Ebook: The myth of medicine.

The first edition of this little book was published under the
simple title, Rubies In The Sand. It is presented here unchanged except
for this Foreword and the Addendum. The book was originally written
in an effort to uncover from the sands of time precious jewels of truth
about health, disease and healing and to discover, if possible, the
means of preserving and restoring health that were so successfully
employed by our primeval forebears before the origin of the first
shaman, priest and physician. It is a source of much satisfaction to the
writer that he was eminendy successful in this effort. It is also
gratifying to know that mankind never actually lost these precious
jewels. They have simply been pushed aside and neglected while all the
emphasis has been placed upon anti-vital, inhuman and unnatural
methods and systems that have been offered as substitutes for nature's
own plan of care. The system of Natural Hygiene that I have stressed
in the following pages is not a new discovery, but a revival.
Hygiene is the employment of materials, activities and
influences that have a normal relation to life, in the preservation and
restoration of health. In other words, hygiene is the employment of
nature's own means of life in the care of both the well and the sick.
Vegetarianism and other forms of dietary reform, physical
culture, the various psychological and metaphysical movements, etc.,
are mere fragmentary approaches to the many and complex problems
of life and are inadequate to meet the needs of modem life. Hygiene, by
insisting upon an all-out approach to life's problems and upon a total
approach to these, constitutes a full system of mind-body care in both
health and illth. Other systems resort to treatments, substitutes and
compromises. All systems of so-called or alleged healing, both drug
and drugless, employ therapeutic means and measures that bear no
normal relation to life, fulfill no need of the living organism, and are
positively harmful, while their use is predicated upon no known law of
life.