It is a common error that radical Hygienists cannot secure favor and patronage; hence, the unstable seek a refuge in therapeutics. Various modalities suit a weak-minded practitioner and, as a natural consequence, pseudo-Hygienists desert our cause for something more suitable to their mental capacity. Writing in the Journal, November 1859, of the system of Hygienic medication and of the employment of Hygienic agencies, Trall said: "We assume that our system is true; that, being true, all persons who understand it will believe in it; and that any person who does not believe it, wholly and exclusively, does not understand it. The person, be he layman or physician, who says he believes a great deal in hygeio-therapy, and yet believes that a little medicine is necessary sometimes, is perfectly and profoundly ignorant of the philosophy, the rationale, and even the fundamental premises of hygienic medication. No such person can even state what its principles are."

Trall further says: "Many physicians and many hydropaths who also employ drugs have become convinced that the whole system of poisoning, from Alpha to Omega, is wrong. 'But,' they say, 'the people demand medicine. We know that hygienic appliances, without anything in the shape of a drug, are best in all cases. But if we tell people so, they will not employ us. They will send for a physician who will give drugs."'

"Such reasoning," said Trall, "is conclusive with the majority as human nature is now constituted. It is the sordid argument of the opium dealer, the infernal reasonings of the rum seller, the damnable logic of the tobacco-trader. It is a conscience salve of the peculating demagogue who says: 'The public is a goose; if I do not pluck its feathers, somebody else will.' It is the conclusion of the robber, whose creed is every man for himself, so that he keeps out of the halter."

When a medical man, a chiropractor, a spiritual healer or other cure-monger, undertakes to say that Hygiene is not adapted to certain constitutions, and that drugs or some form of therapeutics are best adapted to some persons or to some diseases, we say in reply that he or she knows very little about the Hygienic System. We do not hesitate to say that we consider him or her as either an ignoramus or a humbug.

Institutions have sprung up all through the years offering to provide the sick with Hygienic care that were and are such in name only. The heads of these institutions have not been and are not Hygienists and their institutions do not deserve the name, because they do not illustrate the principles of genuine Hygiene. They do not put themselves into harmony with it; they do not yield themselves gratefully and with full understanding of and confidence in Hygiene. They do not believe in Hygiene enough to live by it, to stand by it and to rely upon it. Belief in Hygiene is the life of Hygiene. They do not give themselves up to Hygiene and are not controlled by it. In mapping out their course of action, the pseudo-Hygienists follow a course exactly the contrary of that pursued by the genuine Hygienist. Only if the man reflects Hygiene in all that he does and there are no half-way measures and no compromises, is he worthy of the designation, Hygienist. The disciples of Hygiene must wear its badge. They must be marked men and women who have a home within its precincts and feel, in their principles and means of care, both of the well and the sick, confidence and enthusiasm.

All great revolutions (and Hygiene is the greatest revolution in human history) have been beset by these same types of conservatives, who seek to take care of the new idea and save it from destruction. They pose as wise friends, who seek to save the new movement from the destructiveness of extremism. They are afraid of extremes. They do not know that TRUTH is as much at home on the border of her empire as at its heart. Her empire ends only at the line of demarcation between truth and fallacy. It is not at the heart of the empire of truth, but at its extremes that the egg is laid that hatches into treason. Truth does not live on or between extremes, but in or at extremes.

It is a misnomer to call a journal Hygienic that is organized and published to advocate therapeutics in any form. It is a misnomer to call an institution Hygienic that is conducted on therapeutic principles and administers therapeutic modalities. It is a misnomer to call a man a Hygienist if he practices any mode of therapeutics. These things are more than misnomers--they are hypocritical. It is like "stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in" to take the name of a system of mind-body care, that is doing so much good and growing so rapidly in popularity and that is bettering the lives of people everywhere, and use it for the purpose of covering up and glossing over a system that is incompatible with it.

Professionally, the eclectic is everywhere and nowhere; he is everything by turns and nothing long. These half-and-half copies of Hygienists are not always agreed in regards to the merits of the curative measures that should be brought along from the practices of the cure-mongering schools--whether herbs, chemical drugs, vitamins, chiropractic, hypnotism, spiritual healing, or other "aids to nature."

As we understand the various medical sects, no one of the multitudinous variety of medical isms contains sufficient truth to cement it into a system, much less to assure its permanence. They are all transient, yet serve a purpose, either in exposing the weakness of other isms or of revealing the folly of the whole curing practice.

In justice to Hygiene, those practitioners who are only half converted and who wish, whatever their reasons therefor, to employ the therapeutic modalities of their school, should not call themselves Hygienists. As the Hygienic revolution incorporates within it vitalities sufficient to make it independent of the schools of medicine, it is only fair that we demand of those who wear its mantle and set themselves up as its disciples, that they should separate themselves from the schools of curing and hold unquiveringly the Hygienic standard to the breeze. A radical system, like Hygiene, must have this course on the part of its standard-bearers or be lost. There can be no standing still for the Hygienist. If he advances far enough to attain his doctorate, he must continue to advance if he would be true to himself and to Hygiene.

