LECTURE XX.

CHRONIC ALCOHOLISM-(Continued).

THE TREATMENT OUTlined.

My Enslaved Friends :

My experience in the cure of such diseases as yours is rather limited. For very many years after adopting my present scheme for the aiding of nature in the restoration of her waste places, I had no thought that there was relief for your afflictions. There is the one difficulty in the way of all treatments, a difficulty that confronts me now in the treatment of your cases. And it is just this: you have the constitutional right to commit slow suicide and I have no legal right to restrain you. Could I have legal power, I should have no difficulty in getting you as completely freed from the toils of your enemy as you were before you took that first drink; and once released from his grasp you would be able, through a higher culture in obedience to life's forces, to go on in the ways of your affairs infinitely safer than you were when you left those homes with the parental blessing.

You, my friends, are sick men, very sick; you are prostrate, helpless; and you have no rest from that foe that gnaws like a file and stings like an adder; not one moment of blissful oblivion from these filings, from these stingings, that does not come from those doses that make oblivion of all care of your vital concerns in life.

Will you drink when you are in this mental and physical agony? Yes, even though you snatch the bread of life from the hands of your starving child that it may become the drink of death for you! Moral suasion, argument, denouncement, ridicule, dashes in vain against such a rock-faced fact as this. You have all tried the "gold cure," and you thought for a time you were cured; but you were taught no ideas while you were patiently permitting your bodies to become needle cushions in an absurd treatment, no ideas as to the science of prevention.

Your residence at the hospital was a relieving break in the hard lines of your life, and your nutritive powers for the time were stimulated by the inspiring power of hope. You all expected to be cured, and there was a powerful appeal to endurance from the forces of association. There was a great deal of relief achieved that was due, not to the needle, but to a combination of forces to which you were subjected. And what is the difficulty that now stands in the way of your getting well? Let us look into your stomachs for a moment. with the "mind's eye" to give you another and fresher view.

The stomach is in a state of chronic congestion, and its glands, as I told you in my last lecture, are dry, or so nearly dry that they are never able to meet the demands for the work you habitually, irregularly and excessively place upon them. What are you going to do in such a case?

Now, for instance, suppose that those stomachs, in perfect condition, should be subjected to a violent rasping from a grater, which would convert the entire mucous lining into a wound. What kind of treatment would common sense suggest in such a case? Why, of course, the "rest cure," as must be in every other

wound and in all fractures. Your stomachs, every one of them, as I have suggested, are like the schoolyard in term time, there is no growth there, nor can there be until the vacation comes. Can you give your stomach a vacation? It will never recover without it, nor will you ever be relieved from all your resulting ills until they do recover.

You can easily see that a dosing is not likely to relieve a condition that is being kept up by irritation; and you can also clearly see that the changes that must take place in those stomachs must be through the divine hand of nature, even as in the case of wounds and fractures. Now, how are we to get that rest that must be if a cure is to be wrought?

Let me make a startling statement. It is my belief that the alcoholic disease is one of the easiest in the world to be rapidly and permanently cured where the life is actually worth saving. That is, in all cases where there are powers which are worth the effort.

There are a great many adults in this world who have never become men and women in any manly or womanly sense. They are children, and the most child-like in every moral and mental sense, and they could all be spared without causing any vacuums in society, and with the result of clearing the social atmosphere. How so easily and rapidly cured?

Now suppose you have made up your minds to give those stomachs a vacation, which will be a great thing as astarter, you will then expect the following evolution to take place as soon as the stomach becomes entirely freed from every grain of irritating food, it is going to begin to get well; as soon as the bowels have become entirely freed from decomposing food and indigestible residue, they are going to rest into power; the entire digestive tract in a condition of repose, there

will be no more exhaustive demands upon brain force. This condition once reached, the cure goes on rapidly. Now comes in our wonderful bill of fare to help you out. While the fast is going on the brain will duly care for itself, and far better than it has been able to do for years.

Now let me startle you again. The digestive tract once empty, every moment of the fast will be a moment of unloosing of your enemy's grasp, every moment will add to the relieving sense; and they will add a momentum to the cure-there will be an awakening, a growth in all the forces of life.

And as the fast goes on by as much, will it easily go on, and at last when that hunger comes such as you have not known for years there will a rested, perhaps a cured, stomach; and there will be such an utter absence of your old adder and file agony, that you could not even be hired to take a drink of whisky. You will have no want other than for good, nourishing, substantial food; and for once in your lives you will have clean tongues; and that nerve of taste, new-born, close to the surface, will give you a new idea of what it is to eat with that relish, that is always associated with the power of selection and power of digestion.

Can you fast, do you think, until your stomach is rested into life again? If you cannot, because willpower has become too weak for your human effort, then I cannot see you cured until I have the legal right to seize upon you and arrest the progress of suicide. There is no other way given unto man whereby that stomach can regain its power, except through the vacation that must be voluntarily or legally enforced.

The long-suffering, long-abused stomach may require a few days, or one, two, or three score of days to reach its normal power; but it will be one of the

safest of all human methods to relieve it, to cure it, because of the absolute safety of the brain while it is going on. You will only lose the relative proportion of the tissues that can be easily spared; and lose without the slightest sense of their loss except what appeals to the sense of vision. You will see that the loss is going on, but cannot feel that it is; and mark you, while this process is going on, the saloon is losing its grasp on those revenues that deprive your children of bread! If there be any other effective way to attack the saloon of the present generation, I do not know what that way is. If there be any other way to cure a diseased, pickled stomach, other than through a perfect fast, I do not know what that way is, any more than I know of any other way to cure a fracture or a wound.

That it is a safe way beyond any question, I do not believe any sane man or woman will care to deny. That it is a physiological method in its very essence I do not believe any sane man or woman, whether of the profession or of the laity, will care to deny.

And what about the second meal after the first that you have relished so well? You are going to have it after another fast until hunger comes, and so long as you shall keep this up you will not have even the slightest disposition to make glad the souls of the present generation of saloon proprietors by your patronage.

In due course of time you will find, as in all other diseases, the development is general, and that all other weak or diseased structures, alike improve with the stomach. And you will also find that, if you take due care of the stomach, the bowels will care for themselves without any artificial aids. Nature has her own disinfectants, and she has no need of your goads; no harm will come if they are not used.