LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA GIFT OF MRS. MARY WOLFSOHN Z&FKKlf. IN MEMORY OF HENRY WOLFSOHN DE WITT & SHELL BOOKSELLERS J. H. KUTTLEY, M. D NATURE'S SECRETS AND The Secrets of Woman Revealed ; OB, HOW TO BE BORN AND HOW TO LIVE. OBEY THE TEACHINGS OF THIS BOOK, AND YOU MiY LEAEN TO LIVE A HUNDBED YEAKS WITHOUT THE AID OF DOCTORS, LAWYEBS OB CLEEGrYMEN. BY J. H. BUTTLEY, M. D. . I. SAN FRANCISCO, OAL PUBLISHED BY J. H. BtrrrLEY, 745 MISSION STREET. 1875. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by J. H. RTJTTLEY, M. D ., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. 0. Stereotyped by Painter & Co., San Francisco. PREFACE. The market is flooded with books which purport to treat upon the various topics included in the title which I have given to this work, and yet there is no one of them that meets the public de- mand. Two motives seem to have influenced the authors and pub- lishers, namely: 1. A desire to make money by the sale of the books; 2. A desire to advertise certain quack nostrums. Many of these works are the merest trash, crowded with indecent language, apparently for no other purpose than to attract the ignorant and vulgar. All of them cater more or less to the popular prejudices, seeking to curry favor with the influential classes. In^iewof these, and many other considerations, I have been induced\fl undertake the task of the present publication. In the present day, it seems to me that "the three learned pro- fessions," as they are called, are contributing more than all things beside to the perpetuation of the errors and superstitions of the dark ages. A mystery is made of everything, so that the common people shall not understand, and whoever can employ the highest sounding terms, or quote most fluently from the dead languages, is accepted as an oracle of wisdom. Thus, error is popularized and transmitted to future generations. The people themselves have long been aware that they are be- ing doctored to death, yet they do not comprehend a tenth part of the misery that is being entailed upon them by the administration of poisonous drugs. Nor can any one, save an educated physicijrfi, even approximate to a knowledge of the dreadful sufferings and cruel murders that are daily inflicted. A realization of these things have prompted me to take up my pen in behalf of the common people, and the reader has now before him the first installment of what I have undertaken. 1 58785 When I commenced this work my first thought was to abridge BO as to include all within the compass of the present volume; but a very little reflection assured me that this could not be done with- out greatly impairing the benefits which I was anxious to confer upon mankind, and then I decided that if my life was spared other volumes should follow as I could spare the time for their prepara- tion. Still, something will depend upon the demand for the first volume. If the people stand by me I will not only fight their battle for them, bat will teach them how they may secure life and health without employing doctors, and what is far more important* how beautiful, moral and intellectual children may be born to them, in place of the sickly unfortunates which everywhere meet the gaze. The second volume will begin where this one leaves off, con- tinuing to tear down the errors of the popular systems of medical practice, and giving instead the vis medicatrix naturea, so that the mother may take proper care of herself during gestation; and when the child shall have been born, then full directions as to the care of both it and the mother. If permitted, I shall follow the child through all the stages and epochs of life, including diet, clothing, bathing, exercise, employment, study and education, courtship for both sexes, and finally marriage, the greatest event of life. In the meantime let the reader study the present volume and accept for his and her J*st prosperity the kind regards of the AUTHOE. OF THf UNIVERSITY OF NATURES SECRETS AND THE SECRETS OF WOMAN REVEALED; OR How to be Born and Plow to Live. CHAPTER I. EVOtUTION I ITS RELATION TO SPIRIT FORCE., Science is a knowledge of facts and forces ; Art is the ex- ercise of intellectual and physical power in the control of these forces for the benefit of mankind. Between the or- ganic and inorganic there is no such gulf as men have in the past ages thought. From crystal to protoplasm, the way seems long and impassable by the laws of chemistry as form' erly understood, or indeed, even to-day. But the flinty crys- tal has come through the geologic ages, from silic acid dif- fused through water, colloidal or dynamical condition of the atoms which the crystal holds at rest ; and between that crys- tal and the simplest form of organic matter. Nature could show you many colloidal states, many compounds formed and forming, many activities, an unrest of the atoms, a discontent with death, a struggling upward in search of life. These ever varying phenomena, the passage of a colloid 2 Nature's Secrets. into a protoplasm, or the genesis of an animalculae from the decaying atoms of a leaf or muscle, to a bioplasm, give the lie to Atheism and proclaim a spirit of Infinite Intelligence which Christians are agreed in calling God. Moral philoso- phy teaches that force is spirit in motion. What is that spirit? Is it an aggregation of spirit from mortal life? By no means, else it would be finite, whereas this spirit which pervades the entire universe must be infinite. Alexander Pope was in- spired with a most sublime comprehension of this spirit when he exclaimed : " See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth, All matter quick, and bursting into birth." Again, while describing the manifestations of this infinite spirit, he says : 11 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees ; Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent/' The nimble fingers of the sunbeam have stirred up all the reservoirs of Force, from the coal in the rock to the brain in mankind. The most complicated organ known to Science is the thinking Brain. From the moment we wake in the morning until sleep closes our eyes at night, it is in constant activity, and we cannot keep from thinking even if we would. The Brain is the great volume of nervous tissue that is lodged within the skull ; it is the largest and most complete of the nervous centres ; its maximum weight in the adult male is five. pounds, and in the female four and a half pounds ; but the loss of weight in the female is more than compensated in the fineness of the textuie, etc. Within the skull the brain is enveloped by certain membranes which at once protect it from friction, and furnish it with a supply of nutrient vessels, the one called the araehonid or "spider's web," the dura Natures Secrets. 3 mater and the pia mater, or "the tough and delicate cov- erings. " The supply of blood sent to the brain is very liberal, amounting to one-fifth of all that the entire body possesses. The brain of man is heavier than that of any other animal, except the elephant and whale. For the formation and per- fection of that greatest of all wonders, we find more than seven hundred combinations of the atiomes that lie dead in air, and water, and rock, are wrought into this living dome of power. What hand snatched the atoms from air and rock and wrought them into brains ? It was the sunbeam. Every clement in the living frame has first been taken by the plant from the air, the water and the soil, each element passing through a transformation in the leaf, guided by the spirit of infinite intelligence. Man is so constituted that he hungers for the plant, and having eaten it, another transformation occurs, assimilating the elements to their changed conditions, and though raised to higher estate, still required to act and to carry on the war against statics. The gray nerve matter of my brain is the laboratory in which the thought is evolved which I am now putting on paper for this Book A. leaf was the laboratory in which the atoms, that compose my brain, were won from the lifeless elements and fitted for the uses of thought. What forces wrought in the leaf? It was the sunbeam. Some rays of the sunbeam are chemical ; we employ them in Photography ; they fell on the compounds of silver on the plate and decom- pose them ; they fall on the green leaf and decompose the compounds of carbon. They elaborate sugar, starch, albu- men. Photograph the leaf; your picture is dark; the chemi- cal rays were expanded in working transformations in the leaf ; and the light shed from the leaf has no force to break the compound of silver on the plate. We come to that great truth the force which underlies all the vital activities of na- ture ; force therefore, which sends the atom from the rock, 4 Nature s Secrets. up to its throne in the human brain, is lodged in the sun- beam. We are the offspring of the sun. Bird and beast, too, are the offspring of the sun. The weed, the worm and all things that live, are members of one celestial brotherhood ; all, all are the children of the sun. Is there nothing beyond the sun's rays ? Is the sun the ultimatum of causes ? The chemical rays of the sun are convertable into Electricity ; Electricity is convertable into Magnetism. Professor Farra- day's experiments on the electric eel have shown us most conclusively that Magnetism is convertable into Nerve Force, and Nerve Force into Will and Empyria ; thus demonstrating that the sun's rays are not the ultimate cause. Cast your eye along the table of Forces, and at the head you will find Will, Mind, Spirit ; ( and Dr. Carpenter tells us in his Conserva- tion of Force that " Spirit is a Dyanamic capable of acting on Matter/') It dominates all the Forces that play through the universe ; its energies are perennial, flowing into the great nervous centre. The Brain of man, with its ethers, essences, fibres, convo- lutions, membranes, corpus colliseum, gangilia, gray a.nd white nerve matter, and fluids of inconceivable tenuity, to- gether with all the forces of the Brain ; sending forth these subtle occult forces to bless or to curse the race, is the great generator of Electricity, Magnetism, and Empyria; this force the ancient philosophers called the " Regenerating Fire," and it is at this time attracting a great deal of attention as a re- medial agent. Prof. Ellitson, of England, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the London College, says in his report: "I have cured by this agent, after all others had failed, Paralysis and many other diseases." Dr. Ellitson, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, has established a Hospital where the subtle forces are daily employed in the cure of diseases. Cicero says, ''Pythagoras could charm away any pain by the laying on of his hands." Pliny says : "There exist some men whose bodies are eminently cura- Natures Secrets. 5 tive." Plutarch relates that " Pyrrhas, King of Ephrus, had the gift of removing diseases by slowly touching the affected parts with his hands. " Galen, when brought before the Ro- man Senate for making cures by magic, openly confessed his knowledge of the secret means of Hyppocrates. A. Trilli- anus, M. D., an eminent Physician of Greece, in the 6th cen- tury, says he resorted to two different sysetms, namely, the laying on of the hands, which he termed the " occult means, or natural remedies ;" and the administration of medicine, which he termed the "common remedies." Vespacian, Emperor of Rome, cured a blind man, and another of par- alysis. The Kings of England, for 800 years, were public healers. Valentine Greatrakes travelled in England from 1663 to 1666 ; the learned Geo. Rust, Lord Bishop of Derry, says of him, " I do affirm that I saw him cure by the laying on of his hands, ophthalmia, epileptic fits, scrofula, and cancer- ous tumors of the breast ;" and the Royal College of Sur- geons published his cures in their journals. See Pecklin, Observ. Medi. Lib. III. Baron Emil Sweedenbourgh, Mar- tin Luther, and Rev. John Wesley used these subtle forces in curing diseases. See Armenian Magazine, vol. 1 1, page 85. Archbishop Whately, of Dublin, not long before his transla- tion from earth, cured a man who was totally blind by these occult forces. Man is of the earth, earthy. The Science of Chemistry demonstrates that there are 64 substances known as prima- ries ; they enter into the composition of all things in nature and Man is a part of nature ; his eternal, immortal soul came from God, and permeates, sublimates, and etherealizes with its Divine essence those remedial agents, and fits them for the scientific removal of disease ; for when a man's entity is placed in contact with another and a more controling entity, the most happy remedial results are effected ; and when the Theory and Practice of Medicine admit all the remedial agents that are known and proven in their Pharmacies, then 6 Nature's Secrets. will it begin to be a positive science, and not be charged, as Dr. Skey, Head Surgeon (f pf St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, declared, "An uncertain Science," but a credit and honor, to the medical profession, and a great blessing to suf- fering hnmanity. But it is high time that Religion and Sci- ence should do all in their power to remedy causes, and not always be seeking for and curing effects. Here is a theme for an able pen. I know God has given us the Law, but we must work out his Divine problem through obedience to other laws. There is probably no department in the great laboratory of Nature which so aptly demonstrates the presence of spirit force, with its infinite intelligence, as the growth - and devel- opment of an embryo, whether we take for example that of the sea-weed or oak, radiate or mollusk, guinea pig or rab- bit, dog or man ; for in the primitive stage of embryotic life, so closely do the cells of these widely different beings resem- ble each other, that even the most expert naturalist would en- tirely fail in an attempt to distinguish one from the other. Then why not the cell of an oak grow into a man, or of a man into a sea-weed ? Simply because everything is subject to law, and there is no such thing as chance ; because the great spirit of intelligence directs all things understandingly, and executes everything in power ; because it has ample time for everything, and never makes a mistake ; because " the spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters," and moves everywhere else throughout this vast universe. In order that the reader may fully comprehend the subjects which this volume will endeavor to expound, a knowledge of at least the rudiments of these laws and principles is absolute- ly necessary. And if this is to be demanded of the unpro- fessional reader, what are we to think of the professional teachers and physicians who know absolutely nothing about primary causes, but devote their time entirely to the treatment of palpable, tangible effects? To illustrate: Fever is an Natures Secrets. 