Natural Hygiene

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Diseases of the Stomach

Genesis and Control of Disease

S. Weger M.D.

Acute Gastritis, Gastroptosis, Chronic Gastritis, Hematemesis, Peptic Ulcer;

Gastric and Duodenal, Gastralgia, Cancer of the Stomach, Dyspepsia, Gastric

Dilatation

A comprehensive resume of the different degrees of gastritis from simple catarrh

to ulceration is given in a special article immediately following this

discussion. Irritation of the stomach in varying degrees is present in more than

one-half of the patients receiving our advice and institutional treatment. Very

likely this incidence could be confirmed by all practitioners who recognize in

various symtom-complexes (some quite obscure and apparently unrelated) a primary

gastric catarrh. Simple gastritis or catarrh is not difficult to remedy by

proper dietetic means preceded by a short period of physiological rest.

Ulcer-ative conditions require more time and restriction. However of more than

one hundred cases of gastric, pyloric, and duodenal ulcer that have come under

our personal supervision and care in the last twelve years, not more than three

or four have failed to make good and dependable recoveries.

One of the cases of the latter class was a woman nearing her seventieth year who

gave a clear history of pyloric ulcer of at least twenty years standing. All

evidence of discomfort disappeared in five or six weeks and she remained well

for more than a year. It was then found that the stomach did not empty and that

only a trifling amount of liquid food could seep into the intestines. Slow

starvation was inevitable unless surgery could be successfully employed. With

great reluctance the patient submitted to an operation which resulted fatally

within a week, due to extreme impoverishment and the constitutional effects of

arteriosclerosis. Autopsy disclosed an old pyloric ulcer in which the healed

scar contracted gradually to completely obliterate the opening. This is an

infrequent complication and is cited only to prove that healing had taken place.

In this case there had been frequent hemorrhages for years preceding our

dietetic treatment. Other forms of diet had been unsuccessfully tried in this

country and also in various European health resorts.

One case was that of a man past sixty-five with recurrent exhausting hemorrhages

for the control of which an emergency operation was imperative.

Another case on our records is that of a perforation requiring an emergency

operation. Months later the patient was reported doing well and remaining

comfortable as long as food was properly combined.

Those who expect a cure for gastric derangements without paying any attention to

diet, constitute the army that goes from one doctor to another, vainly hoping

yet often despairing. There are diets and diets, there are doctors and doctors.

Some diet lists that are submitted to us as having been prescribed for ulcer or

other stomach troubles are the records of pathetic attempts to cure something,

the real cause of which is not clearly understood. Failure or recurrence is

inevitable if cause if not removed.

GASTRIC DILATATION, PTOSIS, and GASTRALGIA almost invariably recover by proper

treatment.

CANCER OF THE STOMACH is incurable.

The Real Significance of Gastric Ulcer This most distressing condition develops

so frequently that it deserves a more prominent place in the hall of famous

diseases. It occurs in grown people rather than in children. The adult usually

suffers for a long time before he submits to an operation for the relief of a

condition about which there is such an element of doubt in diagnosis and

prognosis. X ray and fluoro-scopic examinations are used to confirm the

tentative diagnosis, but except in pronounced cases even this method is not

always conclusive. Though opening the abdomen is a major surgical affair at any

time, operations for gastric and duodenal ulcers are becoming quite as common as

appendectomies. Unless the condition demands active and immediate surgical

interference because of perforation, the patient usually has sufficient time for

deliberation. Given time to think the situation over after reading enlightening

literature, most people can be convinced that the surgical extirpation of an

ulcer does not remove the cause of the ulcer. The removal of an effect may open

the field for the development of another ulcer or a similar condition elsewhere

in the body for the primary cause or causes still remain active in the system.

Surgery does not remove cause.

