Value Of Diagnosis

Correct diagnosis is one of the most important factors in the practise of applied food chemistry, and when a correct diagnosis has been made the remedy will suggest itself if the student has a thorough understanding of causes.

In diagnosis it is often necessary to ascertain the patient's general habits of eating during the few years prior to the appearance of the disorders. As an example, rheumatic conditions are often superinduced by an overconsumption of starch, usually cereal starch and acids. This overindulgence may have continued for several years before the appearance of any rheumatic symptoms. The primary causes being residual in the body, exposure, low vitality, or extreme climatic changes may give expression to them in the form of rheumatism, or some kindred trouble.

Causes Sometimes Very Remote

After determining the causes, a diet should be designed which will counteract existing conditions. This may usually be accomplished by limiting the quantity of food somewhat below the demands of normal hunger. This will give the digestive organs less work to do, and the body an opportunity to take up or consume any excess of food matter that may have become congested. In cases accompanied by loss of hunger, it is sometimes necessary to put the patient upon an absolute fast from one to three days, but in the majority of cases a semi-fast is best, prescribing light, nutritious foods of a remedial character.

Value of limited feeding.

Educate Your Patient

In beginning treatment each patient should be made acquainted with the fact that the radical change in diet may bring slight discomfort. While the systern is adjusting itself to the new regimen, there is usually a slight loss of weight and a feeling of weakness or lassitude.

It should be impressed upon the mind of the patient that regaining health and strength is in reality a process of growth or evolution, hence slow and gradual; that when one has violated the laws of health for many years. Nature will not, or probably cannot forgive all these sins and repair all these wrongs in a month or two. However, when one gets in harmony with the physical universe, and conforms to the laws of his organization, Nature will construct (cure) much more rapidly than she formerly destroyed (produced disease).

Curing A Slow Process

The practitioner may have many cases that for some seemingly mysterious reason will not respond to a perfectly natural diet and will, therefore, be called upon to change the diet from time to time in the vain hope of finding combinations of food that will agree. In these cases the student should not be led to deviate too far from what he knows to be a natural and chemically harmonious regimen. If such a diet does not produce the desired results, it is not always the fault of the food, but the fault of the patient. If the food is right, and does not agree, it is the patient that is wrong, hence the logical thing to do is to make the rebellious patient agree with the food, instead of searching for a food to agree with the patient.

The Patient Should Agree With The Diet

These facts should be impressed strongly upon the mind of the one under treatment, and he should be prevailed upon, if possible, to conform strictly to a correct diet until Nature is given time and opportunity to bring about an adjustment between the individual and his food.

It has been the custom of the medical profession for centuries to shroud its work in mystery, to write prescriptions in a dead language, to keep patients in ignorance of the remedies being applied. This seems to be necessary, probably because an intelligent discussion of allopathic drugs, their sources and their constituent elements would, no doubt, prove fatal to their administration. The food scientist should follow exactly the opposite course. He should make a very careful diagnosis, taking into account the diet, habits of exercise and exposure to fresh air prior to the appearance of the disease, as well as at the time of treatment. By giving the patient a thorough understanding of your work, you gain his confidence and faith, which wield a very powerful influence over the body.

Effect Of Mental Conditions

A very careful examination should also be made of the mental conditions. Worry, fear, or anxiety often produce serious digestive trouble which is generally attributed to other causes, and which should be treated very differently from the same trouble caused by errors in eating.

Worry Or Fear Causes Stomach Trouble

During my professional work many patients have come to me laden with fear, caused by the thoughtless or perhaps reckless statement of some physician. It is indeed as great a crime for a doctor to pass the "sentence of death" upon a man who comes to him for help as it would be for the judge of a court to pronounce the death sentence upon a prisoner without hearing the evidence, and some day when the power of the mind or suggestion is understood, it will be so considered.

It is impossible to fully estimate the effects of fear on the human body. Each year I become more and more impressed with the fact that fear is one of the most potent factors in the cause of disease.

What Christian Science Has Done

Christian Science has relieved thousands of people through the simple presentation of a philosophy that induces the individual to throw off this burden of fear. It matters not whether this burden is cast upon the Gentle Nazarene or John Doe, the fact that it has been disposed of often leads to relief and recovery. Christian Science has done the world a great service - it has put out the fires of an orthodox hell by pouring into it orthodox medicine. With a clear knowledge of the powerful psychological law, and the laws of human nutrition, the student has at his command two of the greatest forces in Nature for the relief of human suffering.

Publicity

Judicious and truthful advertising is another important factor in the success of the food scientist. Advertising has been considered unethical by medical men for years. It has been discredited, not because it is wrong, or because there is any harm in telling the public the truth about one's business, but because so many spurious nostrums and patent medicines were exploited by "quack" doctors, that the respectable physician deemed it best to adopt the other extreme in his effort to keep entirely out of this class.

Value Of Truthful Advertising

Advertising, however, is rapidly acquiring a more honest and upright character. The best magazines and some weekly newspapers will no longer accept advertisements of a questionable character, especially regarding medical remedies. Many of these excellent publications go so far as to vouch for and guarantee the honesty of everything exploited in their pages. Such methods are gradually purifying the advertising atmosphere.

There is no logical reason why anybody who has a virtuous and useful article, or who has discovered anything in the realm of science that would be a benefit to humanity, as well as a profit to himself, should not make it known as widely as possible through the instrumentality of advertising.

Advertising Both Virtuous And Necessary

In preparing advertising literature, whether for magazines, booklets, or letters, facts and truth concerning your work are all that is necessary. No statement should be made that can in any way jeopardize your reputation; nothing should be stated or claimed that cannot actually be made good.

For many years it has been my policy to keep my advertising conservatively below the full limit of facts; in other words, the whole truth concerning that which can be accomplished by scientific feeding sometimes seems so startling to the lay mind that the experienced advertiser will not state it as it really is.

A patient of mine who had been in a wheel chair for twelve years, and af-flicted for twenty years with locomotor ataxia, was so much improved within a year's time that he walked from Brooklyn to my office in New York City to exhibit himself. He gave me a testimonial letter and the privilege of using it in my advertisements. I wrote up the facts in regard to his case and submitted them to my agent, who was an expert advertiser, and he advised me not to state the facts as they were; the public, he contended, would not accept them as true.

Be Courteous And Tolerant

It is almost impossible to estimate the moral effect of a broad-minded, tolerant and courteous attitude toward others engaged in the practise of the healing art. Medical doctors seldom agree, especially those of different schools. They accuse each other of ignorance and incompetence, and the public is sometimes inclined to concede that they are right.

In certainty and in truth one has confidence and strength which is always conducive to tolerance. The food scientist, knowing the laws of cause and effect in regard to nutrition, and knowing the proper use of natural methods of diet and hygiene in the prevention and the cure of specific diseases, needs neither to dispute with a fellow practitioner, nor to argue with his patient. He can afford to state his position and quietly allow Nature to prove his claims.