The failure of the old-line practitioners to cure disease, or to even materially lessen its hold on the bodies of men, has resulted in recent years in a general distrust of the methods of the "doctor." This has opened up a chance for new methods of treatment to get a hearing, and not infrequently a chance to demonstrate.

The old-line medical school instead of conquering old diseases, is finding new ones all the time, and "business continues to be pretty good, thank you," - even though thousands and hundreds of thousands of people are really finding health in sane methods of living, such as taught by Physical Culture and other health publications, and by abstinence from medicines and the exercise of the power of the mind over the physical body.

The first break from the old school was Homeopathy. Briefly, it works largely on the same basis, only it believes in "small doses" of medicine, - may Allah be praised for even that concession from the "dope fiends."

I have already tried to explain that the body is a machine, and that the machine must be taken care of properly, otherwise it will suffer injury. The machine of steel and wood may suffer injury and has no way to tell about it other than a squeak or a failure to operate; the physical body has a way to inform the soul, the driver of the machine, that something is out of order, and pain is the way.

There is never a pain in the body but that there is some cause for the pain; the pain is not the disease, it is but the evidence of it, the voice of protest, so to speak. For centuries the "doctors" have been trying to stifle pain. In this they are the worst opponents of "free speech" the world has ever known.

A large dose of morphine will put the body out of pain forever, a small one will silence this voice of protest, but morphine is a poison to the human machine and will never eradicate the cause of pain, and should never be taken; and yet it is one of the "doctors' " pet remedies.

Many quacks have built up great reputations on their ability to immediately stifle pain, the voice of protest. As. soon as the body gets free from the effects of the "drugs" that have been administered, pain again speaks and tries to tell the soul that something is wrong, and the dear "doctor" is again called in to smother this pleading voice of nature that is trying its best to save the body from permanent injury or destruction.

Get this: when men and women learn to live right, they will cease to suffer from bodily pain, and not before.

One might also "deny" pain and succeed in psy chologizing one's body to the extent that the voice of pain could not be heard, but even that, while it has its advantages in that no villainous poisons are injected into the system, still has its disadvantage in that it borders on insanity, in fact is a mild species of mental disorder. While great results are seemingly accomplished through mental suggestion alone, it is not the rational or sensible method of getting the body rid of its physical disorders. These troubles are real, and have their cause in wrong living and disobedience of the great fundamental laws of our physical being.

If pain tells you that your body is ill, listen to its voice of protest and at once try to find out why it is ill. Here is the proper function of the mind; through your reasoning faculties you may be able to discover the cause of your trouble, though this is not always possible. Even though you are not able to definitely locate just what particular thing you have done to cause your distressed, dis-eased, un-easy state of body, your mind, if permitted to act normally, will at least reach the conclusion that you have done something sometime. The system may not enter its protest until some time after the cause, which may be cumulative, for you now know of the wonderful "surplus energy" that the body stores, and how it draws from this, and so the absolute location of the specific cause may not be possible. But here again "mind" can help you, for you can figure it out to a certainty that the pain in your body is the result of either some accident having happened to mutilate some part of the body, or else because of some improper foreign matter that can't be eliminated, or else because of an overworked and tired-out state that has permitted nature's destructive principles to gain the mastery over the constructive principles of the body itself.

And be it known that these destructive principles are ever at hand in the form of disease germs, and that any body that is not kept tuned up to the proper health key is apt at any time to be subject to their attack. If the body has sufficient vitality, it will repel these disease germs without any harm to itself; not a day passes but that we take in enough germs to kill an army - provided that army is in such a weakened state of physical resistance that the men's bodies could not repel these invisible hosts.

In a depleted state of physical health the germs find an easy lodging place, and a battle royal is the result. Sometimes the germs win, and then the body is dead; sometimes the body wins, and the germs are cast out, and then some "doctor" usually gets the credit, though he deserves none at all unless he has helped to build up the resisting powers of the body by sensible advice as to food, breathing, etc., which he seldom does.

Now listen again: germs will never find a lodging-place in a perfectly healthy body, unless that body is inoculated by direct contact or by vaccination, or some such process, and even then the bodily resistance being normal, the battle is usually one of short duration.

The body that is not in perfect health is always subject to disease germs; they find in the body the very food on which they thrive in the form of refuse that the physical organs have not been able to eliminate.

Now use the mind again and it will tell you that if germs are cast out of a healthy body without harm, and find lodging in the unexcreted refuse of a weakened body, that the thing to do first, when the body gets diseased, is to get rid of all refuse in the body. To do this "granny" used to give us a dose of castor oil or epsom salts, and she had the right idea, though her method of accomplishing it could be better served today by the water enema.

But granny's remedy did not go far enough, it only eliminated part of the waste matter in the intestines and colon, while every organ of the body needed cleansing. Here the fast is the only sensible solution, and it is nature's solution. Just as soon as you get sick nature tries her best to have you stop eating by taking away your appetite, and then the dear doctors come along and stuff you full of drugs, and your friends do their best to tempt you to eat in spite of the fact that you ought not to take a thing, thus giving your system a chance to clean itself out, as it will readily do if you just stop insulting it with food that it does not want.

The right function of the mind is to treat the body rationally, to discover its troubles and to eliminate the cause and give the body a chance to eliminate the effects. Here is a chance to exercise the will-power and refrain from things that have been found to be harmful, to correct bad habits and appetites, and live normally.

Here again, through auto-suggestion, is a chance for the mind to "suggest" to the body helpful thoughts, and give the body intelligent advice and direction.

The mind has a great power over the body. The mind can kill the body instantly if it so chooses. The mind can make the body sick by unhealthful suggestion, and make it well by healthful suggestion in line with the laws of the physical organism.

The mind can do wonderful things, but there is a limit to the power of the mind over this physical body, and if the mind does not work normally and discover the proper laws that affect the body in which it lives, or if it disregards these laws wilfully or ignorantly, the body sooner or later will suffer.

You can not disobey natural laws without paying the penalty in pain, disease, ill health, and eventually in death itself.

Live right and, barring accident, you may surely live a hundred years, and more; disobey the law and you will die young in spite of all the doctors in Christendom, and in spite of all the mental denials you make that you are not sick and that only your "mortal mind" is in distress.

Just in plain English language, let's quit our foolishness and through the mind learn the laws that govern our physical organism on the earth plane and through the will-power obey them.