| OCR Text |
Show The Secret Out. A very Imprudent physician has done his brethren a great injury by thoughtlessly divulging one of the most valuable secrets of the profession. "How is practice now? you must be making a great deal of money, for every third person seems to be ailing?" "True; there is much serious sickness, but I get no practice. The panic has made the times so hard, that people cure themselves by eating nothing." There are few bodily ailments which are not aggravated, and in some cases rendered incurable by insufficient diet; but with the exception of diphtheria and a few others, nine out of ten of all ordinary ailments are controlled, are arrested, are permanently cured by a wise diminution of the amount of food eaten. This is particularly the case when there is no decided ailment, but a general feeling of discomfort or of unwellness. In all actively inflammatory maladies, where there is some pain anywhere, total abstinence from all substantial food, from everything liquid or solid, except hot teas, is the sheet-anchor of safety, when not extended beyond 36 hours. No one should venture on a longer abstinence on any occasion without the advice of a physician. All pain is caused by over-distended blood vessels pressing against some neighboring nerve. Hence the quickest way of relieving any ordinary pain is to diminish the amount of blood to the vessels of the part by bleeding. But there is a safer a better and a more enduring relief in cutting off the supply of blood; and as blood is made out of food we eat, it must be apparent, that if on the feeling of pain or discomfort, we cease eating absolutely, that pain must begin to diminish within six hours, that being the time required for converting food into blood, and if no more food is eaten no more blood can be made, while if the amount in the system is diminished at the rate of two or more pounds in every 21 hours of invalidism, there must soon be relief. |
