Toxemia Explained - Causes of Enervation

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The Causes of Enervation

TO UNDERSTAND disease, it is necessary

to know cause; and, as Toxemia is the cause of all diseases,

and as enervation--an enervated body and mind--is the cause of

Toxemia, it behooves those who are sick and want to get

well, and who want to know how to stay well, to know what causes

enervation.

A normal, healthy person is one who is

poised (self-controlled), and who has no nerve-destroying habits.

A self-controlled man is a man who is not controlled, kicked,

cuffed, or driven by habits.

Man is either the master of himself, or

his appetite and sensual pleasures master him. If the former,

he enjoys health until worn out; and he should go down at from

ninety to one hundred and fifty years of age. If he is inclined

to the latter, yet has his habits more or less under control--is

moderate--he may live from sixty to ninety years. But if he is

a sensualist--is controlled by habits and passions, sits up after

bedtime to take a last smoke or eat a lunch or gets up in the

night and smokes (I knew a celebrated physician who used tobacco

to secure sleep; he died at fifty-four years of age), or takes

a drink to quiet his nerves and make him sleep, or goes the limit

venereally--he becomes irritable, grouchy, and dies prematurely.

Excesses transform a man into a disgusting

brute. The word "brute" is used here to express the

state of one being devoid of self-control. Those of fine constitutions

are often converted into neurotics, who have left health and comfort

far behind. Many know comfort only for short periods, and then

at the instigation of drugs or stimulants.

The youths of our country are fast developing

a state of multi-inebriety--jazz, tobacco, alcohol, and petting

parties; are developing a sex-neurosis that will he followed by

a generation of paralytics, epileptics, insane, morons, idiots,

and monstrosities, embracing all who do not die of acute disease.

This class live from thirty until the

chloroforming age--sixty years. The majority die early in life.

We are fast coming to an age of impotence. I knew one of superior

mind who died of ataxia at thirty-five. I quote a few lines from

his own writings concerning his state the last year of his life:

Could I but crystallize these midnight tears

And gather from their beaded bitterness

A rosary for burning lips to press,

Some pain-born token of these joyless years,

To teach the faith that saves, the hope that cheers;

Then would I bid these fountains of distress

Flow fast and free, if their sad floods could bless

Or murmur peace in some poor sufferer's ears.

My world has shrunk at last to this small room,

Where, like a prisoner, I must now remain.

I'd rather be a captive in the gloom

Of some damp dungeon, tearing at my chain;

For then, perchance, my freedom I might gain.

Ah God! to think that I must languish here,

Fettered by sickness and subdued by pain,

To die a living death from year to year,

Joy banished from my breast and Sorrow brooding there.

I often think how once these stumbling feet,

That now can scarcely bear me to my bed,

Were swift to follow, as the wind is fleet,

That baleful beam that to destruction led;

Thou domineering power, or love, or lust,

Or passion, or whatever else thou art,

How have thy crimson roses turned to dust

And strewn their withered leaves upon this heart!

Though through my vitals now they venomed dart

Strikes like an adder's sting, yet still I feel

From Egypt's flesh-pots it is hard to part;

And my weak, wandering glances often steal

Back to sweet sinful things, until my senses reel.

Still one retreat is left, to which I flee:

Dear dreamy draught, in which I often steep

Body and soul, I turn again to thee,

And drift down Lethe's stream out on Oblivion's sea.

Thirty-five years is a short life for

a brain to live that can conjure the English language as the above

snatches indicate. Thousands pay the price that this man paid,

but very few can win so much admiration and sympathy with their

swan-songs. Few people can read the psychology of swan-songs.

Often they are an epitome of a lifetime.

ENERVATING HABITS

BABIES

Babies should not be trundled about too

much; should not sleep in their mothers' arms; should not be exposed

to bright lights, loud talking, noises, too much heat or cold;

should not be jolted about in baby-buggies, automobiles, trains,

street cars.

The very young are made sick by too much

excitement of all kinds. Very young children should be kept quiet

enough to favor sleep all the time, except when bathed and when

clothes are changed. They should not he taken up every time they

do any fretting. All that is needed is to make them dry and change

their positions.

Young children should not be fed oftener

than every four hours, and not that often unless they are awake.

