One must realize that the human body is in some respects similar to a man-made machine. When the gas tank of an auto goes empty the engine immediately stops. This same law operates within the human body: When the body runs out of energy (starves, runs out of calories) it stops running, dies; and although man who made the auto can refill its tank with fuel and put it to running again, he cannot do so with the human body. Once the heart stops beating, at that very moment life ceases and the body lies down until the resurrection day — until the One Who created it starts it moving again.
When the crankcase of an engine becomes empty, but the engine continues running, then the machine breaks down, and its usefulness ends. And as the life of an auto is maintained by reducing friction through means of lubrication, the life of a human being is kept up by Nature’s replacing the worn out cells after the day’s task is done, while he takes his rest in bed. Thus is he able to arise in the morning with renewed strength. But if he fails to provide the material which Nature needs in order to rebuild the worn out cells and tissues, he, of course suffers the consequences as does the neglectful person who fails to replenish the oil in his auto’s crankcase. And if one fails to drink enough water, too, during the day, his blood will, as a result, become impoverished, and his system stagnant and clogged with waste material, there to ferment and decay; and if Nature is deprived of energy by which to throw off the toxins through the pores, kidneys, and the bowels, or to raise fever and endure the burning process of the wastes, then there is nothing to do but to give up trying — decease.
It is therefore necessary that Nature be well supplied with all the essentials if one expects to maintain his usefulness unimpaired and to live his allotted life.
Moreover, no good engineer puts useless or needless parts into an engine, and if the user of it takes out any part, regardless how small and insignificant, the engine is made just that much less efficient. The same is true with the human body. But though the engineer can replace the missing parts in the machine which he designed and built, the surgeon cannot replace the body organs which his patient may cause him to remove. For example, one may remove only a set screw from a machine and not affect its performance for the time being, but at length he will find that the machine fails to perform, and if he cannot replace the part which he has taken out, the machine will become altogether useless. The same thing occurs, more or less, when one removes an organ from his body.
LESSONS FROM NATURE
Since the well-being of the body is even more accurately taught by Mother Nature herself, no one who wishes to enjoy life dares overlook her counsel. Plants never do well in soil that is deficient, or depleted of its life-giving properties. Some plants do better in one soil or climate than do others. Some thrive in higher altitudes and others in lower. The same law seems to operate in mankind: The darker races fare better in the torrid regions, and the lighter in the frigid regions.
While plant life subsists on inorganic matter, animal life subsists on organic. Moreover, as plant life was created before animal life, the truth is that the plant kingdom can get along without the animal, but that the animal kingdom cannot get along without the plant. Thus it is that vegetation needs only Mother Earth, but man needs both the earth and plant. In other words, plant life is dependent on the soil for existence, while animal life is dependent on vegetation. Flesh diet is therefore, artificial, and thus deficient — incapable of maintaining life.
So, just as plants cannot thrive on poor soil, men cannot thrive on poor diet. And if one is aware of the fact that almost immediately after the soil is enriched, the plant awakens with health and vigor, then he will have no difficulty realizing that as soon as he corrects his own diet, his health will likewise spring up. Is it not true, then, that one’s health depends on the food he uses as does the plant’s on the soil in which it feeds?
If the sufferer’s faulty diet is the cause of his aliment, and in most cases in our day it is, then no kind or amount of drug can cure him. Yet when something goes wrong with one’s organism, he generally runs to a doctor, not to find and to remove the cause, but to be cured, while the cause remains and while it brings him closer and closer to the grave! And if he is not given drugs, he dislikes the doctor! Why not check up on your daily diet and habits of living? Why take drugs when you need to take water, fresh air, sunshine, the right kinds of food; to exercise; or perhaps to clean up your home, your body, and your surroundings?
Let it be now understood that anyone living on a poor diet, or in unpleasant surroundings and unsanitary conditions, is subject to disease in one form or another, just as is a plant that is planted in poor soil and unconducive surroundings. Then, too, one must remember that unbalanced food, regardless of quality or quantity, is poor food; and as too much fertilizer kills the plant, so too much food kills the man. Too much of anything is as bad as is too little. Illness, therefore, is only a warning of one’s improper habits of living. But, alas, who can understand! and who is taking heed!
What else can the cause of diseases that are not hereditary or communicative, be but wrong living — malnutrition, “unclean” flesh food (Lev. 11), overeating, poor elimination, insufficient exercise, lack of sunshine and fresh air, living in filth, neglecting to drink enough water between meals, or perhaps smoking or chewing tobacco, habitually using coffee, tea, or some other stimulant that whips up the body to the last ounce of energy? To be sure, such diseases as cancer are the result of wrong living. If such is not the cause of the sufferer’s illness, then the last and final cause, as referred to before, is sin against the Decalogue.
Nature teaches that if a tree becomes sickly from within rather than from without then to spray it with any kind of drug will only hasten its death, waste the drug, the time, and one’s energy. The human body is no exception. If the disease is from internal cause, then what good will it do to try to remove it by the use of drugs? In such a case drugs will not remove the cause but rather do greater harm and hasten the end.
If it is not possible to keep a water-cooled engine from overheating when the radiator is empty, and if nothing but to fill the radiator with water will cure the trouble, then why should it be possible to cure a diseased body without curing the cause? Stop and think.
True, many do suffer from hereditary and contagious diseases, but most persons suffer from diseases caused by erroneous habits of living. Alcoholic beverages and other stimulants, rich pastries, commercial sweets, overeating, wrong combinations, and too many grain products, any one or all of these collectively have more or less afflicted every human being of this age with one ailment or another.
Constipation is one of the commonest diseases that one brings upon himself by erroneous eating. And constipation in itself is a cause of a number of diseases, as is malassimilation. Man is not naturally subject to constipation, — no, not any more than is a water main subject to plugging up if nothing but water is put through it, the only thing the manufacturer ever intended that should be put through it.
That commercially prepared foods, too, are among the many causes of constipation, a faculty member of a certain health institute writes: “Because of our civilized foods and the way they fill the bowel with toxic material and gas, it is absolutely necessary to give oneself a series of colonic irrigations at least twice a year in order to stay well. Headaches, colds, flu, intestinal pains, mucous, gas, and many disturbing disorders disappear after one or two colon treatments.”
We should not overlook the fact that Noah lived 900 years of good, happy life, and that we have no record of his having had to take colonic irrigations or to under go an operation! Rather than resort to artificial means for cleansing now and then, why not eat the right kinds of food, the kinds that keep the bowels clean every day of the year? Moreover, a balanced diet will not only keep the bowels free from “toxic material and gas,” but will supply the entire system with the necessary minerals and vitamins, without which no one can keep well any considerable length of time. Then why spend your money on manufactured vitamins and devitalized foods at sky-high prices when you can have Nature’s own, full of vitality, and at prices as low as gravity? Ever remember that artificial nutratives are no better than artificial arms or legs.