Part I: Fasting

Introduction

Health that intoxicates with its power and intensity, is within the reach of all who are willing to reason for themselves, and begin that activity of muscle, mind and ...

Preface

The great truths of Nature are here ready for you, reader. Are you ready for them? Are you free from prejudice, and willing to read and reason without considering the ...

Fasting: Physiological Data

What shall we do to be saved? is a question which, from a physical point of view, can be answered in less than ten words: Learn to interpret the language of your ...

The One Meal Plan. Part 1

The progress of culture often resembles the undulating rise of the tide, rather than the steady advance of a river current; the rippling waves surge in capricious eddies and for ...

The One Meal Plan. Part 2.

Like a festival at the end of the week, it sustains the energy of the laborer with the prospect of an adequate reward. The gratification of a well-earned appetite is something ...

Dietetic Restrictions.

A fast, in the language of the medieval churchmen, generally implied the interdiction of special kinds of food, and, in that sense of the word, almost every creed of ...

Protracted Fasts. Part 1

The strongest temperance argument I ever heard was the incidental remark of a lecturing naturalist, that it would be easy to name a thousand different animals that subsist ...

Protracted Fasts. Part 2

Abstinence is by far too much feared in the treatment of acute diseases generally. We have good reason for believing that many a life has been destroyed by the indiscriminate ...

Protracted Fasts. Part 3

There are alimentary reserve stores; accumulations of adipose tissue gathered to guard against this. They will supply all essential needs for the time being, and can be replaced at ...

Protracted Fasts. Part 4

Among the germ-diseases that have been relieved by fasting, the author of The True Science of Living also mentions malaria, eczema, gastric cancer, pneumonia and ...

Protracted Fasts. Part 5

Trance-fasters, like Augusta Kerner of Ingolstadt, survived in a semi-conscious condition for nearly a quarter of a year, but it would be a mistake to suppose that staying powers ...

Protracted Fasts. Part 6

One great aid to the successful accomplishment of a fasting-cure is the rule to keep the mind as much as possible occupied, so as to prevent its brooding over the topic of alimentary ...

A Seven-Day Fast. An Experience Of One Of The Authors

The description of my fast of seven days, which appeared in PHYSICAL CULTURE some time ago, will probably be of interest to my readers. During the last ...

Part II: Hydrotherapy

Hydrotherapy. Physiological Data

Refrigeration is Nature's specific for the cure of germ-diseases, and the tardy recognition of that truth is certainly not justified by the lack of suggestive facts. ...

Hydrotherapy. The Cold-Water Cure. Part 1

Hydrotherapy is one of the eldest offspringperhaps the first-bornof natural hygiene. The desire to relieve the debilitating effects of summer heat by immersion and ...

Hydrotherapy. The Cold-Water Cure. Part 2

We should add a few words about the fierce controversy which a few years after Priessnitz's death was excited by the attempt to suppress the water-cures which in the ...

Hydrotherapy. Air Baths. Part 1

In the cure of diseases by refrigeration, cold air is the readiest substitute for cold water. In the higher latitudes Nature supplies the remedy free of cost for six months of ...

Hydrotherapy. Air Baths. Part 2

There are many ways, less often sought than found, for becoming quite cold and warm again, but an experimenter, trying to contract a catarrh in that manner, would ...

Hydrotherapy. Climatic Sanitaria

Wet feet, especially feet wetted by a walk in the chill dew of a meadow, ranked with the chief sanitary bugbears of our forefathers, and that a bugbear of that sort should now ...

Hydrotherapy. Ventilation. Part 1

A traveling revivalist displays charts of the Eastern continents to illustrate the vast area of territories still in need of missionary labors. The extent of the field for ...

Hydrotherapy. Ventilation. Part 2

The German, Austrian, and Russian shepherds stay the whole summer with their flocks, but as a class, are nevertheless remarkably subject to pulmonary diseases, and for the ...

