So you have cured your thumb nail, and if you stick to your good resolution not to destroy the nail again in this way you have cured it permanently.

You do not stop to think that this healing is a demonstration of the growth principle still active in the body, just as active as when your body was not yet fully developed, but as it is just this, and it is this same principle that acts to cure disease of all kinds, repairing, the damage done.

The organs you have this year are largely new organs, not those with which you were born at all, and largely not the ones you were using last year, for cell by cell they die and are replaced cell by cell by other organs. This same continuance of the function of growth and repair goes on so long as life lasts.

Our care must be that daily we use as food those things that represent everything in the form of building materials that the body requires in making these daily repairs, and using these in such relation as will guarantee freedom from the usual fermentations that result in so much loss of alkali by the body.

In building a house of brick we must also have mortar else there will be nothing to bind the loose brick together, and for so many brick we must also have so much mortar, if we are to build an enduring wall.

The building stones are the materials from which we build tissues, the mortar is represented by the mineral salts without which the building would soon crumble.

Some of these salts no doubt enter permanently into body structure, others are used up in daily function, passing out through the avenues of elimination, in combination with the excreta, while still others are what we call catalysts, chemicals whose presence is necessary in the changes that occur in digestion and elimination and metabolism, but which are not lost, being used over and over again, and even these become depleted through time, and have to be restored through the foods.

If we knew what minerals are shy at the time and could replace them from the shelf, in the form of prepared chemicals, then there would be some sense in describing certain of our so-called remedies as "restorative remedies," but we still have no proof that man can make these chemicals in form acceptable to the body, Nature's form, colloids, having so far eluded the chemist very largely, though he makes now what he calls colloids, but their use does not restore the deficiencies of the body, as we judge this by clinical observation.

Nature provides all her chemicals for restoration of the body in the form of colloids, organic forms, and man has for a long time sought to imitate her in this, but he has not been so very successful that we are now able to insure the recouping of the chemical losses of the body by any artificial means, and must still depend on Nature's colloids as found in plant and fruit.

During acute illness when the body is fighting with all its might and main to readjust its internal affairs to the normal, and when death seems very near, it is but natural that the friends should desire that something very heroic be done, and it is equally natural that the physician should feel the same way. The writer well remembers that he always felt this way about such situations, and yet there is nothing to do but wait, for it is positively dangerous to interfere in any way with the body's own means of readjusting itself to the normal, and if we realize this and keep hands off we will be astonished at the short time required to do this work of housecleaning and repair.

Twenty-four years ago, when the writer definitely stopped all interference, it took nerve to give absolute blanks and wait, but he was so firmly convinced that this was Nature's intention that he stuck faithfully to this prescription of just plain sugar of milk tablets, colored in several impressive colors, and then he began to see all these acute cases recover that looked seriously like failures under former prognostic experience.

After two years of the use of nothing but these harmless placebos he quit even this, but in treating cases for the first time it is yet sometimes necessary to deceive the patient in this way.

Four years ago the writer was called in great haste to a new family whose physician was not available at the time, but whose two-year-old baby was supposed to be dying with whooping cough.

It was useless to try in a few minutes to educate this mother who was frantic over the baby's apparent danger, so all that was attempted was to reassure her first, then ascertain what was being done, change this all quickly, give sugar of milk tablets with orders to dissolve one in a teaspoonful of water and give every two hours during waking hours, clear the then burdened colon, and wait.

Orders were given also to use no foods of any kind till the baby-was evidently hungry, nothing beyond orange juice to be considered till that time, and to get in touch with their physician next day.

Two weeks later the writer met this mother with her baby walking beside her, taking an outing, and as she approached she picked up her baby, then looking perfectly fit, and she said to the writer: "Doctor, I wish every woman in the world knew of this wonderful medicine for whooping cough."

It was good, for it allowed Nature to work unhampered, and the other slight assistance given was merely in line with Nature's own efforts, unloading a bowel unable to keep itself clear of waste from meat, eggs, breads, cereals, sugars, milk, for her doctor had warned her that whooping cough is a very tedious and exhausting disease and the baby must be kept well nourished, and it was smothered with food.

