When the roar that greeted this jibe at the medical profession had subsided, the speaker continued: "The land is flooded with sickness which flows from ignorance of nature's laws. Proper instruction would shut off disease at its source, but if doctors turned off the tap they wou!d put themselves out of a job."

Nobody pays the medical profession to "turn 'er off," they get "two bits an hour to mop 'er up." Tilden says: "A rational healing system cannot be based on haphazard and guesswork. The physician who is capable of treating disease according to a normal, rational plan will know what has caused the disease and just how it can be got rid of, and how it can be avoided. If he has success, his treatment must be exact--his patients must follow instructions; not half-way follow them for two or three days, and then neglect them for a few days."

When people are made sick from self-poisoning brought on from enervation, the medical professions prescribe more stimulation, with the idea that jaded nerves can be restored by jading them more. The common-sense procedure, when pathology exists, is to stop all enervating habits and restore nerve-energy by rest. This will restore normal functioning of all the organs; toxin will be eliminated and health will return in all cases where organic change is not so great as to make restoration impossible. Even in these incurable cases, life may be made comfortable and may be prolonged by this same procedure. When this common-sense, comprehensive system is generally accepted and practiced, we shall cease building chronic, organic "diseases."

"We have to work hard to catch disease." "To develop disease we must do everything that is disagreeable. We must eat the things that we do not like, and eat too much of the things we do like. We must form habits that are repugnant to our natural senses. Tobacco is distasteful. All kinds of drugs, including alcohol, coffee and tea, are distasteful to the natural palate. We indulge appetite and passion to such a degree that discomfort is experienced. We overwork our emotions until we are unhappy. We practice selfishness, dishonesty, and disloyalty until suicide offers the only escape."

If you have any symptoms and discomforts, there is something wrong. You do not know how to live. You are enervated and toxemic, and have much intestinal indigestion. Pain and weakness are the coins with which we pay for our "pleasures." No spice but hunger, no stimulant but exercise--this rule will prove productive of health.

Tilden says: "It is no part of the office of a physician to treat with a view of curing those who are sick; for such treating means palliation. How is it possible to treat wrong life? What can a physician do for a bad habit, except to show the evil of it, and how to live to get rid of the effect? Surely, after this, the patient must cure himself. Curing, then is a matter for those who are sick to attend to. Indeed, there is something to the old saw which says: 'A man is a fool or his own physician a forty.' Certainly, when he resorts to amulets, charms, prayers, doctors, dope, or anything except correcting the habits of body and mind that cause his disease, he has a fool for a doctor."

No individual will give up a bad practice in which he finds pleasure unless he is convinced that he is being cheated out of more than his pleasure comes to. So long as a man is not convinced that tobacco injures him, he will use it. He may say he is convinced of its injuriousness, but he is deceiving himself. People must be tanght how to live and taught how to correct the errors of life.

It is a mistake to think that because unhappy effects and consequences do not follow transgressions as suddenly as a thunderclap follows a stroke of lightning, your bad habits will not "find you out." We need most of all to know how to form our habits in conformity with the grand ends of nature.

How frequently do we see people so overwhelmed by pathology-producing habits that they go down and out, in spite of resolutions that are supreme while they last. They lack sufficient native or inborn power to make a sustained effort of sufficient duration. These people need and must have the restraining help of their caretakers, rather than a miscellaneous assortment of methods and systems of treating their symptoms.

The headaches suffered by the coffee user when deprived of coffee; the pains suffered by the drug addict when deprived of his drug; the unsteadiness of his nerves suffered by the tobacco user when deprived of his tobacco; the depression suffered by the stimulant user when deprived of his stimulant--these are not evidences of the beneficial influences of these substances but are evidences of their deleterious character. Outraged nerves and other tissues are simply coming out from under their influence and making their true condition known. Let the habitual rum drinker abandon his rum, and the parts of his body that have suffered most by the long continued excitement begin to cry out and make known their actual state. Greater or less suffering and discomfort which are regarded by superficial and ignorant observers as indications of an adverse change, immediately result, but the sequel is a happy issue.

Or, perhaps he attempts to "taper off" on his stimulant habit. He gradually reduces the amount of the drug taken. This does not decrease the suffering he will have to undergo in overcoming the habit--it but prolongs it. Instead of suffering for a week, he suffers for a month, or longer, and then, probably fails in his effort to free himself from the grip of the poison.

Tapering off is like cutting off a dog's tail an inch at a time until it is the desired length--or desired shortness. Cut off the tail and wait for this to heal, then cut it again and so on until you have cut it all you desire. This is the way tapering off works. It is best to cut out the stimulant at once. Pay the price all at once and have it over with.

The proffered opportunity to repair the injured and damaged' parts is immediately seized upon and the work of restoration begins at once. But due to the very general apparent detriment experienced in the initial stages of the restorative process, consequent upon the sudden cessation of the habitual excitement, this all important and beneficial process is commonly thought of as a "pulling down," or destructive, rather than a building up, or constructive, operation. People are warned not to break off their bad habits suddenly, but to "taper off" gradually. This latter plan both prolongs and increases the actual suffering that one must go through in the renovating work. One does not gain, but loses by the "tapering off" process, for the bad habit is continually interfering with the work of repair that may be begun when the amount of habitual injury is decreased. What is more, the "tapering off" process seldom enables one to succeed in breaking off from a bad habit for each repetition tends to keep the habit alive.