Part III: Exercise

Exercise. Physiological Data

The sanitary influence of active exercise is so unmistakable that it has never been altogether disputed, though its importance is still strangely underrated. Nearly two ...

Outdoor Exercise. Part 1

The principles of regeneration by natural hygiene may be summed up in Dr. Hufeland's advice, to re-establish, as far as practicable, the conditions to which our organism became ...

Outdoor Exercise. Part 2

Health is the chief of all earthly blessings, Lord Chesterfield writes to his son; so much so, indeed, that a healthy beggar is happier than a bedridden king; and ...

Indoor Exercise. Part 1

In latitudes of an inhospitable climate an opportunity for indoor exercise has indisputable advantages, but involves the risk of defective ventilation, and the ideal of a ...

Indoor Exercise. Part 2

The poet-philosopher Goethe remarks that every brain-worker should consult his sanitary interests by following some mechanical trade as a by-occupation, and the successor of ...

Exercise: Gymnastics. Part 1

Primitive nations can dispense with physical training-schools as the creatures of the wilderness dispense with houses and clothes, but city-dwellers need a substitute for the ...

Exercise: Gymnastics. Part 2

Lifting weights and holding them out at arm's length is a favorite amusement of the Tyrolese peasants, whose knee-joints mountain climbing has made almost fatigue-proof, and who ...

Exercise: Gymnastics. Part 3

Movement-cures, on the other hand, reveal their benefit after the end of a week or soat first by improvements in the facility of the exercise itself, but soon also by ...

Exercise: Gymnastics. Part 4

About twenty years ago a North Yankee invented a rowing machine, which he intended to facilitate the preparatory exercises of oarsmen,without perhaps suspecting ...

Free Movement Cures Or Sanitarium Exercises. Part 1

There are health seekers so exhausted by wasting diseases or the abuse of drugs that they are unable to participate in the exercises of a public gymnasium. Old school physicians ...

Free Movement Cures Or Sanitarium Exercises. Part 2

Free Movement Cures Or Sanitarium Exercises. Part 3

Free Movement Cures Or Sanitarium Exercises. Part 4

The choice of any special form of movement cure should be decided by the exigencies of their purpose to compensate the deficient opportunities of daily life. Persons engaged in ...

Part IV: Detailed Advice For Treatment

Detailed Advice For Treatment: A

Wet sheet pack will be referred to in treatments advised and same can be taken as follows: Wet two heavy sheets in cold water: wring them out and lay them on a bed or sofa: let the ...

Detailed Advice For Treatment: B

Bilious Fever: Immediately upon appearance of the first symptoms take a wet sheet pack. Encourage the appetite for cold water, in every way, drinking copiously ...

Detailed Advice For Treatment: C

Carbuncles: Same treatment as for Boils. Catarrh: Treatment should ...

Detailed Advice For Treatment: D

Diabetes: Same treatment as for Bladder Diseases and Bright's ...

Detailed Advice For Treatment: E-F

Eczema: One meal per day. Avoid all meat and white bread. Take long walks in the open air, with plenty of deep breathing exercises. The entire system of ...

Detailed Advice For Treatment: G

Gastric Fever: Wet sheet pack immediately upon appearance of the symptoms, which should be followed or preceded by the colon flushing treatment. No food of any ...

Detailed Advice For Treatment: H

Headache: Encourage desire for hot water all you can. If convenient, take steam vapor bath. Eat no foods except some light fruit until symptoms disappear. The ...

Detailed Advice For Treatment: I-L

Indigestion: Same treatment as for Dyspepsia. Don't eat until very hungry. ...

Detailed Advice For Treatment: M-N

Malaria: Treatment for this trouble simply requires a course for building up the general health. The entire system of exercises here illustrated should be taken ...

Detailed Advice For Treatment: P-W

Palpitation: Same treatment as for Heart Disease. Pneumonia: Wet ...