What can we do for disease? Only stop causing it, and when we have done this we have done enough in every case.

Spasmodic asthma comes from the embarrassment of the bronchial tubes, from waste of acid character, manufactured every day, and whether these are severe spasmodic seizures or the continual catarrhal condition the cause is the same and the treatment the same, merely to stop the formation of this irritating debris.

This is so easily and quickly proven that it is a pleasure to make this proof to any asthmatic sufferer.

To accomplish a quick relief it is well to take the Pluto water every morning for at least three days, confining the diet to fresh fruit juices, always unsweetened. Usually this rather short period is sufficient to bring quite thorough and complete relief, convincing the patient that his trouble is from this accumulation of acid debris which has been partially and temporarily removed, and it is then easy enough to secure the full cooperation of the patient in such dietary changes as are necessary to end this pestiferous condition permanently.

If any unbelieving asthmatic will make this proof on himself he will easily see how foolish he has been to take medicines which never did any good, or even to inhale irritating powders or smoke, which by their irritation cause great flow of mucus and bring temporary relief, for the cause is all the time inside the body and controllable through the diet only.

Relieved in this way asthmatics can continue to live in their former uncongenial surroundings without the least difficulty, and the very same thing applies to hay fever, though this should be undertaken months before the expected attack in order to secure relief then; and the next year, if diet has been right, there will not be one sneeze to usher in the formerly fatal twentieth of August.

Now what cures these cases? No magic dope, no powerful and potent concoctions, nothing but Nature, your own body, through its function of growth and repair, and you need nothing beyond this, if you will remove the causes and keep them daily removed for all time.

In a later chapter the means necessary to remove all the exciting and predisposing causes of disease will be gone into more fully, but if one will select foods all the time that are real food, not manufactured tastes only, and combine these in such manner as will forfend the digestive tract against the usual fermentations of the ordinary heterogeneous mixture of incompatible foods, one will have then done enough to insure recovery from the annoying condition then present, and also to forfend the body against attacks of other sort that pass as the many-headed monster that we have always been taught to think disease.

The program is easy, when understood fully, and its application is pleasant and really fascinating, for food is a great game when you study it, and a game that has no tricks and no chances for short change, nothing but consistent winnings, when played fair.

Nature makes a complete showdown in every case of acute disease, and when you have learned how to read her cards they are as plain as day.

If we can forget our desire to do something heroic in acute . troubles and content ourselves with a removal of the evident obstructions to Nature's efforts to heal, we will have done the most heroic thing possible under the circumstances, and we can wait with confidence in the outcome, for Nature seldom undertakes to set her house in order unless there is sufficient vitality present to go through with this; some say she never does, but the writer's experience teaches definitely that she very seldom does, and if we have vitality enough to be alive in the early stages of this housecleaning that we call acute disease we have vitality enough to go through with it to the end, and the end is always far better conditions than obtained before this was undertaken by Nature.

So long as the body has vitality enough to undertake these readjustments there is hope for us, but when we begin to note that our former colds do not trouble us any more, and our sick headaches are a thing of the past, our formerly fluent catarrh has dried up, and if at the same time we have not removed the cause of these things through the necessary changes in diet, then we are in danger, and chronic disease in some form is already well established, for only then has Nature given up the job of trying to keep us clean inside.

If we would escape the formation of chronic disease, or avoid the necessity of these occasional housecleanings that we call disease, we need do nothing but quit causing these.

We must avoid all the causes of lowered vitality in every one of our amusements, our habits, and we must so arrange our food intake that the former acids will not form again to pollute the fountain of life at its source.

Such program does not fit in well with the practice of the ordinary physician or hospital, for these do something concrete for the disease as it presents itself at the time, something much too concrete by far, for the less they do for disease the better off will the patient be.

After all, what does the usual physician know of health?

His whole training is on disease, not on health; he knows nothing about the latter as it is not a profitable study, except for the patient. This is not the fault of the physician, but the fault of the system which educates him and continues to keep him misinformed on many things that his reason should tell him are not as he has been taught to believe; chiefly that Nature is a blind nurse and needs much expert guidance. All she needs is a freedom from restraint, a free hand.