, sick and tired, they will get into health-building habits.
It is quite alarming when one gets well acquainted with the picture of how much the health of modern men and women is impaired by faulty habits of daily eating and living.
No tumor becomes a tumor until the uterus or prostate has been congested for years by improper drainage of venous and lymphatic wastes. Mild and severe inflammations and swellings or enlargements, known as benign tumors, can surely be prevented by proper hygiene from adolescence onward.
Cancer of these organs could also become only a minor problem for humanity. Today cancer is an overwhelming problem. This formidable disease can never be cured or prevented by the orthodox medical approach and by the conventional habits of eating and living that victimize modern men and women.
The prevention of pelvic inflammation and congestion can help to prevent cancer of the organs in the pelvic region.
In the course of my practice at my sanitorium, the Health Rest, I have examined and treated a considerable number of men and women with diseases of the pelvic organs. It is remarkable how responsive the body is to conservative treatment that is so planned as to relieve and remove congestion from the structures in this lower basin of the body.
It is a fact that many women, as well as many men, are choosing the new road to health. They seek a physician who will not use the knife as a first recourse. Male patients, as well as female patients, have been helped by my simple, rational, regenerative methods of treatment. I have had the privilege, in an impressive number of cases, of studying my patients while they are under treatment, from a month to several months. It is amazing how much natural power the body has to unload congested waste debris when properly treated.
The osteopathic treatments that my patients get as a matter of routine every day have, I am earnestly convinced, contributed toward the success of my general regimen, which includes restricted diet and exercise on the bed while the body is at rest. A prostate gland the size of a fist is regenerated and shrinks to its normal size, the size of a chestnut, within six months to a year. This has happened under my care. I do not administer any “local treatment” such as “massage” by way of the rectum. I only examine my patients about once a week and note progress.
Progress usually occurs in proportion to the patient’s cooperation in diet and exercise. A 75-year-old man had his prostate gland reduced to normal within one year of treatment. This same man also had thrombotic congested ankles that looked purple and were rigid. One year of rest, short-wave diathermy and corrective exercises absorbed these cluttered varicosities, and now he has perfectly normal ankles.
Another case of mine involved a male patient with enlarged prostate gland; family preferred that he have a surgical operation. He was about 74 years old at the time. Removal of his prostate did not eliminate his pronounced symptom of urinary retention in the bladder.
After his surgery he came to convalesce at my Health Rest. Part of his treatment consisted of catheterization morning and evening in order to remove about a pint of the foulest purulent urine.
Surgery for the prostate gland may relieve mechanical pressure. I find, however, that conservative dietetic treatments, including such adjuncts as short-wave diathermy, applied to the lower spine and abdomen, as well as daily general osteopathic treatments that are administered to improve the circulation of the blood in the entire body, tend to remove prostate swelling and enlargement. This has happened in the case of patients ranging in ages from 50 to 95, in the course of my experience.
It is my earnest belief that constructive non-surgical methods should be used as a service for every patient suffering from a tumor of a pelvic organ, even if surgery seems to be necessary. My method of treatment is good for the patient as preoperative treatment because it helps to cleanse the various cesspool wastes of the body.
While my patients, male or female, are treated for pelvic tumor, 1 put them on a diet that does not contain any protein, fat, or starchy foods. They are made to live on their own grease and beef. Many people who consider themselves smart are, nevertheless, being very foolish when they carry around fat bellies and enlarged derrieres. A month of bed-rest, as I prescribe for my patients, can do wonders toward regenerating diseased organs.
While the patient is on such a rest cure, the food intake is limited to fresh raw fruits and the juice of lemons and grapefruits, diluted with water. Not much water is permitted when the patient is over-weight or when the kidneys seem to be inadequate in any way. Particularly in the case of those who smoke, at the age of 50 or 60, the kidneys may be inadequate in fluid output because tobacco is a poisonous blood-vessel constrictor and the kidneys are full of blood-vessel structures. This is well known to medical science in the field of pathology and materia medica. The tobacco poisons cause arteriosclerosis of the kidney blood vessels and of other organs, such as the heart and liver.
A daily diet consisting of a few well-chosen fresh raw fruits, such as grapefruits and pineapples, and lemon juice with water, as well as two or three glasses of raw vegetable-salad juices, will act as a means of eliminating wastes that could not be carried off by the kidneys and liver under an ordinary diet. The liver is vitally concerned with waste disposal because one of its functions is to filter an important portion of the protein wastes into the kidneys.
While on such a blood-cleansing and organ-regenerating diet, the body is forced to consume its own protein and fat in order to maintain its basal metabolism. This is the phenomenon that occurs when a person omits the ordinary eatables from the daily food intake. A new stage in medicine will have been reached when the profession that is entrusted with the health of mankind adopts methods of treating disease that are in accordance with the rational program outlined here.
Any progressive physician who today dares to depart from the old methods of reasoning and practice is called names, such as “cultist” or “quack.” I have been a pioneer in investigating and applying the constructive principles of non-drug methods that help to regenerate the sick body. A method that can help to regenerate the sick is also a preventive in principle and practice. It can help to keep the healthy body from breaking down. In our time there are so many broken down middle-aged and elderly individuals.