7 effect, not a cause, but formerly the entire medical profession treated it as a cause, and chief among the remedies employed was blood-letting. Now the fever was a kindly effort which Nature was making to throw off theMisease, by an increased action of the heart, and so forth. By depriving the system of a portion of the vital fluid, of course the fever would abate, and Nature, having abandoned the struggle for life and health, the patient would appear much easier, and be assured by the physician that "the symptoms are more favorable'/' whereas the disease has been aggravated ten fold. The unprofession- al reader can readily understand the malpractice in this case, but fails to discover it in thousands of others, because unac- quainted with the occult causes. But there is malpractice among the law-makers, in a hun- dred ways, just as absurd as the practice of bleeding in case of fever ; yet the masses appear just as ignorant of the great wrongs inflicted upon'them as were the fever patients a hundred years ago. Nor is this malpractice confined to the physician and law-maker. Our clergy, our school teachers, our lecturers upon ethics, and in fact all, including parents, who have any hand in shaping and regulating the great body politic. Like bleeding for fever, their efforts are worse than useless. I do not charge base or improper motives upon those prac- titioners, but I do insist that their ignorance of remote causes is resulting in the most unhappy consequences. Every form of vice and crime is aggravated and made worse by injudi- cious treatment, while disease seems to be annually upon the increase, each generation growing weaker, if not wiser, under a system of practice that originated in the dark ages. Every- where humanity appears to realize these facts, as is evinced by the great army of reformers, all earnest and anxious to do something for the elevation of the race, yet in conse- quence of their ignorance of the remote causes which pro- duce the ills they are seeking to remedy, their efforts, at the least, are but the gropings of a blind man. 8 Nature's Secrets* The advice which I shall give, and the information which I shall endeavor to communicate, will be based upon a know- ledge of primal causes, and although want of space will pre- vent me from entering into full details, yet I will be suffi- ciently explicit to enable the reader to comprehend the im- portance of the subject and perceive its full bearing. Then, any person desirous of fully mastering the subject, must make himself acquainted with Zoology, Botany, Geology. Embry- ology, Anthropology and" the laws governing Natural Selec- tion. A thorough knowledge of these sciences will so expand the mind, that the presence of spirit force will be detected in a thousand instances where now it is not dreamed to exist ; the errors of physicians, law-makers, and so forth, will become apparent, while it will be seen that the so-called reformer, ignorant of these sciences, does not deserve the least respect or gratitude from poor, suffering humanity, save that the reformer is actuated by good motives while hope- lessly ignorant. Natures Secrets. CHAPTER II, HUMAN ATTRIBUTES : THEIR ORIGIN AND TRANSMISSION. When you stop to gaze admiringly upon a beautiful little girl, whose sunny smile and gentle manners remind you of a disembodied spirit, you are quite likely to think of her only as a cause, and giving loose reins to Fancy, you sketch for her a bright future, with many parts to play, in all of which she is a heroine, or the grand, moving cause. But there is another view to take: consider her as an effect, and she will afford you a study that is infinitely more interesting. Think of her as the result of a thousand causes which have been operating for millions of years, and that if but one cause had been wanting she could not have been the perfect creature that she is. Now you have a study more worthy of your con- sideration, for you may deal with facts instead of theories, evolve principles through induction, and establish a science that is valuable. But to go on dreaming about this beautiful child as a cause, theorizing upon imaginary effects, will have no more bearing upon the science of humanity than a sensa- tional novel has upon mathematics. Turn your gaze in another direction. Search for men who have splendid physical organizations, with bone, nerve and muscle well developed. You find a numerous class in all ranks of society. Now look for women of a similar type. Alas ! you look in vain. Turn once more to the lords of creation and search for men as perfect in the mental as their brothers are in the physical. Look for men who think well, reason well, write well, and act well their every part in the io Natures Secrets. . . great drama of life. Your search is almost useless, for such men are very rare, standing wide apart in the centuries, with a great wilderness of barbarism between them. But look once more, and this time confine your search for men whose moral and spiritual development take rank with those of fine physical organizations. As a standard for weigh- ing and measuring your model man, call to mind the picture drawn of the gentle Nazarine. He must be a man that if smitten upon one cheek will turn the other ; he must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and administer to the afflicted, even though they are his deadly enemies ; he must assist the widow though she has no beautiful daughter on whom he can thrust his love, or impose his lust ; in a word, one whose whole life, from infancy to hoary age, has been sanctified by doing good and never evil. You look in vain, for the Ages have not yet produced him, and judging the future by the past, tens of thousands of years must elapse before the elements upon our earth will be sufficiently matured for the produc- tion and sustenance of such a masculine mortal. You may find women who approach this standard, but not men. You naturally inquire : " Why this discrepancy in the devel- opment of the species? Why do not the mental, moral and spiritual keep pace with the physical? Is it not as easy for God to develope the one as the other ?" Be careful, my friend, for such queries smell of blasphemy. Your clergyman will assure you that you have no right to be prying into these mysteries, for' they belong alone to God. Should such be your view, then shut this book and never look into it again. It \> not intended for such as you. I am not writing for the fossils of a barbarous age and dead past, but for the progres- sive minds of the living present. Presuming that I have a reader not afraid to listen to truth, I will proceed to a solution of this seeming mystery, which can be done only by considering man's origin. If we turn to Genesis for information upon the subject, we learn that "man Nature's Secrets. 1 1 was made from the dust of the earth." The words here quoted convey only a general idea to the mind ; they are like the title of a book which cannot be fully comprehended until the book has been read in detail. Suppose you pick up a book with the appalling title : " How Butter is made from Grass and Hay." You do not read the book, and being totally ignorant of the daily business, you naturally infer that it means that butter is made from grass and hay, something as a box is made from boards, or bricks from clay. You im- agine a quantity of grass put through some mysterious chemi- cal or mechanical process and coming out butter. Such a suggestion may seem very silly to you, and yet the conclusion that man was made from the dust of the earth, in a manner similar to the manufacture of a brick, as we have been so long taught, is just as silly. The details are what we want, and these will show that the words quoted are strictly true. Instead of looking for the origin of man as a whole, the product of a few hours' creative power, let us take a single organ, the heart for instance, and opening the great book of Nature, under the title "Geology," we run down its Groups and Ages to the Silurian Period. We pause and look around. A radiate from the Cambrian attracts our attention. He is the first type of animal life, struggling up from the vegeta- ble, partaking as much of the nature of the latter as of the former. We look in vain for a pulsating heart. We are standing upon"the shore of a Silurian sea. At our feet is a mollusk. He comes next in the scale of animal life to the radiate, and is an object of our special interest. We ex- amine him by the aid of a powerful microscope, and lo ! there is a contracting and dilating muscular movement, revealing the action of a heart which sends the cold, colorless blood through its appointed conduits. Here we see the germ of the heart of man. It has been developing and maturing, passing through every type of animal life, for untold millions of ages, each successive type higher than the last, until it has 12 Natures Secrets. reached its present point of culmination in the highest type of intelligence upon our planet. Let us next investigate the origin of the human hand. We look in vain for traces of it among the mollusks. We ascend to the Devonian, a later Period, in the Age of Fishes, where animal life is taking on higher conditions. How marked the change from the Silurian 1 As we found the mollusk removed farther from the vegetable than the radiate, so we find the fishes developed still farther away. The , power of locomotion has been wonderfully increased, and as we watch them darting through the Devonian waters, our at- tention is attracted by certain protuberances which are used like paddles. We examine them more closely. They are fins. And here we find the outline of the human hand! Trace it to the reptile and it becomes a foot. It is but a slight change from a fin, and yet millions of years elapsed while this change was going on. God works slowly. He has no occasion to hurry, for eternity is before him. Thus we discover how it was that man was made from the dust of the earth. He has grown from the earth just as surely as a tree. He has been developed from the rudimental forms of life beneath him just as certainly as the butterfly is developed from the catterpillar. He has in him the characteristics of every animal, and I regret to say that many of the species seem to have inherited largely from the swine. Man possesses two kinds of intelligence, instinct and reason. It is the predominance of the latter over the for- mer which distinguishes man so greatly from the lower order of animals. When we search for the first form of intelli- gence we find it clear down to the zoophyte ; nor have we traced it to its origin even then, for the plant manifests in- stinct just as surely as the dog. Bury a block of wood wiithn two feet of the spot where you plant some squash seeds ; ten feet farther away bury a bone full of marrow. Now watch the result. While the block of wood is un- Natures Secrets 13 heeded, a little root is rapidly sent out in the direction of the bone, and having reached it, divides into a hundred branches, the extremity of each directed to a part of the bone that is most porous, and with its hundred little mouths it sucks out the nturiment from the bone, sending it to the parent root. No one would deny intelligence to the animal that acts with so much wisdom ; then why deny it to the plant ? In these wonderful evolutions do we not discover the working of an infinite intelligence, an Infinite Spirit whose center is nowhere-, but whose circumference is everywhere ? If we leave the plants and go to the minerals, we still find intelligence, still find an instinct exactly adapted to the wants, of the mineral. We trace this instinct to the infinite. There is neither time nor place where it is not found. Not so with reason. We look in vain for the first dawn of reason until the later Ages of the earth. The lower order of mammals can reason a little, but are mainly dependent upon their in- stinct, an intelligence that never errs, while reason is con- stantly blundering. Now comes the query: Why is man less perfect, intellec- tually, than physically? Because his intellect is not so old by millions of years as his physical. It has not had time for growth and developement. His instinct is perfect, but when he was endowed with reason he was almost totally deprived of instinct, not possessing a tenth part so much as a pig. The reader can now understand why this discrepancy between man's physical and intellectual natures. So, too, why man's moral and spiritual natures are not as perfect as his intellec- tual. The former are far younger. The idea of looking among the animals for morality and spirituality seems absurd, yet the germ of these attributes must have existed in the animal, in an undeveloped state, from the earliest moment of animal life. Right here I must be pardoned for what may seem a digression, but which is really an important feature of this 14 Nature's Secrets. "work, namely, a consideration of the moral nature of man. The clergy try to monopolize this department of knowledge, but have made such wretched work of it that it becomes the duty of the intelligent physician to instruct man in a general knowledge of ethics, just as much as to enlighten him regard- ing his physical nature. No reflecting person will deny that the physical organs are all the result of growth and progression. In the seal we dis- cover a rudimental hand, yet very imperfect as compared with the human hand. Now fancy some critic, not only con- demning the poor seal on account of his awkward flipper, but actually treating him with cruelty, not only as a punish- ment to the individual seal, but that it may prove a warning to all others. Perhaps most of my readers see the point, but there are probably some dull ones who need a plainer illus- tration, and since it is chiefly for the benefit of this class that I am writing, I will elaborate the idea. Suppose you have half a dozen children, ranging from two to twelve years of age. You furnish each with a bucket and direct them to carry it full of water, across the parlor carpet, threat- ening the direst punishment should they spill even a drop. Explain to them that they are free moral agents, to spill the water or not, and therefore the spilling of a single drop will subject them to the same penalty as if they had spilled a bucketfull. " For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." James ii., 10. You lay down the law most positively, conditioned with rewards as well as penalties, and leave them in a state to act for themselves. Your law is no respecter of persons, and therefore exacts the same obedience from the two-year-old that it does from the twelve-year-old. Besides, the buckets are all of the same size, and you require that all shall fill them to the same fullness, for you make no distinctions and show no partiality. Left to themselves, the labor begins. The eldest discovers Natures Secrets. 15 that by a little care he has no trouble in obeying your com- mands, for he possesses not only the physical strength but a matured mind to plan as well as execute. The next younger, being inferior,- both mentally and physically, finds that the greatest care is necessary in order not to come under the curse of the law which you have given. For a time he suc- ceeds, but becoming weary, his muscles exhausted, by a false step he spills a single drop. This seals his doom, and in pure recklessness he throws down the bucket, spurns it with his foot, deluging the fine carpet with water. Perhaps he would not have been guilty of this last act but for the severity of the law which punished him the same for spilling a drop as for a bucketfull. Of course the third child will fail more signally than the second, and so on to the youngest, whom we will suppose to be a little girl. Imagine the poor thing toddling along, not more than half conscious of the responsibility resting upon her, when suddenly one of the other children puts out 'his foot in front of her, and away she goes sprawling on the floor. This ends the period of probation. All save the oldest have broken your law, and now, with your "anger kindled," your "fierce wrath aroused," you summon them, "with the great sound of a trumpet." to appear before the judgment seat for trial. Five of the six are found guilty and sentenced to be shut up in the gloom and darkness of the cellar, to be fed on bread and water, with an opportunity to ponder upon the enormity of their crimes. To prove that you have done this with the best of motives, you employ a missionary to visit them and administer conso- lation, which he does by telling them that they are the spared monuments of your mercy, and that if you had been strict to mark their iniquities against them that they would have long since been beyond the reach of hope. He admonishes them that they had good and evil set before them ; that you gave them the law, and they knew just what to expect in case they violated its wise and beneficent provisions. 1 6 Nature's Secrets. But we will suppose that one of these five unfortunates is very intelligent, and should reply to the missionary something in this way : "I am simply the victim of circumstances* over which I had no control. Had it been in my power I would have* made myself as strong as my eldest brother, and then I should have avoided spilling the wafer, and thus escaped this cruel imprisonment." " Cruel imprisonment !" exclaims the missionary ; " How dare you utter such a slander against your kind and noble father ? Did he not warn you beforehand what to expect if you disobeyed him ? " Yes, but I couldn't help spilling the water." " It is the devil putting these wicked thoughts into your mind. Remember that you are a free moral agent ; God gave you the power to choose, but you chose the evil instead of the good, and therefore your punishment is just. No, my poor child, all this complaining, this attempt to shift the res- ponsibility from yourself upon your kind father or upon God himself, comes from your depraved and rebellious spirit.'