The Hygienist is bound to preserve, with the utmost care, the vital powers of his patient; to provide every condition favorable to recovery, and to avoid every measure in practice which has proven to be deleterious or dangerous to the organism. For, under no circumstance and at no stage of any so-called "disease," is there need to make use of any means which tend to injure either immediately or remotely, the permanent health of the sick person.

Any acts or measures which have a tendency to cripple the organic powers, or which lessen the strength of any organ, at a time when it is struggling vigorously to overcome pathogen and repair damages must necessarily lessen the chances of recovery. To relieve pain, certainly no agent or practice should be employed that tends to deprive the nerves of the power to produce it--to feel. Not the pain, but its occasion should be removed. It is equally as rational to administer opium to relieve the pain in a corn and leave the ill-fitting shoe on the foot, as it is to give it to relieve pain elsewhere in the body and not remove the exciting cause.

Remedial Hygiene has but one legitimate object; namely, the restoration of the sick body to a state of health, by the use of such means as will improve the general vigor of life. It should be our business to understand the natural resources of a healthy life and an abundant vitality, and to make use of the most appropriate and most powerful agencies as the simplest and most effective means of restoring and renewing health, strength and youth.

Tilden expresses it thus: "The office of the physician or healer is to understand the functions of the mind and body, to know their capacity, and to be able to recognize when the capacity is overworked; and then to know how to advise to bring back a return to the normal. It is within man's capacity to interpret the wants and needs of his body and mind--the cosmic urge, if you please. The law of his being is in unison with, if indeed it is not a part of, universal law."

The highest development of health demands an ensemble of cooperating conditions. A superior constitutional vigor correlated with good living habits means the acme of health and strength. The body must depend, not alone upon the integrity of its parts, but also upon integrity of behavior.

The hygienic processes herein developed have their sole basis in physiology and anatomy. They supply the internal needs of and set in motion a self-regenerating machine and are the things ordinarily employed to insure the continuance of health and life. The application of hygiene will slowly, but surely, coax and build that tottering nutrition back into health's morning.

The true remedies are those only the constant tendency of which is to restore the healthy state. Only in proportion as it cooperates with the forces of life, on whose efforts bodily restoration is dependent, is any plan of care beneficial. Agents that excite or depress nervous activity; narcotics that deprive the nerves of the power to tell us, by aching, of trouble; cathartics that lash tired, overworked bowels into vigorous and exhausting action--these are not remedies. The true anodyne is not the drug that all but stops nervous activity, but the process that removes the reason for the pain. So-called drug anodynes are, in reality, odynes.

Our methods are in strong contrast to those methods which rely on the dubious relations existing between the living organism and a multitude of substances exerting chemical and mechanical force-relations always obscure and affording much ground for conflicting and widely different opinions. Under prevailing methods recovery of health is effectually blocked by the incongruity existing between a therapeutic system based on suppression of symptoms for petty ends and the real needs of the sick organism.

Food builds nerves; tonics destroy them. Rest is nature's greatest healing influence; stimulation is a disintegrating influence. For instance, we get fever by breaking down resistance with stimulants. Only the processes of nature (working with natural agents and forces) can resupply or rebuild lost or diminished nerve energy and nervous structure.

A proper regulation of the environment, eliminating all impairing influences, necessarily contributes to the prevention of toxemia and greatly facilitates recovery.

Those who want to rebuild and renew their bodies when the old frame has, for years past, been accumlating toxins, rather than attempt to patch up the body, will prefer the natural to the artificial remedies. The renewal of life, renewal of tissue, renewal of the body, depends upon the removal of enervation and toxemia and the proper supply of the natural renewers of the body.

We have never adequately realized how consistent and utterly trustworthy nature is; hence we have been prone to rely upon false remedies and to worship at the fanes of false gods. "If you cooperate with Nature you will find that the natural forces are infinite which tend to strengthen, restore and upbuild. Array yourself against these forces and disorder, discomfort, disease and death will follow."

3. "The accumulation or recuperation of the vital or healing power." This can only be accomplished by giving the organism an opportunity to recuperate its vitality. No matter what the definition of vitality; when vitolytic effects are in excess of the ability of the vitosynthetic process to restore or replace, and when this is continuous, day after day, vitosynthesis lags behind; a condition of the tissues and organs results that will require a considerable period of freedom from vitolytic activities to recover. This means rest in any language.

Jennings wrote: "The great object to be steadily aimed at in all cases of sickness, is to favor the renovating process which is in constant progression within. Rest, quiet, is the great remedy. Let there be no unnecessary expenditure of vital funds, either through mental exercise, or any undue exercise of the bodily functions. When there is a disposition to sleep, let it be indulged. And as there is no medicine to be given by the hour, sleep may be protracted to any length, unless it is laborious, then a slight jog, or a little change of position, or a swallow of water, will start it in its regular train again."--Tree of Life, p. 187.

Two factors are concerned:--(a) Correction of all influences that occasion the waste of power; (b) Supplying the body and mind with rest, relaxation and sleep in order to recuperate. This is accomplished by all of the following :

(1) By stopping the habits and indulgencies that increase function (stimulating habits).

(2) By ceasing physical effort.

(3) By ceasing mental effort.

(4) By reducing physiological effort. Physiological effort is reduced by correcting those habits that stimulate function, by stopping mental and physical effort and by either stopping the food intake entirely or by at least reducing it to a minimum.