I am glad to say there is no “suggestion” or faith cure about the milk diet treatment. You put something in, and you get something in return for it every time. I have had patients who took the treatment because friends urged them to, but without the least faith in it, except that they thought “milk wouldn’t hurt them,” and these people have made as good a cure as others who had perfect confidence in the method.
All my patients will bear me out in the statement that no psychological influence has been exerted. The milk diet treatment is a simple thing, and within any person’s reach. It is not necessary to have grand buildings, expensively furnished apartments, showy bathrooms, glittering apparatus, or complicated appliances of any kind. What is needed is a quiet, cool and airy place, with a comfortable bed and the necessary toilet utensils. A vase of fragrant flowers is always acceptable, but showy ornaments or pictures or lace curtains are out of place.
Nor is it necessary to have frequent examinations of the body, of the urine, the blood, or the secretions of the stomach, etc. After a long sanitatium experience, and listening to the histories of many people who had been the rounds of the various institutions, I am firmly of the opinion that these “examinations,” as usually conducted, are mainly beneficial to the staff of young doctors who get the fees, and incidentally, some experience. Of what possible use is it for the patient to learn one week that he has “hypoacidity,” and the next week that he has “hyperacidity,” if his dyspepsia is not relieved?
Such things may have their use in sanitariums conducted with the idea of having the patients stay as long as their money holds out, but they are not needed in a place where the treatment does what it is claimed to do, and patients are steadily improving.
The average person will get better results in a well-conducted sanitarium than he will at home, not especially on account of more skilful treatment, but from causes that are well understood by all physicians.
The change of air and scene, the making a regular business of the “cure,” the relief from home cares and worries, the getting away from the well-meant, but often harmful solicitations of anxious relatives and friends, often the exchange of a stuffy, over-furnished, over-curtained, badly ventilated bedroom for a more healthful one, all these, and many other details, frequently assist in getting an invalid started on the up-grade. But more than all other things combined is the wonderful influence of the new
blood made do freely on the milk. Rest and quiet, daily warm baths and plenty of fresh, pure air, are necessary to most people in order that they may take and assimilate the proper amount of milk, and eliminate the waste products.
It is not necessary to have a daily “health lecture,” during the treatment. But frequently, at the start, a little encouragement is helpful to keep the milk going down, because the senses of hunger and thirst do not cry for it, and it is easy to stop drinking for a while.
The best “cures,” in my experience, have been the patients who started in with the full amount of milk, and took it continuously, without interruption other than during the sleeping hours. They did not stop because their stomachs seemed full or for a bad taste in their mouths. Some of them have disregarded nausea and even vomiting during the first days of their treatment. Others have suffered headaches and backaches, and later on, the dull, stretching pain in the stomach, kidneys and liver, which may accompany the rapid growth of those organs. Very many have had returns of the old pains of rheumatism, neuralgia, earache, toothache, pleurisy, peritonitis, and inflammatory conditions of the generative organs, which they may have had years before. These pains usually last about a day, but in chronic cases of long standing, where there has been considerable growth of inflammatory tissue, and adhesions, as between the serous surfaces of the peritoneum and various organs of the abdomen and pelvis, the duration of the pain is somewhat in proportion to the length and seriousness of the disease.
The pain is never as severe as it was in the original disease, except perhaps in some women at the menstrual period, and the pain may be stopped by stopping the milk, and thereby taking off some of the pressure, but that is usually the wrong thing to do, for it is the excess of blood that works the cure.
I do not ask the impossible of any person, but I tell those who are inclined to stop the milk that the pain is only a necessary reaction in the diseased part; that pain means a growth of new capillary blood vessels in a place where the circulation has been stagnant, that the part of organ is growing larger, getting straightened out, coming back to the place where it belongs, stretching its fibrous and sensitive covering (as in the liver and kidneys), pulling on the contracted ligaments, or abnormal fibrous bands which have bound it down and interfered with its action, or stimulating the normal movement where it had been paralyzed.
It is easier to understand why there should be pain with a curative process than it is to explain how there ever can be a cure without pain.
When I have told patients what, to the best of my knowledge and experience, is going on, I leave it to them to decide whether they can stand the pain, or discomfort, with the expectation of a complete cure, or whether they will have to stop the milk temporarily, and perhaps stop the curative process when it is at its height.
I encourage them by stating the fact, which I cannot emphasize too strongly, and which every one should remember, that in 41 years’ experience with this treatment, on all classes of patients, suffering from heart and kidney disease, brain and nerve disorders, blood clots, paralysis, inflammation of the bowels, ulcerative processes in various parts of the body, chronic specific disease, dilated stomach or chronic poisoning due to lead, mercury, arsenic, or any medicine, I have never known an injury or bad result from pushing the milk diet, with the single exception of the hemorrphagic cases such as those specified under consumption and high blood pressure.
I would advise against giving the full milk diet to any patient who had recently been operated on or who had a ruptured artery from any cause. By “recently” I mean within two to four weeks, according to the extent of the operation. I am not afraid to give the milk diet in any case of diseased blood vessels, or in aneurism caused by disease, for I believe the blood carries its own cure for these conditions, but COMPLETE REST MUST GO WITH IT.
It is not possible in this little book to follow each case to the end. There is an infinite variety. If you have learned the great natural principles upon which the treatment is based and follow the directions I have given you, you will be ready for any condition, which may arise.
Don’t leave out some portion, which you think is unnecessary, nor add something to it which has helped you under other circumstances. Try my way first.
Those who take a full milk diet without resting, and fail to cure their disordered, should wait some time before taking the treatment in the proper way. It is best for them to lose the flesh they gained even if they have to wait several months, or take a long fast, before trying my method.
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