* "Who gave me my depraved and rebellious spirit?" "You brought it on yourself by disobedience." "Well, suppose I did ; but God must have known, when he was making me, that I was liable to have that rebellious spirit ; then why did he not make me so strong that I would not have it?" "Because he made you a free moral agent and left you to choose for yourself." " Did he know before I was born the exact choice that I would make?" "Of course he did, for he knows everything; but that is no excuse for you." " Beg pardon, but tell me this : Could I do anything to change God's foreknowledge ?" By this time the missionary would be in a dilemma. If Natures Secrets. 17 he answered in the affirmative, that would at once be a denial of God's omniscience ; if in the negative, that would most effectually upset the theory of free moral agency. So the missionary would be likely to resort to the clergyman's dodge whenever he is cornered in this way, and answer : " Oh, the depravity of the human heart, before it has been enlightened by God's Holy Spirit ! prone to evil as the sparks to fly upward ; and then, setting carnal reason against Divine Inspiration, try to shift the blame upon God himself. Let us pray !" We will leave this imaginary missionary at his devotions, while we proceed to make a practical application of the al- legory. For yourself, as the father of these children, we will substitute the legislative and judiciary powers of the State, with humanity at large in the place of the children. We find men and women just as incapable of living up to the high moral standard established, as were these little children of keeping the law laid down for them. There are persons so weak in morals, in consequence of bad antenatal conditions, that they can no more lead honest and upright lives than the little two-year-old could carry a bucketfull of water without spilling a drop. These persons are just as destitute of capa- city to be moral, as Prof. Combe was of mathematical abili- ty, and he assures us that at the end of seven years' hard study he had failed to learn even the Multiplication Table. As he was one of the most brilliant philosophers that Scot- land has ever produced, would you, had you been his tutor, have inferred that he might learn mathematics just as well as philosophy, and then would you have punished him for his failure ? This is the way society is dealing with its unfortu- nates, utterly blind to the law of their being. This business has been in the hands of lawyers and clergymen from time immemorial, leaving the physician to take care of the body, but the bungling manner which has characterized their man- 1 8 Nature s Secrets. agement seems to demand a change of administration, and hence my interference. Whether we accept Genesis or Geology for authority, we find that man was made from the dust of the earth. His physical and metaphysical qualities are perfected according to the age of each, just the same as my allegorical children were capable of carrying the water without spilling it, accord- ing to their age and strength. His physical is oldest, and therefore nearest perfect ; then come the intellectual, the moral and the spiritual. Some are progressed in one direc- tion, some in another. Some are idiots in mathematics, some in music, some in finance, some in intellect, some in morals and some in spirituality. But to punish them for these deficiencies is to criticise their Maker, and virtually charge him with not understanding his business. Would you punish a savage, simply because he is a savage ? If you would, then you censure God for making savages, since he might have made them all of the Caucassian race, had he been so disposed. Would you punish for immorality the man born without moral perceptions? Who made him so? "Did this man's parents sin," or was it God? In either case you assume a fearful responsibility when you punish him for his moral imperfections. How dare you do it ? Do you imagine that you can engineer matters on this planet bet- ter than the Supreme Architect of the universe ? No, the savage should not be condemned for being a sav- age. He was needed in nature, else it was folly in the God of Nature to produce him. He fills his niche, and is just as true to his conditions as a Humboldt or La Place. Neither must the man with a weak moral nature be condemned. He is one of the toiling human corals, contributing his quota to the great whole, and just as necessary as a Tyndall or Hux- ley. If we compare imperfect morality to the fin of a fish, and partially perfected morality to the human hand, selecting George Washington as the highest type, we shall find human- Natures Secrets. 19 ity swarming with fins, flippers and paws, yet but few with hands. How sublime the thought of punishing these poor handless wretches for imderfections which they cannot help ! They are filling a place in the great human hive, and if I condemn them, and denounce them, then I am condemning God because he did not make them better, as he certainly might. But society condemns them, and sends them to pris- on, where they are treated more like the wild and ferocious animals than they are like human beings. Every prison, in every Christian country, is a standing libel upon the charac- ter of the Christian's God, for he might have made them all good and perfect, when there would have been no necessity for prisons. I would not be understood as advocating the same freedom for these poor unfortunates as for men like George Washing- ton. No, we should restrain them just as we would a maniac whom we fear might murder us or burn our houses. Society has a right to protect itself, but has no right to inflict punish- ment. I mean just what I say : that Society has no right to inflict punishment under any circumstances, and for this reason : We have seen from a logical and philosophic pre- sentation of the subject, that every living thing is simply an effect, the product of millions of causes, those eauses being infinite. Hence, to punish the effect, the thing produced for being what it is, would be to imitate the boy who stubs his toe against a solid rock, and then in anger beats the rock with a club. Or, suppose it to be a deformed idiot, instead of what we call a criminal, would we dare to punish him for his deformity? We might find it necessary to restrain .him from going at large, but to punish him would seem horrible. Yet our so-called criminals are just as much deformed mon- strosities as the idiots, and just as deserving of our charity. I hope the reader will not think me tedious in my illustra- tions of man's moral nature. Remember that I am treating of humanity in every department, instead of confining my 20 Nature s Secrets. observations to the physical. Therefore it is proper to lay the foundation by showing how it is that man has been made from the dust of the earth. This being done, we have a foundation laid on which to build, and we may then consider the laws of generation, or how to be born. Man lives by virtue of certain nutriment which he takes into his system ; so, too, does a plant. The plant must be supplied with food, or it will die just as certainly as man when deprived of food. In this the similarity is marked. So, too, both must be supplied with wholesome food, or disease will result, followed by death. Finally, both must be able to digest and assimilate the food taken into the system, or, proving a foreign substance, injury must result. Thus a parallel might be traced between man and a plant for a great distance ; nor would it be any argument against this parallel to show that man had one mouth, one stomach and so forth, while the plant has many. This difference has been effected in consequence of their different natures and different re- quirements. Man inherits from the plant his mouth, stomach, digestive apparatus, excretory organs, etc. Hence, a thorough knowledge of anatomy involves a knowledge of every living thing below man, to the mineral. Without this knowledge the medical practitioner is but a quack and imposter. It is a knowledge, too, that should be diffused among the masses. Hence this book. . I might devote several volumes to a consideration of the gradual changes which have been going on in the great la- boratory of Nature, during untold millions of years, the whole -aim of which has been to produce man upon our planet ; but I must not dwell upon this portion of the subject. Starting with the mineral, we discover certain differences, not only in the physical, but the spiritual characteristics, which are designated by such terms as positive and negative, corres- ponding to the masculine and feminine. Coming to the plants, we find conclusive evidence of the presence of male Nature's Secrets. 21 and female. Rising in the scale to the zoophyte, where there is positive animal life, the proofs of male and female are less apparent than in the plant; yet there can be no doubt but that all animal life is characterized by a distinction of sex, although we may not discover any sexual organs. Neverthe- less there are some species of the Radiate that will multiply by being divided into several pieces, each part growing into a perfect animal. This is true of the angle worm ; also of the fresh water polyp, and has been asserted of the snake, but this last requires proof. The polyp is so constructed that there appears to be no difference between the skin upon his surface and his stomach, for if you turn one inside out, he is just as ready for his dinner as before the change was made. Our modern politicians appear to have inherited this peculi- arity to a marked degree, and it is a striking coincidence that pol is the first syllable in both their names. The Radiate and Mollusk appear to be perfectly passion- less, unless sympathy can be called passion, even a sympathy as cold as that which exists among the minerals. Natural- ists tell us that in the lowest forms of animal life, where the zoophyte looks as much like a vegetable as an animal, pro- pagation is carried on by a system of " budding." A bunch appears as if attached to a larger form, continuing to enlarge until having attained a sufficient size, when it drops from the parent stem, becomes a distinct entity and sets up in busi- ness on its own account. In this the animal retains the char- acteristics of the plant with but slight modifications. Ascending in the scale of being, we discover a gradual change in the law of generation, or rather its conditions, until the method peculiar to the plant can scarcely be traced. The fishes are cold-blooded, but still they manifest towards each other something like amatory passion. Coming to the warm- blooded animals, the evidences of amativeness are indisputa- ble. The marsupials, such as the opossum, kangaroo, and so forth, preserve a relic of plant propagation, something like 22 Natures Secrets. " budding," for the female is provided with a sack, or false stomach, as it is called, in which are carried the young during gestation, each with his little mouth glued to a nipple from which he draws nutrition. Like the "budding" zoophyte, when embryo life is complete, he " drops off" and becomes a distinct, individualised marsupial. Embryology, in all the departments of Nature, should be studied by all who contemplate becoming parents. Indeed, it is a science that should be taught in our public schools. Boys should know the laws governing generation ; girls should know what is to be expected from them in the relations of wife and mother, and when both sexes are thus instructed, the offspring born will be vastly superior to the wretched abortions that owe their existence to blind passion In concluding this part of my subject, I desire to impress it deeply upon the mind of the reader, that man, with all his organs, faculties and traits, is but an effect. That as yet he is far from being perfected, and that at his present ratio of progress, millions of years may elapse before the human race will attain to its point of culmination. In the mean time, let the reader consider man as just as good and just as perfect as God designed he should be, at this epoch, instead of censur- ing and condemning him because he is no better. Further- more, the reader should never forget that the attributes of man are like a family of children, some older and some younger, and that less should be expected from the young than the old. The PHYSICAL is approaching maturity ; the INTELLECTUAL is only a sprightly youth ; the MORAL is in its childhood, while the SPIRITUAL has but just been born. Had God produced these constituent elements all at the same epoch, then we might be excused for railing against him on account of the disparity between man's Physical and Spiritual natures. But to rail now, when the latter is so much younger than the former, is rank blasphemy, a luxury which only our Christian law-makers can afford to indulge in, and they only because they hire Chaplains to pray for them. Nature s Secrets. 23 CHAPTER III. ANTE-CONCEPTION CONDITIONS : THE. ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND. The heading for this Chapter is one of several sub-titles under which I shall consider the laws governing generation. I shall commence in society just as I find it to-day : a majority of the men and women united in wedlock, and therefore lia- ble at any time to become parents, whether they so will it or not. Under this sub-title I shall not raise the question whether or not the parties are fit companions for each other, in the marriage relation, but accepting conditions as they are, instead of theorizing upon conditions as they should be, we will try and make the best of everything, and produce the best offspring possible under the conditions, pointing out the best methods for rearing and educating the same, and then, when the improved breed shall become old enough to marry, I will endeavor to so instruct them, that with an improved marriage relation their offspring will be as much superior to themselves as they have been made superior to their parents, and thus go on, from generation to generation, improving the race as the stockraisar is enabied to improve every variety of animal, even to the sow that wallows in the mire. In order that my advice may not appear to be purely theo- retical, and therefore make but little impression, 1 shall en- deavor to deal with facts as much as possible. I regret that most of the writers upon this subject have labored chiefly to prove that their deductions are true, instead of proving their premises. I shall aim entirely at proving my premises, leav- ing the deductions, as the fish does its young, to shift for 24 Nature s Secrets. themselves. Were the reader acquainted with the same per- sons as myself, I could take him to different families of chil- dren, point out the dissimilarities of constitution, intellect, disposition, and so forth; and then, after careful inquiry from the parents, be able to point out the causes for these differen- ces. But since this course is not practicable, I will refer to the present royal family of England, the history of which it is easy to learn. Prince Albert was most emphatically an intellectual man, quite free from low indulgences which usually characterise royality and nobility. Aside from his dignity of birth, if he had only been a hod-carrier, he would have been admired for the purity of his life, his uprightness of conduct, and ex- alted ambition. Queen Victoria was a most exemplary young woman, and in all her relations of life, whether as friend, wife or mother, aside from her royalty, affords a fair model for her sex. Here, then, we have two persons united, much above the average of humanity, and have a right to expect superior offspring. Nine months and eleven days after mar- riage, the Princess Royal was born. She has proved a very superior woman, and just such as would very naturally be ex- pected from such parents. Just eleven months and eighteen days after the birth of Victoria Adelaide, Albert Edward, the Princs of Wales, was born. The Prince is a poor model for goodness, and just such a son as would not be expected from such parents. In the Galaxy for March, 1870, Justin Mc- Carthy says of him : "Those who saw the Prince of Wales, when he visited this country, would surely fail to recognize the slender, fair-haired, rather graceful youth of that day, in the heavy, fat, stolid, pre- maturely bald, elderly young man of this. It would not be easy to see in any assembly a more stupid-looking man than the Prince of Wales is now. * * * All that he could do by countenance and patronage to encourage a debauching and degrading style of theatric entertainment, he . has done. He is said to be fond of the singing of the vulgar and low Natures Secrets. 