Furthermore, living in accordance with these principles is even more esthetic. Correct daily personal hygiene prevents and cures such personal manifestations of impaired health as bad odor from the mouth and from other orifices. It is high time that the teachers and the leaders, the pillars of our society and culture, gave up their vulgar habits of eating and living. They would then serve humanity much better than they can while their bodies are saturated with cesspool wastes.
These words are dedicated to school teachers, editors, judges, columnists, clergymen and politicians who carry burdensome wastes in their physical makeup. They could serve humanity much better if their bodies were pure and free from stagnating, diseased organic debris. The obituary columns of daily papers are full of notices about accomplished people, presumably able servants of society, who died because their bodies were handicapped by unexcreted filth.
In fact, obituary columns are full of notices about doctors of medicine who pass away in their middle age from diseases that can be prevented by hygienic daily habits of living and eating. When a physician lives wrong and eats wrong, he breaks down, for he is only human. As a sick man or woman, a physician or surgeon can hardly serve those who trust him to the fullest possible extent.
The same holds true with other specialists in social and political life and service. Ordinary men and women who look for leaders often finally realize that they must solve their own problems and be the masters and mistresses of their own destinies. In health methods this certainly is an important goal that many people are realizing.
Many are seeking health information and advice by visiting health food-store authorities, by reading health publications. The organized powerful medical profession has some health publications which are not as good as they should be. The people want knowledge instead of advertisements for drug remedies. In health periodicals and naturopathic publications many people are finding the kind of knowledge that the most accepted medical authorities refrain from giving to the public.
In the United States, the organized medical profession has been opposing state and federal medical services such as some European countries are providing. Such opposition sometimes means restraining progress. Can progress be checked? The human race may suffer all sorts of handicaps, but it is nevertheless advancing in all fields on the high road to a better life.
The practitioners in the field of health must change their policies because the people are aware of the need for health education and they will get it by whatever means they can obtain it. If they must leave their old family physicians and specialists and find new ones, new physicians who can teach them the facts about the prevention of disease and its proper treatment, then they will find them and they are finding them.
To return to our immediate subject, tumors. Enlargements of the uterus that are considered benign have, in my experience, responded to bed-rest and light diet alternated with fasting periods. The average fasting period I prescribe for a patient with a tumor is about three days.
During a fast only lemon juice diluted with water is permitted. Stout patients are not given more than four glasses of liquid a day. They may get the juice of two lemons in enough water to make a glassful, about four times a day. Slim people with a tumor are permitted to drink as much water as they can enjoy, using the juice of half a lemon to each glass. During the fasting period the body responds most effectively in consuming a tumorous mass. This observation has been made on female as well as male patients.
When a tumor is accompanied by profuse bleeding the fasting method is used very cautiously. The uterus is examined by bimanual examination. The cervix is examined by the use of the speculum in order to determine its pathological condition. When the cervix is soft and discharges bloody clots and fluid blood profusely, caution is practiced to the necessary extent. Such symptoms may be an early or late stage of cancerous degeneration.
Patients who have come to me, in preference to undergoing surgery, have done so because they felt that such treatment is safer and more conservative than the knife. A number of “miracles” have taken place under my treatment of degenerative uterine disease. Bleeding stopped in a number of cases within a matter of a week to three weeks.
In the course of over twenty years of practice, I was impelled to refer two patients for radium treatment. In one case, a woman from Pennsylvania, who reported that her bleeding was reduced during her monthly periods and that the uterus had gotten smaller, the patient preferred to have an operation, the surgical removal of her womb, because she felt that her husband would then be sweeter to her than he had been….
In another case, a young woman 29 years of age, who had been a domestic worker for about 15 years, came to me with an enlarged uterus that was palpable outside as high as the umbilicus. That young woman insisted on being treated with fasting. During her six weeks treatment at the Health Rest, she went through a continuous fast of two weeks, on lemon juice with water and grapefruit. (In her case the fast was used continuously because the patient was not afraid of it. The shorter fast, alternated with feeding, is used with those who are afraid of a continuous long fast.)
The grapefruit was given to her to chew in order to keep her muscles of mastication from becoming flabby. While on her fasting and rest period she also formed the habit of doing health exercises several times a day in order to tone up the muscles of the body and drain the pelvic wastes as much as possible.
At the end of six weeks Miss I. of Detroit was happy because she had no more pressure against her spine or against her bladder and stomach. The uterus was reduced about 50 per cent in size.
After the fast the diet I prescribe consists of fresh raw fruits, raw salads and some steamed plain vegetables and dairy products. This is the daily program: Raw fruit and fruit juice for breakfast; one starchy food, raw salad and raw fruit for lunch; steamed vegetables and cheese, or milk and fresh raw fruits, for dinner. If the patient is not anemic, eggs are not used for about six months to a year.
Beans and nuts are also kept out of the diet. These concentrated proteins are withheld from the diet because proteins have a tendency to stimulate cellular growth. In case of a tumor the object is to absorb a growth. Nature, in time, performs bloodless regenerative organic changes that are superior to surgery.
Physicians, surgeons and health teachers, as well as the general public, have much to gain by putting these methods into practice and testing these claims. It would be a way of emancipating the human race from the misery to which it is subjected today by persistently remaining in the old medical rut and in the rut of the conventional habits of eating and living.