To awaken a child for food is very unnecessary and harmful.

A human being is a cerebro-spinal dynamo,

and should be kept as much as possible in a static state, conserving

nerve-energy for future use. Poise or self-control--teaching a

child to be contented alone--must be started at birth.

Children need no entertainment. When left

alone, they find entertainment in becoming acquainted with themselves.

Children that are coddled in the matter

of being entertained--dancing attendance on them--develop discontent

and bring on enervation, which favors "the diseases peculiar

to children."

CHILDREN

Children of school age are enervated by

being urged in school work, exercise, and all kinds of excitement.

Play should he limited. When hysteria shows up, stop the play.

Much study, examinations, exercise without

desire, competitive examinations of all kinds, causes a capricious

craving for food. When a growing child is forced to the limit

of its nervous capacity, nature must conserve in some way; and

as there is no way to sidestep convention's eternal grind, the

normal desire for food is lost.

Forced Feeding to Increase Weight.--The

whole system of school feeding, is one of destroying health by

enervating, if not killing the child.

The federal government is ruining thousands

of our young men, teaching them the sick habit. The government

should give them a pension and turn them loose. The present coddling

is pernicious, not only for the ex-soldier, but also for those

who are interested in keeping their hospital jobs.

Doctors must be able to detect cunning

and craft. The sick habit often starts as a joke, an experiment--just

to see how those interested will take it--and ends in deceiving

the deceiver.

A common habit, and one that often leads

to a sick habit, is self-pity--being sorry for one's self. Children

are inclined to play sick to buy what they want.

Giving even school lunches enervates by

building dissatisfaction. It is disease-building. Children must

be given an independent spirit--pride will save the world. Then,

to add to all this routine of nerve-destroying customs of our

schools, teeth must be straightened; which means pressure on nerve

and more or less irritation. The tonsils and appendix must be

removed. This is a pernicious medical fad. Feed right, and there

will be no excuse for operations.

Vaccine and serums must be used to immunize

from disease that results from the enervation brought on from

all preceding causes. This is another senseless fad, besides it

is disease building.

People are sick from wrong living. Operations

remove erects. Stop the cause, and disease goes away. Nature cures,

when allowed to do so, by removing the causes of enervation.

Children Pampered and Spoiled.--This

brings on the bad and enervating habits of irritability, wilfulness,

overeating, improper eating, and temper. Many of the older children

use tobacco, coffee, and an excessive amount of sweets and pastry.

Self-abuse begins early in many, and is the cause of stomach symptoms.

Adolescence comes with excessive dancing, loss of sleep, smoking,

drinking, lasciviousness, venereal disease, and the fear springing

from the contemplation of the consequences. Irritable children

are hard to do anything for. The reason they are irritable is

because they are pampered and not made to mind.

It is a crime not to control children.

They should be compelled to obey. But do not wait until they are

sick. A cranky irritability will help bring on disease and keep

a child sick.

Fear.--Fear is the greatest of

all causes of enervation. Children are subject to many fears.

They are educated to fear the dark, the bogy-man, and punishment.

Parents often keep children in a state of fear by irritably cuffing

them for the slightest excuse. There are many parents who do their

"scrapping" before their children. It is a dreadfully

common thing to do.

Outlawry begins at home and at the breast

of the mother. A child that cannot respect its parents will not

respect the laws of the state or nation. No parent is respected

who is not obeyed at once and without capitulation. Unconditional

surrender is the discipline necessary for character-building.

But children will not obey laws that parents disregard.

In domestic infelicity are born disease

and crime, and no amount of doctoring by doctors of medicine,

law, and theology can cure; for none of them removes the cause.

Those who die of chronic disease have no self-control.

There is much fear and anxiety in a child's

life. No child can thrive living in a state of fear in home, school,

or church. Discipline taught by respected parents brings love

and not fear.

Longevity has increased since hell-fire

and brimstone have ceased to be taught and to build fear. A morality

kept intact by fear is not health-imparting, and is not a morality

at all. Remove the fear, and mob license succeeds it. Fear and

love are antidotal. Man has been taught to fear God, and at the

same time love Him. Where the fear is real, the love is fictitious.