25 buffoons of the music hall, and to have had such persons brought specially to his residence, Marlborongh House, to sing. * * * Night after night, even during the long and lamentable illness of his young \vife, he visited such theaters and gazed upon those prodigies of myriad nakedness. * * Almost any and every one you meet in London, will tell you, as something beyond doubt, that the Prince of Wales is dull, stingy, course and profligate." Dismissing the Prince for the present, I pass on to observe that seventeen months and sixteen days after the birth of the Prince, Alice Maud Mary was born, a grand improvement on her brother. Then fifteen months and eleven days later Prince Alfred was born, who is much superior in every way to the Prince of Wales. Now the question arises, Why so much difference in children born of the same parents? Does such a question ever arise in the minds of the Court physicians ? If so, the world is none the wiser for it, for they are as silent as the grave upon these subjects. Is this difference the result of chance or accident ? By no means, for it is impossible that there should be an effect, of any kind, without a cause. Now I must be able to account for these differences, in a rational manner, in order to inspire, the reader with confidence, and if I succeed in doing this I shall expect to command his respect in other matters that may be new to him. To begin then. It is evident that conception followed immediately after the marriage of Albert and Victoria, while both were full of vitality and magnetism, before exhausting themselves with passional excesses, as usually happens with a newly married pair, for fashionable decency forbids that young people should be enlightened upon these points, so important not only to their own well being, but that of their offspring. Another cause contributed to the happy organization of the Princess Royal. She was begotten in love, before the honey- moon of tenderness and devotion had passed ; before canker- ing cares had sprung up, strewing thorns in their paths, and 2 26 Nature s Secrets. while their minds were temporarily diverted from the vexa- tions, anxieties and responsibilities of state. I might dwell upon these circumstances, elaborating them in extenso, but for the intelligent reader, I have probably said sufficient for my purpose. Having given the hint, his own thought and reflection will supply corroborating facts. We next consider the circumstances and conditions con- nected with the conception of the Prince of Wales. He was begotten in less than a year after the marriage of his parents. Deductions ; i . During this year the parents had exhausted their vitalities by passional excesses, the indulgences being new to both. This exhaustion must have incapacitated them for fulfilling the high and holy mission of parentage, and off- spring begotten under such conditions must of a necessity be inferior. 2. During this year Victoria had endured the pains and anxieties attendant upon the period of primal gestation, having become a mother only a few weeks prior to the second conception. 3. During this year both were experiencing the cares and responsibilities of sovereignty, and although this was a weak adversary compared with the two former, still it would have been sufficient, other conditions being equal, to have made the offspring inferior to the first-born, begotten in the honeymoon of love. "For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." This is true, 'because a law of Nature, rather than because it is in Galatians. We see its verification everywhere in the plant, the animal and the human. The seed of the plant, the germ of life, may be talked about before a mixed audi- ence, and even the most fastidious ladies are not shocked at the mention of rice, corn, barley and so forth, yet they would . be horrified if some one should say " semen" in. their hearing. This does not arise from a natural delicacy, but is the result of a perverse education and the engendering of a false modesty.; for as before remarked, during the early stage of embryo life, there is a period when not even the most learned Naturalist Nature's Secrets. 27 is capable of distinguishing the plant from the human em- bryo. Here are two things so exactly alike, that not even the slightest difference between them is distinguishable, yet while the plant may be discussed in all its stages, from the germ to perfect completion of reproduction, both decency and polite usage forbid even the mention of the male seed, which is to the human what the grain of corn is to the vegetable. If the kernel of corn to be planted is of an inferior quality, no one would expect to be rebuked for indecency, should he venture the remark that the product of that kernel would be inferior. But to make the same remark about the male germ, would be to challenge ostracism from polite society, notwith- standing the Bible informs us that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption." Fools must strain the meaning of words, and dig deep for folly, not to comprehend the sub- lime thought here expressed, namely the sowing of the germ of human life and the production of offspring. For, " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked/' That is, if by over indul- gence of bridal rites the male germ is not allowed a suffi- cient time to mature before being ejected, having barely enough vitality to impregnate the female ovum with animal life, but none to spare for intellectual, moral and spiritual life, then 'depend upon it that " God will not be mocked," and that " whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Physicians who write books upon this subject are too much disposed to follow in the wake of each other, giving out sim- ilar ideas, but clothed in different language. Hence, a cen- tury ago it was thought that the status of the child depended mainly upon the conditions of the mother during gestation. This idea has been perpetuated, and is popular to-day, yet very erroneous, for the status of the child depends equally upon the conditions of the father at the time of conception. If he has been upon a drunken debauch, or just recovering from a severe illness, or has been indulging to excess in bridal 28 Natures Secrets. rites ; or any other cause existing that impairs the quality of the life germ, not all the care possible, on the part of the mother during gestation, can prevent the birth of an inferior child, deficient either physically, intellectually, morally or spiritually. "F<^r whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Combe tells us in his Moral Philosophy that "a soldier and his lover both got drunk; that conception took place during the drunken debauch, and the poor child was born an idiot." It is evident that at the conception of the Prince of Wales, his father sowed an inferior quality of seed. It may be that ill- ness on the part of Prince Albert contributed something to- wards this inferiority, yet it may be entirely accounted for upon the hypothesis of intemperate indulgence, the germinal secretion being thin and watery, instead of being character- ized by being rich, thick and full of vitality and magnetism, as is the case when a man is in perfect health and has been continent for at least thirty days. Keeping up the agricultural similie, the next consideration is the nature and condition of the soil where the seed is de- posited, for if the soil is inferior, or if superior by nature but in bad condition, no matter how superior the seed, or how favorable the season, it is impossible that there should be a glad harvest. In the case of Victoria, although a superior woman by nature, the conditions were very unfavorable when she conceived the Prince of Wales. According to the aver- age period of gestation, less than three months had elapsed since the birth of her first-born, when she conceived a second time. It is impossible that either her physical or nervous system should have returned to normal conditions, and in fact it was not judicious for her to yield to the solicitations of her husband, much less to conceive. This circumstance doubtless contributed greatly to the degeneracy of the child, yet the bad conditions of Prince Albert may have been equally potent for evil. Natures Secrets. 29 There may have been many other minor circumstances that assisted to this unhappy result, but enough have been enumerated to account for this degeneracy, where so much had been expected, not only from his parents and kindred, but from the whole English people. But should we condemn the poor Prince for what he cannot help? It is not his fault that he was so badly begotten that he should prefer vice to virtue, becoming recreant to the memory of an honored father, a continued source of misery to a widowed mother, poisoning every cup of happiness for a betrayed wife, and a living disgrace to his innocent children. Humanity at large will condemn him, for they have been so taught in the church and by the clergy, but the true philosopher will pity him, and not only him, but the millions of physical and moral deform- ities which we meet at every turn. With regard to other children of the royal family, my theory is this : I. Prince Albert was evidently an intel- lectual man, living more on the brain than the passions ; hence, however intense his passions at first, it was only a question of time when the intellect would resume its sway. Before the conception of the Princess Alice, sufficient time had elapsed for his passional nature to have become satiated, and as indulgences were less frequent, the male germ had time to mature and become more perfect. 2. Nearly double the time elapsed between the birth of the Prince and Alice, than between Victoria Adelaide and the Prince. This afforded the queen time for more complete recuperation, and therefore she was in better condition as well as her husband ; and yet even in this case the time was altogether too short between the births of her second and third children, while between the first and second, the time was so brief as to amount to positive cruelty. 3. The conditions were also improved on account of the ripening and maturing of the queen, who had been too young to become a mother. True, her eldest was superior, but to make her so, required such a 30 Natures Secrets. draft upon the vitality of the young mother, that years of re- cuperation were necessary for her to recover normal condi- tions. Finally, the recuperation and improvement of condi- tions continuing, of course Arthur must be an improvement upon his older brother, yet entitled to no credit for being so, for he had no hand in the circumstances that endowed him with superior qualities. Before dismissing the royal family of England, I must remark that no child of Queen Victoria possesses the excel- lent qualities of either body or mind that it was the right and privilege of her Majesty to have born to her, provided the children had been begotten upon scientific principles instead of being the offspring of lust the result attendant upon the gratification of passion, regardless of any design to beget a child. Two such persons as Albert and Victoria might breed children as much superior to the common herd as Baron Von Humboldt was intellectually superior to the country pedagogue. But modesty [ ? J and decency [ ? ] for- bade that either of them, especially Victoria, whose very life was at stake, to say nothing about the well-being of her chil- dren, should be instructed even by a hint upon matters of such vital importance. Blindly this couple assumed the mar- riage relation, and have brought into existence a brood of children in many points unworthy of their parentage. But this, instead of being an exceptional case, is a representative case, illustrating how nine-tenths of the children are con- ceived and born, while fully nine-tenths of the other tenth are bom under far worse conditions, and not one in a hun- dred is properly conceived and brought into existence. Thus far, in this Chapter, like Dicken's Circumlocution Office, I have been explaining " how not to do it/' just as an intelligent father would warn his son against the evils and dangers that he is to avoid. There are many other warnings that I might give, yet if the reader will follow strictly the course which I shall point out, refusing to turn aside into bye Natures Secrets. 31 and forbidden paths, there will be no necessity for occupying space to give warnings which may be so much more profit- ably occupied by giving instruction of a positive character, so that all may know "how to do it." Still there are other warnings which duty will compel me to give from time to time. The begetting of offspring should be a design on the part of parents just as much as the putting of seed in the ground is design on the part of the farmer. Everybody would laugh at a farmer as a fool who would cast out his agricultural seed at random upon the soil, regardless of the proper season, the quality of the seed and a careful preparation of the soil. Sup- pose he had a new kind of wheat to propagate, and should attempt it in the heedless manner described, would not even an idiot ridicule him ? Yet the propagation of the human species, of such infinite importance when compared with re- producing wheat, is practised by ninety-nine in a hundred, in a manner just as heedless and stupid, because decency would be shocked, modesty outraged, and Mother Grundy deeply mortified, should any one attempt to instruct our young peo- ple upon these vital points. The proper season, the best quality of seed, and the most complete preparation of the soil, are pre-requisite for the successful reproduction of the plant. No person outside a madhouse or an asylum for idiots will deny this proposition. Then, as the animal is only a progressed form of the plant, the same conditions, modified and adapted to the higher or- der of life, must be pre-requisite for a successful re-produc- tion of the animal ; that is, the male should be in the best of physical health, full of vitality and magnetism, the accumula- tion during several days of perfect continence ; the female should also be in the best of conditions, fully ripened by age, and in the first stage of physical maturity. The conditions being thus favorable, the stock raiser would, have a right to expect, an improvement in the breed. 32 Nature 's Secrets. Passing from the animal t rt man, the highest order of life, the same conditions, in a modified form, are pre-requisite for successfully propagating the human species. Not only should the man be in good physical health, but intellectually, morally and spiritually, he should be free from all ailments. In addition to these requirements, for at least thirty days ninety days would be better the man should lead a life of perfect chastity. If he has ever injured himself by masturbation, then he should not dare to become a father until he has the full ap- probation of an intelligent physician to whom he has com- municated his unhappy secret. If syphilis has at any time marked him for a victim, then let him beware, for not one physician in a hundred can ever rid his system of the deadly virus, so but that his innocent offspring will be born a mass of putrefaction, similar to the description which King David gives of himself in Ps. XXXVIII, 5, 8. "My wounds stink and are corrupt, and so forth." How often it has happened that a pure, healthy young woman has wedded a man apparently of sound constitution, yet the offspring has been a " mass of scrofula," which is only the po- lite term for inherited syphilis. An investigation discloses that the husband was poisoned some years before, but had been pronounced "perfectly cured." Yet all the time the poison had been sealed up in his system, or apparently circulating harmlessly through it, but secreted in the germinating recep- tacles in sufficient quantity to do its deadly work with his un- born child. It is a horrible crime for a man to commit, and yet the laws affix no penalty for it. Murder, in the most ag- gravated form, the victim dying by a torture that is endured for a whole week, is a kindness and mercy compared with begetting a child that may live for years, an object of both pity and loathing, longing for death as the only relief. Young man ! if your blood has ever been polluted by this awful scourge, which the God of Nature sends as the penalty Natures Secrets. 