In the human body something happens very similar to the deposit of scale in a steam boiler. But the human body is a furnace as well as an engine. It is so intricate and so delicate that if the temperature rises or falls one degree above or below normal, the condition is one of disease. As food is its fuel, how can we expect the mechanism to remain in order if we utterly disregard the body's requirements, not only as to the character of the fuel supplied, but also as to the quantity, especially if we so choke it with fuel that Nature is unable to burn it up in the vital processes, and to dispose of the resulting ashes and cinders? Nature is resourceful - full of expedients and makeshifts! If she were not, the span of life would be much shorter than it is. As previously stated, she will seal up a foreign substance that cannot be expelled, and not only will she do this with solids that have penetrated the flesh, but she will actually build "catch basins" in the body, called cysts - bags, somewhat like a bladder, in which the excess or refuse that cannot be eliminated may be impounded, and the ruin of the body postponed for months or even for years.

The marvelous economy of Nature.

The true office of diagnosis is not only to find the disorder, but to discover also the conditions that lead to it, or have a bearing upon it; hence that diagnosis is faulty which comes short of this, for the reason that even if the disorder be located and overcome, it will recur if its cause persists, just as the scale in the boiler will form again if the causes that produced it are not removed.

True diagnosis locates a disorder; also the causes.

As the blood is the life, as it brings to every cell life (nourishment), and carries away death (poisonous by-products of vital activities in the form of dead matter to be eliminated from the body); as it does this by its marvelously rapid circulation through every cell, it is obvious that every part of the body will be in a state of health if the blood itself is pure, and its supply and circulation such that every cell is abundantly fed. The supreme law of health, therefore, may be expressed in two statements, one positive and one negative:

Both the storing of fat and the disposing of waste are expensive processes.

1 Feed the body correctly.

2 Do not interfere with the circulation of the blood.

If the blood is not a perfect building material it is because we have not put into the digestive mill the right materials; and if it is not properly circulated, it is because the circulation is impeded by positive constrictions, or, as is more frequently the case, because the composition of the blood is not perfectly suited to the demands of the vital activities. As a result, much of the material must be rejected as unusable, thus involving a great deal of extra work in disposing of it. If the excessive material is wholesome, though not at present usable, it may be packed away for future use as fat, this being the easiest, and perhaps the only possible way of disposing of it in the rush. The builders are not only overworked, but literally overwhelmed with excessive and unsuitable materials - and why? - that we may indulge perverted appetites.

Corpulency considered unhealthy.

Defective circulation reduces efficiency.

Even the excessive material packed away in the wholesome form of fat may, merely by its bulk, become an impediment to the circulation. It not only reduces the efficiency of the bodily mechanism, but also is so potent a factor in shortening life that a corpulent person is likely to be rejected by an insurance company, even though his present state of health may be good.

A condition often found illustrates most forcibly the manner in which defective circulation reduces the efficiency of the human power-plant, even as the scaly deposit impairs the efficiency of the steam boiler. "That tired feeling" of which so many complain, is so called because the person thus afflicted has a sense of painful exhaustion upon slight exertion - is tired all the time. If our diagnosis shows a state of chronic exhaustion, and we endeavor to increase the body-efficiency by increasing the food, we shall make the same mistake as the fireman who shovels more coal under a scaly boiler.

Exhaustion, the accumulation of body-poisons.

Painful exhaustion in a perfectly healthy body results from violent, or too long-continued exercise of a muscle, and if there are no intervals of rest, excruciating pain results. The cells are broken down more rapidly than the resulting waste can be carried away by the circulation, hence the body-poisons and pain. The pain is a symptom, and where the condition of which it is the index is temporary, rest soon restores the normal condition of ease.

There would be no sense of exhaustion if the building and the eliminating processes could be carried on with sufficient rapidity concurrently to make good all the expenditures of mental and bodily activities. Not only should we not need rest, but we should not even need sleep. The only occasion to stop, then, would be to take in more fuel (food), and if this could be taken while the body is in action, as fuel is fed to the steam boiler, there would be no necessity to stop. But apparently both the upbuilding and the elimination of waste normally lay behind the demands of even ordinary activity, so that a given muscle must have very frequent intervals of rest (every few seconds), and the organism, as a whole, must reduce activity to the minimum by sleep about one-third of the time.

Rest is imperative.

Nature's devices to provide rest.

As some of the muscles are used with practical continuity during the waking life, Nature resorts to some very cunning devices to provide the necessary rest. The tension upon the muscle of the eye is relaxed for an instant in the unconscious act of winking, but by reason of the persistence of visual sensation, this does not interfere with vision. Thus Nature has always used the principle involved in the moving picture. The heart must perform its work every instant, from the time before we are born until the end, but each muscle rests about one-third of every second - when it relaxes, and the chamber of the heart expands with the inrush of blood.

The body a pile of mysterious atomic masonry.

Nature alone is the builder, and will do all that should be done if she only has the proper materials in proper proportions. We may well stand in awe and admiration of her mysterious atomic masonry, but let us lay no sacrilegious hand upon her work.