TREATMENT OF DISEASES. Il9 



*' That's all." You remember my telling you that I had used theusual remedies. 

 I consulted some of the leading specialists in affections of the lungs, in the city, 

 and paid them large fees. They went through the usual course of erperimen- 

 tation with me, under all resorts to medicine. I went to the Adirondacks (a 

 range of mountains in northern New York) for the summer, and to Florida in 

 winter, but none of these things did me any substantial good. I lost ground 

 steadily, grew to be almost a skeleton, and had all the worst symptoms of a 

 consumptive whose end is near at hand. At that juncture a friend told me that 

 he had heard of a cure effected by drinking hot water. I consulted a physi- 

 cian who had paid special attention to this hot water cure, and was using it 

 with many patients. He said: ' There is nothing, you know, that is more diffi^ 

 cult than to introduce a new remedy into medical practice, particularly if it is 

 a very simple one, and strikes at the root of erroneous views and prejudices 

 that have long been enter*amed. The old practitioners have tried for years to 

 cure consumption, but they are as far from doing it as ever. Now, the only 

 rational explanation of consumption is that it results from defective nutrition. 

 ' It is always accompanied by maJ-assimilation of food.' [Mai, means bad and 

 assimilation means, to make food.^ 'In nearly every case the stomach is the 

 seat of a fermentation that necessarily prevents proper digestion. The first 

 thing to do is to remove that fermentation and put the stomach'into a condition 

 to receive food and dispose of it properly. This is effected by taking water 

 into the stomach, as hot as it can be borne, an hour before each meal. This 

 leaves the stomach clean and pure, like a boilei that baa been washed out. 

 Then put into the stomach, food that is in the highest degree nutritious and the 

 least disposed to fermentation. No food answers this description better than 

 tender beef. A little stale bread may be eaten with it. Drink nothing but 

 pure water, and as little of that at meals as possible. "Vegetables, pastry, 

 sweets, coffee and alcoliolic liquors should be avoided. Put tender beef alone 

 into a clean and pure stomach, three times aday,and the system wiK be fortified 

 and built up until the wasting away, which is the chief feature of consiunp- 

 tion, ceases and recuperation sets in. 



" ' This reasoning impressed me. I began by taking one cup of hot water 

 an hour before each meal, and gradually increased the dose to three cups, or 

 nearly a pint. At first it was unpleasant to take, but now I drink it with a 

 relish that I never experienced in drinking the choicest wine. I began to pick 

 up immediately after I began the new treatment and gained fourteen pounds 

 within two months. ' " 



The editor then closes in a way which you will see encourages the use of 

 hot water in dyspepsia. He says: 



" Combined with carefully selected foods, and some mild medicine to assist 

 nature in eliminating (carrying out) poisons from the system, it is said by those 

 who have tried it to be very efficient in dyspepsia and all forms of indigestion. 

 If this be true (and of this the autl)or has not a doubt), it will certainly be a 

 blessing, as medicines almost universally fail to effect cures in these diseases. 

 Many prominent New York physicians are abandoning medicines for simple, 

 nutritious foods, and report more than ordinary success in the treatment of 