33 of violated law, better go and hang yourself than make some trusting girl the mother of your syphilitic offspring. Should you do so, after reading this book, although I am opposed to the infliction of the death penalty under any circumstances, still I would say that you deserved hanging a thousand times more than Vasquez, the notorious California robber and murderer. True, there is a hope that you may be thoroughly cured, but the chances are greatly against you, for among the hundreds of remedies laid down by the different Medical Schools, I have never found but one that is infallible, and this is known to but very few physicians. If you can apply to me, either personally or by letter, I will put you in a way to be perfectly cured ; but if not, then I warn you, that if you would escape a terrible remorse and torture of conscience, to die sooner than become the father of a 1 syphilitic child. The same remarks concerning syphilis, will apply to wo- man, but it is so rare that a young woman becomes thus dis- eased, and so much more common for a young man than is generally supposed, that I have pointed to him especially, and must particularly caution the young ladies to be careful how they permit any man to become the father of their chil- dren. Coming directly to the point, supposing that the conditions for both male and female are all right, I will give definite in- structions as to how offspring should be begotten. 1. Both the expectant parents should desire offspring and feel that they can afford it pecuniarily. 2. Both should live perfecUy chaste for at least thirty days, and ninety days would be better, or even a whole year if possible. 3. Both should be in love, each with the other, and both earnestly desire the procreative act. A few details, as to the modus operandi, seem appropriate, in order that there may be no misunderstanding. If it was to be only a crop of wheat, it would be thought worth whfle 34 Nature's Secrets. to state all the particulars, and yet if a whole harvest should be lost, that loss would scarcely be felt five years later, whereas a badly begotten child would be a source of misery through life. If the woman has previously been a mother, then at least two years should intervene between the last birth and next conception. This time is fixed upon the hypothesis that the woman has been fortunate and successful with her last child, and that her constitution is good. If otherwise, then a much longer time. Much depends upon circumstances, as to the time that should elapse, but two years is the veiy shortest period, even when these circumstances have been the most favorable. Natures Secrets. 35 CHAPTER IV, WHO SHOULD NOT BECOME PARENTS; THE HORRORS OF MASTUR- BATION. I have already indicated that the victim of syphilis should not assume the great responsibility of parentage until assured, beyond even the shaddw of a doubt, of perfect soundness. But there are .many other classes of persons who are under equally imperative moral obligations not to become parents. I shall therefore devote a Chapter especially to such, hoping that parents may be admonished thereby to put forth more care in training their children, and that they may not form any of these disgusting habits, so at varience with good breeding, so destructive of morals, and utterly incapacitating them from becoming the parents of robust, intellectual chil- dren. Reader, if you have any pride of family, if you would see your name honored in your third generation, give heed to my counsel. Carefully train the children you now have, and some day your grandchildren may rise up and call you blessed ; neglect your children, permit them to form these vile habits, which will make them objects of loathing to all their acquaintances, and then you may expect your grand- children to be fit candidates for the almshouse, insane asy- lum, reform school, house of correction, prison, penitentiary and gallows. I deem it unnecessary to make any additional comments upon the enormity of the crime of parentage by either man or woman whose system still retains even a shadow of the deadly virus of syphilis. It is a crime too horrible for con- 36 Nature's Secrets. templation, and too unnatural to be suspected but for the ghastly evidences which we meet at every turn in eveiy rank of life, from the king in his royal purple to the beggar in his rags. It is the awful penalty which the God of Nature has imposed for the violation of his law, and he is no respecter of persons. It is the penalty not only of unfaithfulness to a bosom companion, but it is the terrible penalty of prostitu- tion and licentiousness. God has ordained one man for one woman, and whatsoever is more than this, on the part of either, is sin. And not only has God ordained these horrible diseases as a present punishment, but that the sin shall be visited upon his children to the third and fourth generations. Aye, and so it is even to the fiftieth generation, taking the various names of "scrofula/' "king's evil/' "humor in the blood, etc.," when the system has been once poisoned with the deadly virus. On the -subject of masterbation a few "more words seem necessary. In spite of our boasted civilization, our "intelli- gent masses/' our free schools, our gorgeous churches, main- tained at an annual expense of more than fifty millions of dollars, in the United States, our fifty thousand clergymen, with an equal number of doctors and lawyers, to say nothing of eleven millions of Spiritualists, every one of whom claims to be a reformer, in spite of all these things, the loathsome practice of masturbation is steadily upon the increase. Its victims are crowding the asylums for the insane and idiotic. A vast army of them are annually swept into their graves. And still there are millions of cases, of a milder type, swarm- ing every walk of life. We meet them in every rank of society, their pale and pinched faces giving notice of their disgusting practices, just as certainly as a striped pole gives notice of a barber-shop. These of the milder type are doing far more injury to society than the poor wretches first named, for they are denied parentage on the score that monsters can- not propagate their species. Nature's Secrets. 37 Were you to look at the statistics of those "who die an- nually, victims of this revolting crime against Nature, you might fancy that they would soon all die off. Yet only a small proportion of these imbeciles die until middle age ; they drag on a miserable existence, marrying and intermarry- ing, reproducing their kind, filling the earth with male and female masturbators, male and female prostitutes, male and female consumptives, and so on to the end of the chapters of vice, crime and disease. Millions of dollars are annually ex- pended in passing laws to punish these loathsome unfor- tunates ; other millions to prosecute and bring them to jus- tice [?]; other millions in the erection and support of alms- houses, prisons and gallowses whereby the public may give expression to its utter abhorrence of these monsters, making them atone by vicarious suffering for the sins of their parents, and not only of the parents, but the sins of the public itself. If only one dollar in a hundred, expended as above enumer- ated, were set aside and appropriated in the employment of teachers, both men and women, to instruct the masses, as I am trying to instruct them in this little work, it would not be many years before it would be found that less than one-half as many of these unfortunates would be born. Then what results might not be expected if one half of these millions, instead of one per cent, should be so expended ? But we need never expect any such policy on the part of Government, so long as doctors, lawyers and preachers are a controlling influence in the land, for this would be aiming a death-blow at the three learned professions, which, now ac- tually control the Government. In order that I might be able to furnish facts and statistics upon this sickening subject, I have been in the habit of gather- ing them for years, and now, instead of being at a loss to fur- nish them, I am at a loss what to select and what to omit, for I might fill a large volume upon this subject alone. Many years ago, in England, ths land of my nativity, my attention 38 Nature^ Secrets. was called to these things, and at first I fotmd it impossible to credit the half that I heard. But on visiting the alms- houses, asylums and so forth, I became amazed at the hor- rors there revealed. I then thought that it might be peculiar onty to my own countrymen, but that in free, proud, happy America, such vices, or at least such disgusting horrors, did not exist. ' I have since travelled over almost the entire Union, become familiar with the habits of nearly all nations and religions, and am obliged to declare that Englishmen are no worse than others. As the last cases are apt to impress us most strongly, I will copy from my diary, under date of "February 8th, 1875. Visited the Almshouse for the city and county of San Francisco, Cal. This Institution receives patients and unfortunates from all parts of the State, and may so far be considered a State Institution, notwithstanding the taxpayers of the county are called upon to contribute for its entire support an injustice that should be corrected. Na- ture made the location an Eden of loveliness, and Art has been liberal in aiding Nature. Good order was apparent in all the arrangements, with good ventilation and a model of cleanliness. "Saw a lady from Scotland, aged 109 years ; also one from Ireland, aged 90. Visited all the wards and workshops, kitchen and dining rooms, witnessing many cases of suffering from age and infirmities. Next visited the Insane Ward belonging to the Institution, situated some distance from the main build- ing. The quiet and harmless insane are here provided with homes and the best of care instead of being sent to the In- sane Asylum at Stockton. Upon inquiry, I learned that it had been proven in numerous instances, in the cases of German women, that the use of lager beer has been the direct cause of their insanity. This fact is worthy of note, although not related to the principal cause of my visit. "Sandwiched between the main building and this one for the insane and idiotic, I passed through a beautiful and artis- tic garden, where I saw ripe strawberries, nestling in delicions harmony by the side of beautiful flowers, whose fragrance perfumed the very air. If it is but one step from the sub- lime to the ridiculous, so, too, I discovered that it was but a Natures' Secrvts. 39 single step from the beautiful to the horrible. Within the building I found 33 inmates. The first that attracted my at- tention was the head of an idiot, and one of the most strongly marked that I had ever seen Next, a boy about ten years old, who had recently been exhibited in San Francisco as a monkey. Of course this boy was very badly begotten and badly born, but surely the persons who thus exhibited this wretched abortion of humanity for money ^ must have also been the victims of bad antenatal conditions. "The causes assigned for the dethronement of reason in. these 33 unfortunates, were, Masturbation, Indiscretions of Youth, and Sexual excesses. These were the direct causes, but does any one ever think of the remote causes ? of the causes of these causes ? Alas ! but few persons, even among our intelligent physicians, appear to ever have such a thought, or if they do, their lips are sealed against uttering it. Yet there must have been a cause for these excesses and indiscre- tions, and in searching for it we discover that it was evil, or unnatural, antenatal conditions. "When we define these "remote" causes we find them to have been passional excesses on the part of the parents dur- ing the periods of utero-gestation and lactation, or during the ante-conception period, for this is a very important period, whereon greatly depends the fate and conditions of the unbe- gotten child. Suppose that for one month prior to conception the mother had been overtasking her vital energies and at the same time indulging in passional emotions to excess. This would have been sufficient cause for her child to be a born masturbator. If the conditions of the father were similar, then expect a semi-idiot to be born." Being unable to picture with a pen, in my Diary, these wretched abortions of humanity, I subsequently despatched an artist that he might photograph one of them to preserve as a specimen of moral horror and degradation. Anxious that it might do all the good possible by way of warning, I have procured it to be engraved, together with two other likenesses, taken at earlier periods of his life, and herewith present them for the contemplation of young men and maidens, that they may see as it were their own likeness, should they ever 40 Nature's Secrets. yield to this awful vice. Fathers and mothers would you like this as a picture of one of your children? See en- gravings, and mark the awful changes wrought by this damn- ing vice. NO. I.-BEFORE YIELDING TO THIS LOATHSOME VICE. "Of the 33 wrecks here, there are 19 who have sunk so far below the brute creation that they utterly disregard the calls of nature. Even a hog will not pollute his straw, but these poor creatures appear as unconscious of evacuations as a new-born infant. Only think of it ! Full grown, living, breathing specimens of the genus homo, must have their cloth- ing changed, sometimes, as many as five times in a single day, as I was informed by the courteous and obliging Superin- tendent. They can neither dress nor undress, and have to be fed like little children. The God-portion of their nature has fled, Reason is dethroned, and nothing remains but a germ of the lowest type of animal life, as stupid and senseless as a radiate \ "One of these particularly attracted my attention. He was a German by birth, aged 28 years, and had been an in- mate of the institution for a year. When admitted he could work a little, but now, in spite of all care and precaution' he Nature's Secrets. 41 was totally incapacitated for any kind of labor. He was bent half double, leaning against the wall, with both hands pressed against his generative organs. So completely had he NO. 2. AFTER MASTURBATING FOR THREE YEARS perverted his nature, that constant excitement seemed an ab- solute necessity of his most wretched existence. I asked him if he was sick. " 'Yes/ he answered. "'Where?' I enquired. " ' Where my hands are/ " ' What caused your sickness ?' " ' Lying too long on the wrong side/ " This was all the information that I could glean from him, and as may be seen from his replies he possessed only a glim- mering of intellect. "There are 70 females in the institution, about ten of whom are the miserable victims of this soul and body-destroying- vice. Women suffer less than men, on account of the catemenial ; yet to look upon their wasted, haggard forms, contrasting them with a plump, rosy-cheeked maiden, such as every true man feels like worshipping, and they seem so loathsoms that we 42 Nature s Secrets. wonder how a man can become more degraded or suffer more from this filthy vice. I will close this sickening memoranda by suggesting that our Supervisors remove these poor suffer- ers to the city, and place them on exibition, for the benefit of the young and as a terrible warning to such as might other- wise become the victims of this debasing vice." NO. 3. SEVEN YEARS LAND HIM IN A COFFIN. With a feeling of relief I turn away from discussing this nauseating subject for the present, although I may return to it again anon, hoping that every person who reads this work may be so impressed with the disgusting and horrible crime of masturbation that if not yet a victim, there will be no dan- ger of becoming one ; and that such a feeling of loathing may arise as to cause one to commit suicide sooner than ever be guilty again. True, I look tipbn suicide as an awful crime, yet what is masturbation but slow self-murder? Nor is the wretch who practices it the only victim of murder, for if he lives, there is danger that he may beget a whole pro- geny of masturbators, who will continue the filthy breed of Natures Secrets. 