Love being the basis on which ethics is built, a love founded

on fear builds humbug ethics; and this is the foundation of all

the conventional lies of our civilization.

Fear in all lines concerning children,

from their conception to their birth, and on through school life,

social life, and marriage, leads to enervation. The dearth of

worth-while knowledge of how to feed and otherwise care for children

keeps up an unnecessary worry with parents concerning their health.

How to teach the young to avoid breaking their health and handicapping

their minds by excesses in play, eating, drinking, in controlling

temper and emotions, and in self-pollution is a knowledge sadly

lacking in nearly all homes. Disease follows these excesses in

the young. There is not a habit so self-destructive and so generally

practiced as venereal excitement; and there is no habit receiving

so little attention from parents.

Ataxia is supposed to be caused by syphilis,

but in fact, it is caused by cerebro-spinal enervation, brought

on from sensuality in all forms--particularly venereal. Subjects

of this disease usually begin onanism early in life. Parents should

teach children to avoid destroying habits. I have had locomotor-ataxia

cases confess to me that they began their self-pollution as early

as eight years of age. Ten to fifteen are the years when active

pollution begins. Unless a physician is very tactful, youths will

not confess. I will say that very few boys have been untruthful

to me. This practice is not quite so common with the opposite

sex.

The physical abuse in this line is not

nearly so enervating as allowing the mind to dwell on sex-subjects.

Lascivious dreaming debauches the victim as much as excessive

venery. Early pollution, followed by excessive venery, often communizes

a mind that would shine in the forum and in intellectual pursuits.

There is a difference, however, in garrulity and garrulous parroting,

and giving a feast of reason. Bright intellects at twenty and

twenty-five often degenerate into mediocrity at forty-five because

of brain-enervation due to venereal excess. Add to sex- abuse,

tobacco, coffee, tea, alcohol, and excessive or wrong eating,

and no wonder man at sixty is fit for little else than chloroforming,

if nature has not already administered euthanasia.

ADULTS

Adults, too, have much fear in their lives.

The bread-and-butter problem gives anxiety; but when enough has

been accumulated, so that fear along this line is unnecessary,

fear is felt that something may happen that will put them back

in the breadline. Why? There is no confidence in business ethics--there

is no God in business.

Business Worries.--Business worries

are a source of enervation. Business--any business--is not the

cause of worry. A work well done is a delight, and anything that

delights is character-building. A work slovenly carried on

dissatisfies;

but the worrier never looks within to find the cause. This life

brings enervation in time, and disease as a sequel; then more

worries looking for a cure. Business is what a man makes of it.

A thorough understanding of business, with honesty and industry,

removes all worries and saves nerve- energy. Worry does not build

efficiency; neither is inefficiency removed by worrying. Worry,

lack of control over the emotions, improper eating, stimulants,

all build disease.

Nothing is so conducive to poise as a

thorough understanding of one's personal habits and occupation.

Bluff and bluster may put the idea of efficiency "across"

to the people for a time; but, as surely as chickens come home

to roost, the truth will out. Worry, even though presenting a

smooth exterior, will break through; the worker will break

down--disease

will claim him for its own. Housewives who carry a burden of worry

become enervated and lose health. The cause of their worry is

lack of control of eating, lack of control of the emotions, lack

of care of the body, and lack of efficiency. Instead of resolutely

going to work to remove all the defects, they are downed by them.

An uncontrollable temper must be downed, or it will down the one

who gives way to it. Gossip is not an admirable quality, and,

unless overcome, it will in time drive friends away. Envy and

jealousy are cancers that eat the soul out of those who indulge

them. What is left to love when the soul is gone?

When anyone, from indolence and health-destroying

habits, allows himself to gravitate below the standard expected

of him by his friends, he must not be surprised when they run

away from him.

Who are the old people who are left alone?

Those who have lived selfish lives--who have demanded entertainment

when they should have been entertaining themselves. Happiness

and entertainment must come from within--from a love of service,

work, books. If this fountain of youth and pleasure is not found

before old age creeps over us, we shall find ourselves alone.

Even in the midst of a throng we shall be alone, forever alone.

What could be more pathetic?

