The Hygienic System by Herbert Shelton

PURE JOYS never pall; uniformity is uniform happiness if the even tenor of our way is the way of nature. And nature herself will guide our steps if the exigence of abnormal circumstances should require a deviation from the beaten path. Remedial instincts are not confined to the lower animals; man has his full share of them; the self-regulating power of the human system is as wonderful in the variety as in the simplicity of its resources. Have you ever observed the weather-wisdom of the black bind-weed?--how its flowers open in the morning sun and close at the approach of the noontide glare; how its tendrils expand their spirals in a calm, but contract and cling, as with hands, to their support when the storm-wind sweeps the woods? With the same certainty our dietetic instincts respond to the varying demands of our daily life. Without the aid of art, without the assistance of our own experience, they even adapt themselves to the exigencies of our abnormal conditions, and our interference alone often prevents them from counteracting the tendency of dire abuses.

All dietetic needs of our body thus announce themselves in a versatile language of their own, and he who has learned to interpret that language, nor willfully disregards its just appeals, may avoid all digestive disorders--not by fasting if he is hungry, or forcing food upon his protesting stomach, not by convulsing his bowels with nauseous drugs, but by quietly following the guidance of his instincts.

Nature's health laws are simple. The road to health and happiness is not the labyrinthine maze described by our medical mystagogues. In pursuing their dietetic cedes one is fairly bewildered by a mass of incongruous precepts and prescriptions, laborious compromises between old and new theories, arbitrary rules, and illogical exceptions, anti-natural restrictions and anti-natural remedies. Their view of the constitution of man suggests the King of Aragon's remark about the cycles and epicycles of the Ptolemaic system: "It strikes me the Creator might have arranged this business in a simpler way."

--FELIX L. OSWALD

INTRODUCTION

An intelligent man may be wrong sometimes, but a fool is always right. He is never wrong. The medical profession is never wrong. It never changes, except superficially.

This is the reason it is necessary for me to write this book. There are many books on the care and feeding of infants, but most of them consist largely of repetitions of ancient mistakes. There is little in them that can be recommended to the parent who desires to care for his or her child in the best manner possible. They are full of statements which have been known to be false for many years. But the medical profession is never wrong.

I constantly see children who are cared for as advised by these books or by the ex-purts who wrote them, or by the doctors who follow these ex-spurts, and I can't work up a great deal of enthusiasm over the results of such care. Indeed, as a rule, to which there are some exceptions, those children who are most under the care of specialists are the ones who suffer most.

It will be said that they are under the care of the specialists because of their sufferings; but I am convinced, from over ten years of careful observations, that their sufferings are largely the result of being under the care and misguidance of the specialist.

The greatest charge I bring against the medical profession, one that outranks the charges of ignorance and commercialism, is that it is artificial and unnatural in almost everything that it does. It is a huge system of antinaturalism, based on ignorance and bolstered up by law and commercialism.

UNNATURAL food is the principal cause of human degeneration. It is the oldest vice. If we reflect upon the number of ruinous dietetic abuses, and their immemorial tyranny over the larger part of the human race, we are tempted to eschew all symbolic interpretations of the paradise legend and ascribe the fall of man literally and exclusively to the eating of forbidden food. From century to century this same cause has multiplied the sum of our earthly ills.

—FELIX L. OSWALD