43 emaciated bipeds for generations to come. Therefore it would be a mercy to future generations for such a personifi- cation of all that is loathsome to lie down to die, if he cannot abandon the accursed habit. I hope, too, that parents, guar- dians and teachers may be so aroused by the importance of the subject, that they will double their diligence in looking after the young entrusted to their care, for negligence in these matters is a positive crime. THE SYMPTOMS OF A MASTURBATOR. It may seem cruel to the victims of this loathsome vice to be so described that even a child might be able to point them out, but for the sake of humanity, and to save others from following in their footsteps, it is absolutely necessary. The policy of both society and the medical profession has been to utterly ignore the subject. There are many middle-aged people, otherwise intelligent, who are incapable of detecting one of these fallen beings. It might be an only son, on whom they depend for comfort and support in their declin- ing years, slowly withering away under this terrible blight, and yet no thought of the dreadful truth would enter their minds, because decency [?] has concealed from them all knowledge of the symptoms. In mercy then to parents, and in mercy to children, I will point out a few of the symptoms of this filthy practice. When the habit commences early in life, as it sometimes does, even before the child can speak plainly, the growth is retarded, the mental faculties impaired, the appearance indi- cating premature old age, while the countenance expresses fear and timidity. A very common symptom, especially with young girls, is a disposition for solitude. The poor victims suffer with headaches, are wakeful and restless during the night, nervous, iritable, indolent, forgetful, distate for study, given to melancholy and hypochondria, and suffering with pain in various parts of the body. The appetite is variable, 44 Natures Secrets. they lack confidence in their own abilities, are subject to great mental despondency, weakness of the back and repro- ductive organs, a gradual wasting away of the flesh, and if a female, hysteria, Jluor albus, etc. Cowardice is a marked, symptom of this disgusting prac- tice. The masturbator makes a poor soldier, for he lacks the physical strength to endure the fatiguing marches, and is powerless to face great danger of any kind. Indeed the poor wretch lacks the courage to look a person full in the face. When the filthy habit has been continued for a series of years, the system will be feverish, with sudden flashes of heat over the face. The eyes have a sheepish, wavering, hesitating look ; the countenance pale and gloomy, with an expression of distrust ; dark spots or semicircles beneath the eyes, es- pecially with females ; pulse irregular, and from the constant waste of nervous matter the hair dry and brash. General debility and emaciation ensue, continuing with an accelerating ratio. Then shortness of breath, and severe palpitation of the heart on taking even slight exercise, or ex- periencing a sudden emotion of joy or grief. The head suffers constant pain, especially in the cerebellum. The va- rious organs fail in the performance of their functions, espe- cially the eyes and generative organs of the male, which greatly diminish in size, losing their muscular power, incapa- ble of excitement without resorting to extraordinary means, and in thousands of cases an entire loss of virile power. The skin suffers from eruptions, attended with great spinal irrita- tion. To unrefreshing sleep are added licentious dreams by night and lustful thoughts by day. Then follow cough, dis- pepsia, night-sweats, costiveness and pains in the chest and loins. The poor wretch is slowly wasting away, a curse to himself and a horror to his friends, until death kindly closes the scene. Professor John King, M. D., in his "Family Physician," page 380, says : "I have treated no less than 2,500 patients Nature's Secrets. 45 whose ailments~ y were brought on by the horrible habit of mas- turbation, and among these about one-third were females." Prof. King further says : " The children of parents, whose nervous systems have been impaired by masturbation are never robust and vigorous. They are subject to convulsions in in- fancy; to epilepsy; to scrofula; their mental qualifications never extraordinary, and they are apt to be diminutive in stature." From the annual report of the Insane Asylum at Columbus, Ohio, for the year 1868, it appears that about one third of the causes assigned for the dethronement of reason was mas- turbation. Comment is unnecessary. In order to gain information upon this subject, Professor Chancy addressed a letter to the courteous Superintendent of the Insane Asylum at Stockton, Cal., and received the follow- ing in reply : STOCKTON, February 25, 1875. PROF. W. H. CHANEY: Dear Sir Your letter of the gih inst. is rec'd. Upon examination of the commitments of patients sent to the Asylum since 1857, extending through a term of sixteen years, I find that during said period, there have been com- mitted and received 5,459 patients; and of these, mastur- bation is the assigned cause of insanity in 495 cases. There is no cause at all assigned however in about one third of the cases. The prevalence, and ruinous effects on body and mind, of this unnatural practice, are so generally conceded, that my opinion in confirmation thereof is only adding another mite in the scale which already contains the entire weight. Very respectfully yours, G. A. SHURTLEFF. Consumptives should never become parents. Like syphilis, when the seeds of this insidious disease are once sown in the system, it may be transmitted and linger 'for a dozen genera- tions. Its victims often attain to middle age, and become fathers and mothers without .exhibiting any of the symptoms 46 Natures- Secrets. of consumption. The first attack is set down simply to " a bad cold/' And it proves so bad a cold that it cannot be cured. The patient may reproach himself for negligence, or blame the physician with ignorance, but all are of no avail. He has inhorited consumption from either a parent, grand- parent, or some remote ancestor, and must die. His little children, now so rosy and full of life, have inherited from him a germ of the fell destroyer. It may lie dormant in the sys- tem until they have grown to manhood or womanhood, and then, just as they feel that life has fairly commenced, this germ of death will develope. Then comes the slowly wast- ing away, the victim still clinging to life, hoping against hope, even until the-last breath. Would it not be better if such persons had never been born? Yet thousands and tens of thousands are annually ushered into existence, only to suffer and die ! If a man is a thief at heart, a liar or a murderer, he knows it, even though he may conceal the knowledge from every one e i s e even though he never yields to any of the dreadful temptations to which he must be subject. Still he may beget a whole family of thieves, liars and murderers. I have often witnessed cases of this kind during my thirty years' practice of medicine. I remember one very sad instance which made a deep impression upon my mind. It was that of a clergyman, apparently one of the most honest and upright of men. His wife was a model woman. Yet, of four sons born to them, the three eldest were convicted of theft and sentenced to im- prisonment. The you'igest was very intellectual, and to all appearance, entirely free from any dishonest taint. He be- came an eminent lawyer and was elected to the State Senate. Everywhere he was honored and beloved, yet two of his three sons were convicted of stealing in spite of his influence as a lawyer and statesman. Now for a solution of this seeming mystery. The clergy- man had inherited a disposition to steal, as he confessed to his Natures Secrets. 49 prison myself. Therefore I shall quote from others when- ever I can. In \hzAtlan1tc Monthly for February, 1868., on page 142, you find the following ; "But in our civilized, sedentary life, he who wovld have good health must fight for it. Many people have the insolence to be- come parents who have no right to aspire to the dignity ; children are born who have no right to exist ; and skill preserves many whom nature is eager to destroy /" There is something terribly shocking to old fogy ideas of right and justice in the foregoing, and yet if the reader can only divest himself of the prejudices of education, and view the subject purely from a moral and philosophical standpoint, he will have no desire to controvert the doctrine taught. Ac- cepting this as a foundation on which to build, I will next' quote from the critical and philosophical pen of Rev. James C. Jackson, M. D. of Dansville, New York : "If so large a proportion of married and marriageable women in the United States foreign-born women not included as forty in a hundred are so constitutionally organized, and functionally developed, as to render them incompetent to give to offspring healthy bodies and proper combinations of men- tal and moral faculties, it follows of necessity, it seems to me, that they are not competent to the task of child-bearing and child-rearing without great injury to themselves. " If this be so, the question arises and at once assumes a moral aspect, whether they are at liberty to become mothers at all. Could they give birth to healthy children, though they did it to their own loss of health and life, the moral aspect of the case might be changed ; but to become mothers of children who, in all probability, under present customs and habits of training and rearing children in America, can never have good health, though they may live to adult age while in so doing 2 50 Nature s Secrets. they make themselves sick and essentially shorten their own lives does not seem to present in its behalf, a right minded morality. On the other hand, it wears decidedly the appear- ance of a transaction originating in heedlessness of conse- quences, and productive of very ill and very sad results. Justly, therefore, it may be characterized as immoral, criminal and wicked, for a man and woman to beget and bear children, where the woman is so constitutionally feeble as to forbid the reasonable expectation that during the period of pregnancy, nursing and early rearing, she will be able to give to her off- spring, robust constitutions and vigorous functional activities. If to do so be not immoral, it would seem difficult to make any act in one's life such. It is conceded on all sides, that to train a child wrong is wrong. If so, what is the nature and character of the act which begets and conceives a child so that when born it goes wrong by the force of antenatal im- pulses, goes wrong because all its predispositions and ten- dencies are wrong ? Writers on moral philosophy, agree in saying that whoever makes a fundamental falsehood take the place of fundamental truth, as though it were a truth, com- mits a more grievous wrong upon mankind by far, than though he should make a wrong application of a fundamen- tal truth in his conduct in life. For, in the one case he poi- sons the fountain, and so poisons all who drink, while in the latter he poisons perhaps only himself. "If a feeble, sickly, mal-organized woman, only injured herself by acts of conception, the evil would be of compara- tively small account, though bad enough at that, but when to the injury she receives, is added that of giving birth as all of this class of women do to children who are either still-born, or if born alive, died early, or if able to live along into full- ness of years, never see a single day when existence to them is not a burden, the immorality of such conduct is not doubt- ful. To any candid mind, at once it becomes clear and con- clusive. The law of the case .governs the fact of the case, Nature's Secrets. 51 and science " determines its character, declaring in precise terms, that women who cannot bear healthy and well-disposed children should not have any, and that those who do bear them commit moral wrong. " It is a curious but very significant fact, that the vicious portions of our population have their starting or originating point in families, or in parentage, much more moral than themselves. Especially is this true of native-born Americans. I have visited Jails, Penitentiaries, State Prisons, Houses of Correction, Poorhouses, and Lunatic Asylums, and made minute and general inquiries, and I could not find five per cent, of the whole number of American born inmates, who could date back two generations to knavish, vicious ancestors. The great majority was made up of persons whose parents were conventionally or morally respectable. How then, came they to be adepts in crime or victims to it? I answer, largely, by reason, in the first place, of constitutional proclivities to mental and moral abnormalism, instituted and induced through the ill health of their mothers, producing in these mental and moral perversities which their children inherited as predis- positions ; and, in the second place, by reason of the want of such healthful early training and moral instructions, as every child must have, if, in after life, he is to keep in the right way, and which a sickly, peevish, fretful, fault-finding, half- drugged-to-death mother is quite incompetent to give. " One of the laws of human nature is that physical condi- tions, or states of body, find their correspondents in mental and moral conditions, or states of mind and heart. Thus, if one wants a sound mind, he should expect to find it in a sound body more surely than in an unsound one, and a healthy, well balanced state of the affections in a healthy body than in a sickly one. The reason for such expectation is, that body and mind reciprocally influence each other, and that where the ordinary, habitual, or constitutional conditions of body are unhealthy, there must exist in greater or less de- 52 Nature s Secrets. gree correspondingly unhealthy conditions of mind. These, as they exist in the mother, may be simply a functional de- rangement, and so be only temporary, or they may be consti- tutional and so ever-present. Whichever it be, if she is un- der their influence at conception, and during foetal life, and during the period of nursing, and during the subsequent period of her child's life in which Nature designs she should be his teacher, guide, inspirer and supporter, he can no more resist her morbid sway than once in the current of Niagara river he could resist going over its ' Falls. ' If then she be in all her structural relations, physical, mental, and spiritual, ab- normally organized say feeble in body, morbid in mind, and extremely vibratory in spiritual impulses, she is by every law that involves moral considerations enjoined not to have chil- dren. Nevertheless, such women keep on having them, and they die, and the mothers weep,* and the fathers mourn, and solemn funerals are had, and pious platitudes are uttered, and God's providence is admited to be mysterious, and resignation to the Divine will is invoked all this while God's will having been that such children should not be bom, their deaths re- sulting not by a mysterious Providence, but strictly in accord- ance with Law. -There are tens of thousands of fathers and mothers in the Republic who every year are called to mourn over the deaths of little ones whom they dearly love, who otght to repent in sackcloth and ashes for the sin of having given them birth only to have them die. In God's plan of Human existence, Heaven is not the natural home of In- fants, but earth is. Children bom to the earth, ought of right to themselves, and to Society, and to mankind at large, to have Life Force enough conditions of living being favorable to remain here, grow up, mature and die only of old age, when, if they lived for Humanity and loved God, they will be pre- pared for Heaven. It is a sin huge enough, for parents to have children who are sufficiently hardy in constitution to live under fair auspices but who have to die because their parents and Natures Secrets. 