Self-Indulgence.--Self-indulgence

is contrary to ethics and brings its condemnation. What about

the ethics of gluttons--what about their religion? Excess in everything

follows on the heels of abnormal selfish indulgence. Coming under

this head are self-pity and a desire for cure. Extravagant habits,

even if there is an inexhaustible supply, builds a self-destructive

morale, on the heels of which, like a nemesis, runs the trail

to premature death. The causes are called heart disease, apoplexy,

paralysis, kidney disease, suicide, etc.; but what is in a name?

Names are all misleading; for the cause--first, last, and all

the time--is a selfish body and mind--destructive self-indulgence.

A study of nature reveals the fact that

man must live for service; not giving alms, but helping others

to help themselves.

Self-indulgence in the use of stimulants,

even in moderation, is a constant drain on the nervous system;

and a time comes when the last cigar, the last cup of coffee,

the last hearty meal, snaps the vital cord; and the contingency

is always unexpected and a surprise.

Overwork is said to enervate; but this

is an excuse behind which are hidden many bad habits that kill,

rather than the work. Work without pleasure in the work is enervating

and disease-building; an unsatisfied mind--a desire to engage

in some other work before efficiency has been attained in the

work engaged in; more desire for pay than to do good work. A work

is never well done until it takes on the individuality of the

worker. We should work with the creative instinct. Our work should

be created in the image of its creator --love of the creator--of

the work' not the emoluments.

Dissatisfaction and overworked emotions

are enervating. Worry, fear, grief, anger, passion, temper, overjoy,

depression, dissatisfaction, self-pity, pride, egotism, envy,

jealousy, gossip, lying, dishonesty, failing to meet obligations

and appointments, taking advantage of misunderstandings, abusing

the credulity of friends, abusing the confidence of those who

confide in us--all enervate and in time build incurable disease.

Grief.--Grief is enervating. Those

who are very enervated and toxemic will be prostrated by grief,

and, unless put to bed and kept warm and quiet, and without food,

may die. Food eaten under such circumstances will not digest,

but acts as a poison. Some people are made invalids for life by

a great grief.

Shock.--Shock, mental or physical,

may enervate so greatly as to kill by heart failure, or be followed

by permanent nervousness. Wrong eating or overeating may prevent

a return to health. The shell-shock that many soldiers suffered

during the World War was converted into permanent invalidism by

tobacco and other enervating habits. Certainly overeating prevents

a return to health.

Anger.--Anger is very enervating.

A daily shock of anger will build profound enervation. A temper

that flies at the slightest provocation ruins digestion and builds

nervousness. Unless controlled, epilepsy may evolve, and cancer

may end life. The chronic grouch is liable to build ulcer or cancer

of the stomach. Those who cannot control their temper often build

rheumatic arthritis, hard arteries, gall-stone, and early old

age.

Egotism.--Because of self-love,

selfishness, misanthropy, and distrust, the egotist sees unfriendliness

in all the acts of others--every hand is against him. This causes

enervation and Toxemia, which lead on to many nervous derangements,

and even insanity. A misanthrope loves self above everything and

everybody. The moment the nearest and dearest friend is suspected,

the friend's head comes off figuratively. The egotist hates all

who fail to feed his vanity. Hate and anger are always on tap,

but draped with a mocking smile when finesse or stratagem demands.

Friendship, honor, honesty, and veracity must go when self-interest

is being impinged upon or neglected. Men of this type have no

gratitude. They demand everything, and give nothing without an

ulterior motive. Where egotism is mild, it may not go beyond a

disagreeable, overbearing selfishness.

Selfishness.--A selfish nature

always looks after self first. A common type of selfishness is

interpreted as love of children. But when a son or daughter marries

against the father's wish, disinheritance follows. Why? Because

ambition is piqued. Love is oftener a selfish ambition than affection.

Selfishness leads on to enervation and Toxemia.

Ambition.--Ambition of a selfish

type brings on ill-health; for it meets with so many disappointments.

Where successful, it enables the one who succeeds to gratify his

sensual nature, resulting in all the so-called diseases following

in the wake of selfish gratification. A noble ambition

goes with self-control and service to mankind, and health and

long life are two of the rewards. Ambition for display, ostentation,

gives an evanescent gratification; but it costs more in wasted

nerve-energy than it is worth.

