"The symptoms of worms will differ a little according to the kind, and the locality they infect. Generally, we can enumerate a leaden countenance, bad breath, red lips, picking at the nose, tumid abdomen, shrunken extremities, voracious appetite, looseness of the bowels, and general loss of power."

Another example of the Hygienic approach to chronic troubles is provided by the care of fallen (ptosed ) organs. In prolapsus of the uterus, instead of removing the womb, why not remove the intra-abdominal pressure from gas, fat and constipation and permit the womb to resume its normal position? The study of the physician has ever been to correct what he conceived to be the abuses of nature, not by correcting the causes of the "abuses," but by correcting nature herself.

Patients suffering with chronic rheumatism were tortured, poisoned and depleted with blisters, leeches, calomel, opium, arsenic, hydriodate of potassa, antimony, bleeding and other ruinous drugs and procedures. What wonder that the victims of such barbarity never recovered! It is pretty generally admitted today that the present treatment of arthritis is ineffective. Patients are goaded with aspirin, gold salts and cortisone, which drugs provide a little evanescent palliation of symptoms. However, they produce side effects that are often worse than the arthritis itself. There has been a change in drugs, but no basic change in the way of treatment; consequently, arthritis is still regarded as an incurable disease.

Even so simple a condition as constipation baffles the learned men of medicine. It seems to be generally accepted that the bowels cannot act freely unless they are mechanically irritated. The average person has no idea of the freedom of the bowels and is always goading his to action, either with drugs or with great quantities of bulk. If he abandons these, he employs injections of water. He must be continuously meddling with the function of his bowels. But what is done to the bowels today is insignificant compared to the abuses to which they were subjected in the past, when harsh cathartics and drastics were in common use and frequent purging was regarded as not only essential to recovery from disease, but, as essential to the preservation of health.

In the early part of the last century asthma was treated with the lancet (bleeding), cupping, emetics, purgatives, narcotics, tobacco, stramonium, lobelia, spider's web, coffee, opium, camphor, ether, and ipecac. It hardly needs to be said that under such abuses asthmatics never recovered, just as under the prevailing abuses of today they do not recover. Frequently the sick become sick and tired of drugs and physicians and take matters into their own hands and try to do for themselves. With old and antiquated notions, false habits and ignorance clinging to them, they go to work and what work it is! They are no more successful than their physicians.

To recover health requires the correction and removal of causes and the treatments of the schools of healing are not directed to this end. Another requisite of recovery is an adequate supply of all the primordial requisites of organic existence and these are commonly ignored by the treatment peddlers and cure mongers of these schools. Only in the Hygienic System are these two basic needs of the restoration of health regularly and consistently given the attention they deserve.

This is the beauty of the Hygienic System: it renews, renovates and restores the impaired organism, removes the causes of the aches and pains, cleanses not only the digestive tract, but the whole organism as well. Lashing a sick organism into increased activity with drugs is as scientific as lashing a tired horse into greater effort with a whip. The one exhausts the sick man as surely as application of buck-skin exhausts the tired horse. A tired horse requires rest, then food; the sick man equally requires rest, then food.

Hygienists have patiently gathered and collated facts and from these facts have made their generalizations, not hasty generalizations, but generalizations that are arrived at by patient and long-continued study of the subject. It should be fully understood that Hygienists have different facts from those offered by the drugging schools; consequently, they necessarily make different inductions. Facts, so far as our experience can reveal, show that many of the chronic diseases now regarded as incurable are radically remediable by Hygienic methods. Long experience has demonstrated the great value of a period of physiological rest (fasting) as a primary and preparatory step in recovery from chronic disease.

It is not always true that there is a lack of desire for food in chronic disease, although it is common for the chronic sufferer to lament that he has lost his appetite. In some cases, however, the sufferer complains of being hungry all the time. It is a rule that when such patients are placed upon a fast, the fictional demand for food soon ends and often there develops a definite repugnance to food. It is essential that the fasting individual shall rest, both physically and mentally, during his fast and for some time thereafter; but this does not mean that he is to give up everything in life while fasting. Hygiene should not be regarded as a plan of denial, but one of fulfillment. In the matter of caring for the fasting individual, the same rule applies as when caring for the non-faster: namely, the capacity of the fasting organism to constructively use the normal requirements of life is a sound rule of care.

The fasting body needs and must have oxygen; it needs and must have water; it does not need and should abstain from work. As a matter of fact, all "stress factors," whether physical, mental, sensory or emotional, are to be avoided. Every possible activity of the fasting organism is not to be regarded as a stress factor. There are many activities that become stresses only when they are carried beyond certain limits.

There is a division of opinion among present-day Hygienists about whether fasters should indulge in sun baths or not. It is the view of the present author that sun bathing is not necessarily contra-indicated during the fast. It is recognized that it is easy to overindulge while fasting; but it is our thought, based on ample experience and observation, that sunshine can be beneficially employed during a fast in most chronic cases. If the bath is taken when it is not too hot, if the bath is not too prolonged, if the exertion of reaching the bath and getting back to bed is not too great, it is our contention that it will prove definitely beneficial. We do not think that moderate sun bathing in a comfortable temperature constitutes a stress while fasting.

Thus does the Hygienist care for the chronically ill. He does not administer a collection of cures, but provides the sick organism with the good conditions required for the efficient operation of its inherent restorative processes; and he finds that, if he has a recoverable organism to begin with, sooner or later health will be restored. Our confidence in the success of Hygiene in the care of the sick is based not alone upon a knowledge of the laws of life, but also upon observations of Hygiene at work and the normal requirements of mankind, physical and mental.