53 the Doctors whom they employ do not know enough to keep them alive; but it is in my view, a much more enormous sin to give to children so feeble vitality that they cannot live. This is in its inception and in its conclusion so heartless a transaction, as to demand the severest censure. Did it not generally or- iginate in desires quite selfish and in gratifications mainly lustrul, one might pity the ignorance that produces such dire results ; but as it is, when children are begotten under prompt- ings of mere animal passion, and born so feeble that they must die, or if they live, suffer death twice told, one does no} feel much like pitying, but more like rejoicing that God is true to the great law of the ' Fitness of Things.' ****** **** " Of late, public attention has been called, by certain Physi- cians, Editors and Clergymen, to the crime of abortion. They claim that the practice of procuring loss of Embryo is quite common amongst American-born women who are married. This practice they characterize as highly immoral, and they appeal to the moral sense of such women as indulge in it henceforth to cease till and carry on a farm, the owner of which had gone to Ohio. The season proved favorable, abundant harvests rewarded their labors, and after the last fruits had been gathered they both felt like congratu- lating themselves upon their success. No person lived upon the farm, but as the neighborhood enjoyed an excellent reputa- tion for honesty, the crops were considered safe, stored in the barn and granary. When winter came, according to Yankee custom, the wheat was threshed, put into a box and securely locked, the deacon remarking as he took the key that if there were any thieves about the lock would not be likely to deter them. Subsequently, every time he met his partner he ex- pressed a fear that some one would come and steal their wheat. But his partner had no such fears, and thus the matter rested. Daily the good deacon visited the farm and examined the box to make sure that it was all right. One day, to his aston- ishment, he discovered that several bushels had been taken away, yet the box was securely locked, and no evidence of any violence having been used. Straightway he hurried to his partner, and upon consultation it was decided that they would take turns watching by night until the wheat could be removed, which would be in a few days. So that night, the deacon watched, but no thief made his appearance. Next night his partner watched, and lo, the deacon came, unlocked the box, took out a sack of wheat, and proceeded very cau- 124 Natures Secrete. tiously into the barn floor ; here he raised a plank and de- posited the sack. His partner had discovered at the outset that the deacon was in a somnambulic state, and so did not interfere. The deacon removed several other sacks, then re- placed the plank, relocked the box and went home. This case alone, although thousands might be cited, es- tablishes the fact that the muscles may be made to act in obedience to the involuntary control of the mind, as well as the voluntary. Here was the good deacon greatly exercised in his mind lest their wheat would be stolen. This was a voluntary action; when he fell asleep that is, the voluntary faculties took a rest the involuntary had the field all to them- selves. If they could have spoken, I fancy the speech would have been something like this: " Let us make the deacon go and hide that wheat, so that it will not be stolen." No quicker said than done; without rousing the voluntary forces, the involuntary marched him off and worked him as long as they dared, for fear that the voluntary might wake up and catch them at it, and thus removed a portion the first night. The second night the deacon watched, the voluntary were kept awake, and so the involuntary were unable to get control. Next night, however, they came into power, the deacon was caught, and the missing wheat all found under the barn floor. Now, no one will deny the phenomena of somnambulism, yet it is far more wonderful than the involuntary action of the various functions which are employed in forming a fcetal child. Then why deny these antenatal influences ? I think I have proved their existence, both by the logic of events and by logical deduction. Natures Secrets. 125 CHAPTER SHALL PEOPLE DRUG, OR DIET? OPINIONS OF LEARNED PRO- CESSORS REGARDING MEDICINE. I come next to one of the most important considera- tions connected with generation, namely, the diet. I have already dropped some hints upon the subject, but shall now discuss it more in detail. Were you to make a lever of soft pine, instead of hickory, you would not be surprised at its breaking easily; yet, knowing as you do, that your bodies are made of the food that you eat, you often appear surprised that they become so easily diseased. The fact is there are too many people made from a " soft pine" material, and then they blame God, or the devil, or the doctor they don't know which for their diseased bodies. If people expect to be healthy and happy they must eat wholesome food. So, too, of the mother during gestation, the future welfare of her child depends greatly upon the quality of food eaten by the mother during both gestation and lactation. But there are so many who depend solely upon drug medication for health, foolishly imagining that no matter what they eat the doctor will be able, by the administra- tion of medicine, to correct all the wrongs and outrages against natural law as easily as an alkili will correct an acid. But doctors know better, and only laugh among themselves at the folly of the masses. To prove this (for I endeavor to prove my assertions), I need only to quote a few of the expressions let fall by the most emi- 126 Natures Secrets. nent physicians, the most gifted and learned teachers and practitioners, who, better than any one else, are qualified to testify upon the subject. Professor Alonzo Clark, M.D., of the New York Col- lege of Physicians and Surgeons, says: "All of our curative agents are poisons, and, as a consequence, every dose diminishes the vitality of the patient." This tells well for the tonics. Says Professor Joseph M. Smith, M. D., of the same school : ' ( All medicines which nter the circul ation poison the blood in the same manner as do the poisons that pro- duce disease." Says Professor St. John, of the N. Y. Medical Col- lege: " All medicines are poisonous." Says Professor H. G. Cox, M. D., of the same school: "The fewer remedies you employ in any disease the better for your patients." Says Prof. E. H. Davis, M.D., of the N. Y. Medical College: " The modus operandi of medicines is still a very obscure subject." Prof. J. W. Carson, M.D., of the N. Y. University Medical School, says: "We do not know whether our patients recover because we give medicine, or because Nature cures them." Prof. Joseph M. Smith, M.D., gives testimony again, and says that " Drugs do not cure disease; disease is always cured by the vis medicatrix natures " the healing forces of Nature. The venerable Alex. H. Stevens, M.D., of the N. Y. College of Physicians and Surgeons, says: "The older physicians grow the more skeptical they become of the virtues of medicine, and the more they are disposed to trust to the powers of natnre." Says Prof. C. A. Oilman, M. D., of the same school: ' ' Blisters nearly always produce death when applied to Natures Secrets. 127 children." Again: " I' give mercury to children when I wish to depress the powers of life." And again: " The application of opium to the true skin of an infant is very likely to produce death." And yet again : " A single drop of laudanum will often destroy the life of an in- fant." And once more: " Four grains of calomel will often kill an adult;" and finally, " A mild mercurial course, and mildly cutting a man's throat, are synonymous terms." Says Prof. Horace Green, M.D., of the N. Y. Medical College: " The confidence you have in medicine will be dissipated by experience in treating diseases." Prof. H. G-. Cox again testifies. He says: "There is much truth in the statement of Dr. Hughes Bennett, that blood-letting is always injurious and NEVEB NECES- SARY, and I am inclined to think it entirely correct." Again: "Bleeding in pneumonia doubles the mortality." And again: " Mercury is a sheet-anchor in fevers* but it is an anchor that moors your patient to the grave." Says Prof. B. F. Barker, M.D., of the same school: " The drugs which are administered for the cure of scarlet fever and measles kill far more than those dis- eases do. I have recently given no medicine in their treatment, and have had excellent success." Again: " 1 have known several ladies become habitual drunkards, the primary cause being a taste for stimulants, which was acquired in consequence of alcoholic drink being administered to them as medicine." And again: "In- stead of investigating for themselves, medical authors have copied the errors of their predecessors, and have thus retarded the progress of medical science." Dr. Baile, of London, says: " I have no faith whatever in medicine.'' Prof. Evans, fellow of the Koyal College of London, says: " The medical practice of our day is, at the best, 1 28 Natures Secrets. a most uncertain and unsatisfactory system; it has neither philosophy nor common sense to commend it to confidence." Says Prof. Gregory, of Edinburg, author of a work on theory and practice of physic: " Gentlemen, ninety- nine out of every hundred medical facts are medical lies; and medical doctrines are, for the most part, stark, staring nonsense !\ John Abernethy, M.D., of London, says, in his works: " There has been a great increase of medical men of late, but, upon my life, diseases have increased in pro- portion." Prof. Jamieson, of Edinburg, testifies as follows : c< The present practice of medicine is a reproach to the name of science, while its professors give evidence of an al- most total ignorance of the nature and proper treatment of disease. Nine times out of ten our miscalled remedies are absolutely injurious to our patients, suffering under diseases of whose real character and cause we are most culpably ignorant/' Listen to the following, from a high source: " As- suredly the most uncertain and unsatisfactory art, that we call medical science, is no science at all, but a jumble of inconsistent opinions, of conclusions hastily and often incorrectly drawn, of facts misunderstood or per- verted, of comparisons without analogy, of hypotheses without reason, and theories not only useless but danger- ous." Dublin Medical Journal. And this: " Some patients get well with the aid of medicine, more without it, and still more in spite of it." Sir John Forbes, M.D., F.K.S. Hear the great doctor: " The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon, and the effect of our medicines on the human system in the highest degree uncertain, except, indeed, that they have destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and famine combined." John Mason Good, Nature's Secret^ 129 M.D., F.R.S., author of "Book of Nature," " A Sys- tem of Nosology," " Study of Medicine," etc. Hear another: " I declare, as iny conscientious con- viction, founded 011 long experience and reflection, that if there were not a single physician, surgeon, man mid- wife, chemist, apothecary, druggist, nor drug, on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality than now prevail." James Johnson, M.D., F.E.S., editor of the Medico-Chirurgical Review. The National Medical Convention that was held in St. Louis, Mo., a few years ago, deliberately adopted the following confession: "It is wholly incontestable that there exists a wide-spread dissatisfaction with what is called the regular old Allopathic system of medical practice. Multitudes of people in this country and in Europe express an utter want of confidence in physicians and their physic. The cause is evident: erroneous theory, and, springing from it, injurious, often, very often, fatal practice. Nothing will now subserve the absolute requi- sitions of an in+elligent community but a medical doc- trine grounded upon right reason in harmony with and vouched by the unerring laws of Nature and of the vital organism, and authenticated and confirmed by successful results." Dr. T. W. Davenport, of Marion County, Oregon, of whom Prof. Chaney says : ' ' I consider Dr. Davenport the most deeply learned in science and philosophy of any man that I have met on this coast," having regu- larly graduated in a medical college, turned his back on his Alma Mater, and having been invited to deliver the annual add: ess before the " Oregon and Washington Health Reform Association," in 1868, after summing up the foregoing quotations, remarks: " To conclude these extracts, which are not a tithe of what might be furnished, I will give the testimony of 130 Natures Secrets. one in whom I could place the most implicit confidence; one whose candor, patience, sagacity, learning and ex- perience entitled him to the highest consideration. He was a graduate of the Medical College at Pittsfield, Mass.; was admitted to practice by the N. Y. State Board of Examination, and continued in the practice of his profession, most of the time in the "Western States, for a period of thirty-five years. As a physician and accoucher, I am now satisfied I never saw his superior. He said, ' I commenced practice with the never-to-be- forgotten lancet, and my saddle-bags stored with a pretty good assortment of our Materia Medica. Before ten years had passed the pill- bags were permanently emptied of tonics and specifics, and the lancet's edge was rusty from idleness. Another ten had not passed, when the lancet and bags were things of the past, and a small vest pocket could carry more than was really for the benefit of mankind. My brother Allopaths called me the do-nothing doctor, and I must say there is much truth in the epithet, as I have lost all confidence in our system of medicine. I tell the people that medicine never cured anybody, and that my success is to be attributed to the employment of Hygienic means.' " This was Dr. Benjamin Davenport, called by the people ' the poor man's friend.' Now, if you have pondered earnestly the extracts just read in your hear- ing, and have not come to the conclusion that our learned opponents have committed suicide a score of times in those confessions, you are, at least, ready to go into an impartial discussion of the foundation truths upon which all medical science must rest. I propose to follow the inductive method, and shall recall to your mind some of the most obvious and essential points of anatomy and physiology, and for the sake of brevity shall be obliged Nature's Secrets. 