Thousands of semi-invalid women bring

on toxemic crises as their reward for giving dinners and displaying

dress, homes, and furnishings.

Women gratify silly, stupid ambitions,

and pay for their thrills in broken health.

Many waste more energy at an afternoon

card party than they can renew in a week.

Envy.--Envy of a low and disease-producing

type is of a begrudging nature. The man possessing this kind of

envy is a vandal. He will slip a monkey-wrench into the machinery

of those whom he envies. He will poison reputations by innuendo.

Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;

'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;

But he who filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed. (Shakespeare.)

When safe, such a person will go the limit

in doing even bodily harm to those whose merits tower over his.

Laudable envy is that of a desire to equal in success the one

envied. To rejoice in the success of others, and try to equal

them, where the success has been achieved on merit, builds a healthy

mind and body.

Love and Jealousy.--According to

: "Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the

grave." should have known.

Shakespeare knew about everything worth

knowing up to his time. He said:

How many fools serve maddened jealousy!

The venomed clamors of a jealous woman

Poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth.

The systematic poisoning of overwrought

emotions has been known since reasoning began; but, aside from

knowing that '`a poison is generated in the system" from

great anger, love, jealousy, hate, and grief, just what the poison

is, and the modus operandi of its production, have never been

satisfactorily explained until made clear by the Philosophy of

Toxemia. The pathology of jealousy Shakespeare knew well, as evidenced

by the words he put into the mouths of some of his characters.

Excessive emotion--jealousy, for example,

or great anger-- precipitates a profound enervation, which inhibits

elimination. This floods the blood with toxin, and brings on a

malignant Toxemia in the form of toxin drunkenness, which in people

of a belligerent nature causes them to run amuck. Murder, several

murders, are sometimes committed. In those with more consideration

for others--those with less self-love--suicide ends the psychological

storm.

Jealousy and unrequited love, when not

malignant--developing in avicious, unmoral subject--in time undermine

the constitution by keeping up a gradually increasing state of

enervation and Toxemia. Catarrhal inflammations and ulcerations

get better and worse, with no hope of final recovery until the

causes of enervation are overcome namely, enervating habits of

mind and body, of which jealousy is chief.

Overeating.--Overeating is a common

and universal enervating habit; eating too much fat--cream, butter,

fat meats, oils, rich pastries, sweets; eating too often; eating

between meals, and checking digestion with water-drinking between

meals.

Food-inebriety is more common than alcohol-inebriety.

The subconscious is as busy as a hive of bees substituting, antidoting,

and in reparation work; substituting one stimulating excess for

another--demanding whiskey, tobacco, opium, etc., for gluttonous

eating; thrills, shocks, sensual excesses for food-poisoning.

Ungratified sense-demands are appeased by food excesses or other

stimulants; and when nature is balked in her demands, the victim

runs amuck.

A French sheep-herder's daughter, being

opposed by her father in marrying a lover, killed the parent while

he slept by their campfire. A short time after the tragedy some

men came upon the camp and discovered the girl eating her father's

heart, which she had cut out and roasted in the fire. When surprised

at her cannibalistic feast, she held up what was left of the heart,

and, with a sardonic laugh, declared: "He broke my heart,

and I am eating his."

Only a short time ago the overwrought

nerves of a jazz-and alcohol-crazed girl forced her to kill her

mother because the latter undertook to oppose her in the gratification

of her subconscious demands for more stimulation.

When enervation and Toxemia have reached

the stage of inebriety seen in the two girls mentioned above,

civil and moral laws have abdicated to the subconscious laws,

which, like cosmic law and order, are unmoral, but run true to

necessity.

Psychological, like physical, cyclones

are out of the regular order, yet they are obeying the laws of

their nature. They have no scruples to gainsay, but tear through

order as ruthlessly as fiends.

Every human being should know that such

phenomena are potential to him, and that the road to such catastrophes

is enervating habits.

Prohibition is a beautiful ideal, but

it is palliating one social disease while it is building a greater.

What mother would not rather have her

son brought home from the corner grog-shop drunk than see him

escorted to jail hand-cuffed to an officer?

Enervation and Toxemia focused on the

brain bring out neurotic states, with all kinds of symptom-complexes.

