Introduction

This is a day of sensational discoveries and miracle medicines. Remarkable new cures and near panaceas are of frequent discovery. Snake venom, artificial fever, frozen sleep, the sulfonamides, penicillin, streptothricin, blood plasma, more powerful X-rays - these vie with sports and movies for free newspaper space. So much is claimed for them and so many new discoveries are made in relation to them that the public is kept constantly keyed up with open-mouthed and wild eyed expectancy.

At long last, "science" is staging a powerful and winning Blitz-Krieg against man's ancient and implacable foe - disease. With remarkable and sensational discoveries crowding so closely one upon the heels of another, the time is surely not far distant when universal health will prevail.

Not only is ours an age of remarkable cures, it is also a time of equally remarkable preventives. We now have so many "successful" vaccines and serums, that there is no longer any need for anyone ever to suffer from many of the "diseases" that were so common yesteryear. New serums are of frequent discovery so that we may look forward hopefully to the time when all "disease" will be conquered.

Surgery, too, has made rapid strides. It has grown more daring and is, today invading physiological precincts, which only a few years ago, it would not have dared touch. With the newer advances in surgery added to the new cures and the new serums and vaccines we have an almost ideal combination for the "conquest of disease."

What these three groups of anti-disease weapons lack in power and effectiveness is completely made up by the many glandular products (hormones) and vitamin combinations that are claimed to do so much for the sick. There is, surely, no longer reason to doubt that the Golden Age has arrived.

The intelligent and informed reader, however, will notice one very important defect in all of these methods of cure and prevention. He win quickly detect a deficiency for which no amount of shouting can compensate. It is this: None of these methods of cure and prevention are designed to affect or even touch the real, the basic, cause of disease.

Drugs may suppress symptoms but they do not remove cause. They may kill germs ( they also kill patients ), but they do not clear up the systemic condition that permits germs to thrive and grow in the body. "Frozen sleep" may temporarily check the growth of a tumor or cancer, but it does not and cannot remove the cause of cancer. Radium or powerful X-rays may destroy a cancerous growth but they do not and cannot remove the cause of cancer. It must be emphasized that: If it does not remove cause, it does not cure.

Serums and vaccines are admittedly capable of doing much harm, but they do not prevent the cause of disease. They do not enable us to avoid the cause of disease. We need to know that if they do not enable us to avoid the cause of disease they do not prevent disease.

Surgery may pull a tooth, extract the tonsils, remove the gall bladder, excise the appendix, cut out the ovaries or the seminal vesicles, drain the sinuses, etc., but it cannot remove the cause of disease. It is time for us to understand that if surgery does not remove the cause of disease, it does not cure.

There is no cure short of removal of cause. Cutting out an organ, suppressing  a symptom, destroying a growth, removing a stone - these processes touch effects only. They fail to restore health for three very vital reasons:
1. They do not remove the cause of ill health.
2. They are not the factors out of which good health is built.
3. They produce positive injury of the body.
For prevention of "disease" and recovery of health we must look to constructive natural agents, forces and methods and cease relying on destructive, unnatural or anti-natural measures, agents and processes. Agents that produce disease in the well are not well adapted to the production of health in the sick. Disease producing agents and measures are not health preserving. The popular methods of prevention and cure neither prevent nor cure. Witness the ever-growing army of sick and suffering in spite of the ever-increasing size of our army of physicians. The ever-increasing number and size of our hospitals and the ever-growing list of cures and preventives.

To avoid sickness, avoid the cause of sickness. Only madness can lead us to attempt to prevent disease by producing disease.

To "cure" disease, remove the causes of disease. It would be the worst kind of folly to attempt to cure disease by ignoring its causes and employing other causes of disease.

To build health, employ the cause of health. How foolish to attempt to build health by employing means that are known to impair and wreck health.

In the following pages the causes of disease and the ways of health are made plain. Not methods of cure, but a plan of living is there presented for those who can understand.

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For twenty-six years the author of this little book, the contents of which first appeared as magazine articles in Dr. Shelton's Hygienic Review, has been leading the sick back to health and teaching the well how to remain so. For eighteen years Dr. Shelton's Health School has been employing the health building means described in these pages. While at the Health School we have received a great preponderance of scraps and derelicts, those who have suffered for years and "have tried everything" without avail, our success in building good health in the great majority of these sufferers has been remarkable.

At the Health School we have no cure-all, in fact, we have no cure at all. We recognize that only nature (meaning the forces and processes of life) can cure and we accord to nature the opportunity as well as the power of cure. Ours is a plan of living and a program of education. If this seems too simple, if it is not mysterious enough, if it seems to lack power, just think over this fact:
If this plan were ineffectual we could not succeed where all others fail.

Of the reader we ask only an intelligent hearing. Lay aside your prejudices and prepossessions and do some real honest-to-goodness thinking as you read the pages of this little book. Then, when you thoroughly understand its contents, give them a fair and honest test. Heed the ancient admonition: "Prove (test) all things, hold fast that which is good" ( true) .
An old adage has it that "the proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof." The proof of the truth of the principles presented in this book and of the value of the practices built thereon is in making use of them. "The wise will understand."

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