The man who insists upon practicing some of the so-called healing arts should take his proper place with the school of healing whose arts he employs and should not call himself a Hygienist. As a Hygienist, he is sailing under false colors. Drugs and Hygiene! Poison and wholesomeness! Filth and purity! Destruction and conservation! Health and disease in co-partnership! Is it not laughable, the complacency that can combine the two in practice and call the practice Hygiene?

What can we expect of the poor suffering patient, when told by the professed Hygienist, that by the use of drugs or by the aid of some drugless modality, he hopes and expects to make Hygiene more effective or to lend it much needed assistance? Certainly, he will think that there must be some inherent deficiency in Hygiene that can be supplied only by drugs or by treatments. He must conclude that, while Hygiene is good, by itself it is not good enough. As all the forces of his past education have been on the side of drugs and treatments and against Hygiene, it is almost inevitable that this shall be his conclusion. Let such a patient recover health under the hygeio-druggist and go abroad and in a subsequent illness he will turn to drugs as naturally as he takes food when he is hungry.

The practitioner who thinks that his treatments, whether they are drugs or physical measures, and Hygiene are natural allies, and who, in contemplating results, raises the very natural questions-whether the Hygiene or the treatments aid the patient, or whether both operate conjointly, Hygienically and harmoniously, or whether the patient gets well in virtue of the treatment despite the Hygiene, or, lastly, whether the patient gets well in virtue of the Hygiene in spite of the treatmentis unable to provide a satisfactory answer to such questions. Practices that are all too easily rationalized or dismissed, or even turned inside out, emerging as ends in themselves, can have no appeal to the intelligent man.

We can imagine no worse evil to imperil the whole system of Natural Hygiene than an alliance with some of the treating systems. Between one system of treatment and another there is about the same difference as that between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They are all antagonistic to life, all violate the laws of life, all are diametrically opposite to Hygienic principles--the delusion is a very strange one that the combination of Hygiene with the treating systems will benefit Hygiene. Those who entertain this delusion have not made an acquaintance with the first principle nor the first letter of the alphabet of the system of Hygiene.

We believe it utterly impossible for any man to make sense and consistency the predominating qualities of his work when his leading idea is to reconcile the unreconcilable. Like all those who propose wrong practices without a knowledge of right principles, he endeavors to compromise wherever he can find a safe position. These pseudo-Hygienists cannot believe in Hygiene because they do not know what it is and do not understand it. They do not dream that it is a complete and consistent system with principles of its own, which principles are true; that it is ample and universal in its application and includes all the truly remedial appliances in the world. They are likely to accuse us of being too radical and too dogmatic about Hygienic fundamentals. Count us as happy to be counted in the ranks of genuine Hygienists. We fear an emasculated Hygiene almost as much as we fear the lighter forms of drugging.

Outstanding among the pseudo-Hygienists was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek fame. Almost immediately after graduating from the Hygeio-Therapeutic College, where he also taught chemistry, Kellogg assumed editorship of the Health Reformer and became medical director of the institution founded by the Whites in Battle Creek for the Hygienic care of the sick. Mr. and Mrs. White, who also founded the Adventist Church, had learned their Hygiene from Graham, Trall and Jackson. Trall was a regular contributor to the Health Reformer. Before making it known that he had become editor of the Health Reformer, Kellogg challenged Trall to a discussion of a minor issue. Accepting the challenge, Trall threshed the daylights out of Kellogg and was repaid for his trouble by being denounced as too radical and excluded from the pages of the Health Reformer.

Kellogg subsequently graduated from an allopathic school of medicine, repudiated his degree from the Hygeio-Therapeutic College, saying that he never wanted it anyway (a fact which did not prevent him from accepting it), and went his own way with what he called "rational medicine." With the support of the Adventist Church, he built the little institution founded by Mr. and Mrs. White into a large institution of world-renown, at the same time, slowly leading the Adventists away from Hygiene. The name of the Health Reformer was changed to Good Health and continued to be published well into this century with Kellogg as its editor. It continued to carry on its mast-head the legend that it was a Hygienic publication, but it deviated severely from the primary principles of Hygiene. All of this desertion of Hygiene and devotion to hydropathy with the administering of some drugging was an effort on the part of Kellogg to get the favor of the medical profession.

Like all those who pretend to reconcile drug treatment with Hygienic care, and the care of the sick with and without drugs at the same time, he used a medley of inconsistencies. Kellogg was an intelligent man, much too enlightened, I think, not to have perceived the contradictions in his own presentation of the case for drugs. One can only wonder how he reconciled in his own mind his compromises and expediencies.

It is axiomatic that reform and compromise are due to outright reaction and even to betrayal. If and when Hygienists become "good fellows" and seek by compromise and piece-meal reform to woo the forces of medicine (of whatever school), they are certain to become hopelessly embroiled in medical issues and problems and in the therapeutic and practical contradictions of medicine generally. The problems of the medical profession will become theirs and those of the Hygienists and of the people will be shoved into the background. Sooner or later the Hygienist reformer will become either an out-and-out medical man or will wear himself out trying to make the medical profession reform itself for the benefit of its patients.