A postoperative picture, quite disconcerting, can often be painted by those who

have had one or more gastroenterostomies, subsequent operations for relief from

adhesions, and not infrequently gall bladder drainage or removal, yet have not

learned how to eat properly afterwards. The appendix may have been disposed of

early in the history of the case. The disillusionment that accompanies the

return of the symptoms, often in an aggravated form, leaves bitterness and

disappointment that shatters faith in surgery and medicine. Even in such

apparently hopeless cases, with loss of continuity of structure or loss of

important organs or sections of organs, there is a way by which comfort can be

restored, and compensatory adaptation to abnormal states is possible of

attainment.

Gastric ulcer is concomitant with gastric hyperacidity. This is an undisputed

fact. It is the universal belief that an excess of acid in the stomach is purely

a local condition. This belief we question. Treatment directed to the relief of

the local condition alone is likely to result in failure. The condition of the

stomach represents more than mere local acidity. The great food receptacle

registers its own hyperacidity plus the same condition in the entire body. There

is a constitutional hyperacidity or acid-osis invariably present in such cases.

Though many people remain quite comfortable by comparison for years after

operation, we are convinced that constitutional correction is most important,

nay, even absolutely essential to dependable and permanent recovery from gastric

ulcer.

Any change in diet from the ordinary conventional menus to the so-called milk or

cream diet or alkaline cure will prove agreeable for a time because milk or

cream causes less immediate irritation than food containing roughage that

requires greater gastric motility for digestion. A sore anywhere, whether on the

mucous lining of the intestinal tract, or the outside covering of the body, will

heal more quickly if left alone and kept quiet than if it is continually

irritated by handling, rubbing, wrinkling, contracting, and expanding. New

tissue cannot form with such disturbances going on. Therefore the first step

necessary to the permanent cure of gastric ulcer is to induce complete rest by

doing absolutely without food. Daily gastric lavages to wash out the corrosive

acids, and water to drink as desired. This treatment insures local rest. But the

patient needs more than that for there is much more to be accomplished.

Normal gastric juice is acid in varying degrees. However, it should not be

corrosive. The reason that hyperacidity is really a corrosive acidity is due to

the fact that the glands which secrete acid must utilize the material within the

body that is furnished for this purpose. People who overeat on sweets, starches,

and proteins have an unstable body chemistry due to the storing up of acids

throughout life. It is not possible for the stomach to modify the acid when the

material from which it manufactures its secretions is abnormally acid.

Since it is easy to demonstrate that the quickest way to overcome constitutional

acidity and restore normal alkalinity is by an absolute fast while resting in

bed, one can readily see that a complete fast serves a dual purpose. When the

surplus acid toxins are eliminated, healing of the ulcer takes place. But not

until then.

Even when this treatment is applied, dependable healing will not take place if

the fast is broken too soon. The fast must be continued until all reactions

indicate that systemic renovation has been completed. True, many patients are

already thin and depleted and look the part of chronic sufferers. This state,

while deplorable, is not a contraindication to the complete fast. There is no

other way that is lasting.

It has been estimated that fluid amounting to more than one-twentieth of the

body weight passes through the stomach each twenty-four hours. Certainly when

the body is saturated with toxic waste this circulating fluid is contaminated.

The stomach tube, if used daily during a fast, will prove that much harmful and

irritating material from the general circulation finds its way into the stomach

and, unless washed out, remains there to pass into the bowels for reabsorption.

For this reason a gastric lavage is a desirable if not altogether necessary

procedure. No further proof of the efficacy of a lavage is necessary than the

relief it gives.

Just what these corrosive acids of elimination are has not been clearly proved.

They are assumed to be the hydrochloric acid excess, plus lactic, acetic, and

phosphoric acids (which result from the presence of organic matter) also various

inorganic salts, —all having been present in excess in the blood and

constituting a part of the poisonous waste that we know as toxins. The

constitutional condition behind and preceding the incidence of gastric ulcer is

by far the most vital point involved. We must learn to discriminate in all cases

and all conditions between the patient and his disease.

--

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. ~Jean

Baptiste Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire

The obstacle is the path. ~Zen Proverb

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