Drunkenness substitutes for bank robbery and other outlawry. So

long as food-drunkenness retains its prestige with the

professions--prescribed

by doctors; babbled to us Sundays, and deciding our brawls on

Monday--it will take more than statutes to enforce law and order.

Most of our laws are made while the law-makers are drunk on food

and tobacco.

Drunkenness and crime of all kinds are

vicarious toxin eliminations--crises of Toxemia. Enforcing temperance

and control of crime must fail In object--namely, causing people

to be temperate and law-abiding. The reason should be obvious

to the student of nature. Our wants are based on our subconscious

needs; sentiment and ethics have nothing to do with it. Our

subconscious

is not moral nor immoral; it belongs to the Great Cosmos, which

is systematic, perfect in order, but unmoral. Intemperance of

any kind establishes a want which, if not satisfied in the usual

way, will turn to other ways of being satisfied. The surgeon,

laws, and anodynes perhaps relieve effects, but cures are based

on removing causes. Legislatures are quack doctors. Self-control

is the only cure. To develop self-control, the need must be understood.

The gluttonous build putrefaction in the

bowels. Nerve-energy is used up in resisting systemic infection.

The supply of blood to the surface of the body for purposes of

warmth--radiation--resisting cold and heat, is called to the mucous

membrane of the gastro-intestinal canal to neutralize the septic

material that is about to enter the system through the absorbents.

The mucous membrane becomes turgid with blood, establishing a

mucorrhea (excessive secretion of mucus). This is what we call

catarrh. This secretion mechanically obstructs absorption of

putrescence,

and also antidotes the poison by bringing the antibodies from

the blood.

A battle-royal is on all the time in the

intestines of the gluttonous. The subconscious musters all the

help possible, and when the system is drained of autogenerated

antidotes, the victim is sent by his subconscious to find alcohol,

tobacco, coffee, tea, condiments, and more food. Moral preachments,

and prohibitory laws passed by Solons drunk on toxin. bowel

putrescence,

and tobacco, like all monstrosities, are abortions.

Insatiable desire for food and stimulants

means an enervated state of the body brought on from

overindulgence--overstimulation.

A driving desire for food three times

a day means enervation; trouble is only a little farther on. The

wise will get busy and correct appetites.

Perverted appetites are built by overeating;

eating rich food until enjoyment is lost for staple or plain foods;

excessive use of stimulants--alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea; excessive

use of butter, salt, pepper, and rich dressings, eating without

a real hunger (real hunger will take the plainest foods with a

relish); eating when sick or uncomfortable; eating at all hours,

between meals; eating until uncomfortable.

Gossips are always slanderers, and slanderers

are always and forever potential liars. If they do not know that

they are broadcasting lies, they are criminally careless in not

endeavoring to find whether the tale they gossip is true or not.

Gossip enervates the gossiper.

Gossips are always enervated, for they

live in fear of being discovered. Their secretions are always

acid. They are inclined to develop pyorrhea and mucous-membrane

infections. They are slow to recover from catarrhal crises of

Toxemia.

Gossips are empty-headed slaves to their

habits of slander and spite; they are malignant parasites that

feed upon carrion. They are the lowest type of criminals; hell

monsters that kill with their breath. They often die of cancer.

Sycophancy.--Flatterers look like

friends, as wolves like dogs. (Byron.) He hurts me most who lavishly

commends. (Churchill.)

A real sycophant, like all people who

are not honest, lives a life that enervates, and which nature

condemns early.

Dishonesty.--Dishonesty eventually

hardens the arteries, and cancer ends a miserable existence.

Religiosity.--Morbidly pious,

yet practicing the foregoing habits and ending in premature death.

A saving religion, Christian, Jewish or

Mohammedan, is one free from mental and physical habits that

overstimulate,

enervate and intoxicate.

If Toxemic get rid of enervating habits.

Cures--prayers, drugs, surgery--all honest or dishonest

cures--will not cure. Get rid of cause and stay rid of it, then

health returns and abides perpetually.

-- Peace be with you,

Don "Quai" Eitner

"Spirit sleeps in the mineral, breathes in the vegetable, dreams in the animal and wakes in man."

Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses. ~Baptiste Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire

The obstacle is the path. ~Zen Proverb