131 to assume many things, but only such as our adversaries havo taught and therefore will not deny." The " Dr. Benjamin Davenport/' here alluded to, was the father of the speaker, well known and most deeply beloved throughout Oregon. His son fails to do justice to the skill, the learning, and the many virtues of the father in the modest compliment which he pays l^im, yet in his own life, grand, noble, and generous, he proves himself worthy to be the son of so good and true a man. I shall have occasion to make further quotations from Dr. T. W. *Daveuport, and although he was not disposed to swell the list of extracts from the sayings of eminent physicians, I am inclined to do so. An American student in Paris sends to the Medical Gazette the following, extracted from the opening of a lecture by Prof! Majendie, the celebrated French physi- cian and physiologist: " Gentlemen, medicine is a great humbug. I know it is called a science. Science, in- deed! It is nothing like science. Doctors are mere empirics, when they are not charlatans. "We are as ignorant as men can be. Who, in the world, knows anything about medicine ? Gentlemen, you have done me the honor to come here to attend my lectures, and I must tell you frankly now, in the beginning, that I know nothing in the world about medicine, and I don't know anybody who does know anything about it. ' ' But do not think for a moment that I have not read the bills advertising a course of lectures at the medical schools. I know that this man teaches anatomy; that man teaches pathology; another man teaches physiology; such a one therapeutics; such another materia medica. Eh bien et apnes. "What's known about all that ? Why, gentlemen, at the school of Montpelier (God knows it was famous enough in its day,) they discarded the study of anatomy and taught nothing but the dispensary; yet 132 Natures Secrets. doctors educated there knew just as much, and were quite as successful as any others. I repeat it, nobody knows anything about medicine. " True enough, we are gathering facts every day. We can produce typhus fever, for example, by injecting cer- tain substances into the veins of a dog. That is some- thing. . "We can alleviate Diabetes, and I see distinctly that we are approaching the day when phthisis can be cured as easy as any disease. We are collating facts in the right spirit, and I dare say, in a century or so the accumulation of facts may enable our successors to form a medical science. But I repeat to you, in this day there is no such thing as medical science. " Who can tell me how to cure the headache, or gout, or disease of the heart? Nobody! * O/ you tell me, ' doctors cure people.' I grant you that people are cured, but how are they cured ? Gentlemen, Nature does a great deal, and so does the imagination; doctors do but devilish little, when they don't do harm! Let me tell you, gentlemen, what I did when I was head physi- cian at the Hotel Dieu: " Some three or four thousand passed through my hands every year. I divided the patients into two classes; with one I followed the dispensary and gave them the usual medicines without having the least idea why or wherefore. To the others I gave bread pills and colored water, without, of course, letting them know anything about it. Occasionally I would create a third division, to whom I gave nothing whatever. These last would fret a great deal and feel that they were neglected. Sick people always feel that they are neglected, unless they are well drugged, les imbeciles, and they would irritate themselves until they got really sick. But Na- ture invariably came to the rescue, and all the persons in the third class got well. There was a little mortality Nature's Secrets. 133 among those who received bread pills and colored water, but the mortality was greatest among those who were carefully drugged according to the dispensary." Majendie was a great man in the profession of medi- cine, and could therefore speak out plainly what the ordinary Professor dare not say. What he said of medicine, however, all within the profession feel to be unfortunately and lamentably true. Medicine has never been raised to a practical and trustworthy science, and is, doubtless, as Majendie declares, a " humbug." Tak- ing leave of the learned Frenchman, let us see what a critic has said, by way of showing his estimate of the practice of medicine in former times : 11 For nothing equals the frightful evils which were inflicted upon mankind by the former practice of medi- cine. This fatal ' art,' as you call it, which for centuries has enjoyed the power to arbitrarily decide on life and death, destroys ten times more than the most murderous wars, and makes millions of others infinitely greater sufferers than they were at first." Dr. Skey, senior surgeon at St. Bartholomew's Hos- pital, and lecturer on anatomy at the School of Medi- cine, speaking to his pupils, says: " If the science of medicine was a certain and exact science, there could be no difficulty in determining, if not the most appropriate agent of cure, at least the most appropriate principle. But no argument can be more conclusive in favor of its great uncertainty, and of the inconclusiveness of medi- cal reasoning, than the fact that this one disease ery- sipelas is deemed amenable to one form of remedy by one class of practitioners, and to the direct opposite by another class. If one of these remedies be good the other must be bad, for their properties are in direct antagonism. Unhappily for the cause of truth, this or that form of treatment is not for the most part the result 134 Natures Secrets. of observation, but ih& offspring of faith faith in the authority and dicta of others. It appears to me that we have reached an era when there must be a crisis in medical opinions. Authorities, whether in person or in the form of writings, are infinitely various and antago- nistic, and yet there is no health in us which is not be- gotten by observation and experiment." Sir John Forbes, physician royal, says: " All well- informed and experienced members of the medical pro- fession are painfully aware of the great imperfections of their art, and of its inadequacy to fulfil, in a satisfactory manner, much that it professes to accomplish." Dr. Pereira, the greatest authority on Materia Medica in the English Schools of Medicine, agreed with Sir Gil- bert Elaine " that in many cases the patients get well in spite of the means employed, and sometimes when the practitioner fancies that he has made a great cure we may fairly assume that the patient has had a happy escape." Dr. James Johnson, physician to King William IV., remarks: " There is as much quackery in the profession as oid of it, and it is my conscientious opinion, founded on long observation and reflection, that if there was not a single surgeon, man-midwife, chemist or druggist on the face of the earth there would be less sickness and less mortality." Prof. Elliotson, in his " Principles of Medicine," says: " As respects this country, I cannot but think that if all the patients in Asiatic cholera had been left alone the mortality would have been much the same it has been." Sir Anthony Carlisle used to say: " Hospitals are in- stitutions in which medical education is perfected by murder! " . Dr. Billing, author of '-The Principles and Practice of Medicine," says: " I visited the different schools of Nature's Secrets. 135 medicine, and the students of each hinted, if they did not assert, that the other sects killed their patients " Dr. Frank says: " Thousands are slaughtered in the silent sick-room!" Dr. Reed says: "More infantile subjects are probably destroyed daily, by the pestle and mortar, than in ancient Bethlehem fell victims in one day to the Herodian massacre ." Dr. Madden says: " In all our cases we did as other doctors had done; we continued to bleed, and the patients continued to die." Sir Astley Cooper, England's greatest physician, gave it as his opinion " That the science of medicine is founded in conjecture and improved by murder!" A celebrated French physician, distinguished alike for both wisdom and wit, once said: "The science of medi- cine consists of pouring drugs, of which doctors know but little, into stomachs of which they know less." Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the first who called Bos- ton " the hub of the universe," distinguished among the best writers of the present age, says: " It would be a blessing to the human family if all the medicine in the world were thrown into the ocean, though it might be a damage to the fishes. >} Thirty years ago, Thomas B. Hazzard met at a water- ing place three of the most celebrated physicians in America, namely, Dr. Faugh, of Quebec, who stood at the head of his profession in Canada; Dr. James, the leading physician of Albany, and Dr. Francis, the first physician in New York City. They were old and ex- perienced, and all had retired with a competency. They were men of sound judgment, and their opinions were greatly respected, yet they agreed unanimously in this conclusion: *' The medical profession may be wholly 136 Natures Secrets* abandoned without detracting from the arerage health and longevity of the human race." Prof. Pancoast, of Jefferson College, Philadelphia, says: " I have discarded the cumbersome remedial agents of the dispensary by reducing them to fifteen in my practice, and consider five of the fifteen little better than useless." I might swell this list of quotations, but think that I have given enough to prove that the practice of medi- cine, as it has long existed, and as it exists to-day, can- not be properly called a " science," for science means a knowledge of facts and forces. Pain is not only a "fact/* but generally a painful fact; for instance, tic doloreau, neuralgia, rheumatism, etc. But in the practice of medi- cine there is neither knowledge nor fact, to be relied upon in all cases, for removing those pains. The great Napoleon was near the truth when he declared that " the physician is always in the dark, and the practice of medicine but little better than guesswork." Napoleon might not have been a physician, but he had more brains than any man in Europe, in his day, as their weight showed after his death. "What I have said about allopathic doctors will not apply to allopathic surgeons. The educated, scientific surgeon is a necessity, whereas even an ignoramus might administer poisonous drugs, and kill just as effectually, although perhaps not quite so scientifically. From the moment of our birth till the time arrives for putting us in bur coffins we are incessantly poisoned . The circular of the Society of Druggists of the city of New York declares that the prescribed dose of Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup contains nine grains of opium/ Is this a mother's blessing? If so, it is still the baby's curse. Mothers, as you value the physical and intellectual lives of your infants, refuse to poison them with this deadly Natures Secrets. 137 anodyne. Study and obey Nature's Taws, and yon have no occasion for soothing syrups; or, if you must use an anodyne, which I dispute, then obtain Hoffman's, but avoid Mrs. Winslow's deadly nostrum as you would the bite of a cobra. In quoting this long list of extracts I have not been actuated by a desire to disparage the medical profession, nor to defame those who practice the art of healing. My only motive has been to convince the reader that the practice of medicine cannot be ranked even as an ap- proximate science, much less among the exact sciences. It has been fostered and kept in existence solely by the ignorance of the masses, and is annually slaying its thousands unnecessarily. Mankind seem to be held as if by a spell, looking to the physician as though he had the power to restore them to health, regardless of how persistently or how long they have been living in violation of the laws of their being. To break this spell, to rescue man from barbarism, and to point him to the true savior, I am writing this book. To prove its necessity, and to illus- trate the depraved appetites that exist, I quote the case of Kev. Mr. Lloyd, an English divine, whose butler assured me that when the parson was invited out to dine it was his custom to eat a quarter of roast lamb, weigh- ing ten pounds, before going, in order to conceal the fact of his awful gluttony. I have made quotations from many of the most emi- nent physicians that have ever lived, in order to con- vince my readers that the more a man learns about the practice of medicine the less confidence he will have in it. If I have succeeded in converting the reader to this opinion, then he is in a proper state of mind to heed the advice I am about to grve, which, though prepared for patients in general, will be found of great value ta 138 Natures Secrets* women during gestation. These directions have been published in the form of a large handbill, under the heading, " DR. J. H. RUTTLEY'S DIETETIC AND HYGIENIC RULES FOE HIS PATIENTS ": THE CAUSES OF DISEASE are multitudinous. If the de- velopment theory is correct the muscular system of our race must have been the result of millions of years of action, and from the inherited idiosyncrasies and eccen- tricities, etc., of our remote ancestry, and our present ignorance of physiological and antenatal laws, may we trace, as in lines of blood, the cause of diseases of body and mind; and hence, it is the first moral and religious duty of all sick persons to ascertain what injurious habits and employments have caused their sufferings, and im- mediately change or correct them . THE REMEDIAL AGENTS OF NATURE are dress, food, water, air, light, electricity, magnetism and empyria, a force we find upon the very summit of the grand structure of positive and negative nervous forces, and medicines as used by the various schools, however good and useful in cutaneous diseases, will not reconcile injurious employ- ments or bad physiological habits with health. History and science demonstrate that it will always be useless to attempt to cure any disease without the most careful attention to diet and all the laws of health. To INSUBE A CURE. Dr. Ruttley earnestly solicits all who consult him professionally, all who use his medi- cines and mode of Nature-a-pathic treatment, to observe all the following rules of diet, etc., as long as they remain under his professional charge, otherwise he will not consider himself responsible for their cure. STIMULANTS AND NARCOTICS. Carefully avoid the use of all narcotic poisons, such as opium and tobacco. Tobacco is the second strongest poison in the world, and is a fruitful source of paralysis, etc., and all stimulants, Natures Secrets. 139 such as rum, tea and coffee, as well as all vinous and fermented liquors, the use of which is a fruitful cause of vertigo, or dizziness of the head, palpitation of the heart, weakness of the stomach, brain, nerves, etc. How TO COOK FOOD. Almost any kind of food may be rendered comparatively wholesome by skillful cooking. It is an old Spanish aphorism, that nature has provided for mankind the greatest variety and abundance of wholesome food. Ignorance, ever intent on mischief, has sent into the world plenty of miserable cooks to spoil it all. Miserable cookery has killed more than war, pestilence and famine. WHEN TO EAT. Never eat when fatigued or exhausted; drink only a little gruel, and wait until rested. The brain aids in digesting our food, and when exhausted by excitement, or by over intellectual or physical employ- ment, cannot digest anything until rested. Never eat anything between meals; give the stomach time to rest, especially when weak and debilitated; frequent eating by invalids, and frequent nursing by infants, weaken the stomach and liver, and bring on dyspepsia and other kindred diseases depending on imperfect digestion. How TO EAT. Eat very slowly. Our food may be half digested while in the mouth. Kapid eating is one of the curses of our civilization, and produces a fearful amount of indigestion and diseases of the stomach and liver, vertigo, headache, neuralgia, nervous debility, palpitation of the heart, spinal irritation, rheumatism, premature decay and old age. No invalid can make stomach bitters chew his food. Perhaps nothing is more prejudicial to the proper assimilation of food than disputation. The mind becomes irritated, and instan- taneously the stomach sympathizes. A dinner table is the worst possible place for an argument which may easily become heated and acrimonious. Nor should it 140 Natures Secreis* be a place where children are constantly reproved, or their bad conduct suffered to destroy the comfort of the meal. Discipline in the household is highly necessary, but the wise mother will not make it a prominent feature at the table. Good news, happy thoughts, innocent mirth and cheerful sayings are the most efficacious relishes, and should be used freely. An uncomfortable meal, whatever may be the cause, is almost certain to produce indigestion. And though such small matters may be thought by many unimportant, they go very far toward the establishment of good health, and even the most robust cannot neglect them with impunity. THE KIND OF FLOUR TO MAKE GOOD BREAD. The out- side part of all grain contains the phosphates and the nitrates, or all the brain, muscle and bone-forming materials, while the central portion of the kernel is composed of starch or fat-forming matter only, conse- quently no animal can live in a state of health on fine flour alone. A calf, if fed on fine flour alone, will die in less than a month. "Wheat, corn, rye, barley, etc., should be ground fine, and then only the outside husks and hulls should be removed by a course sieve. A fine flour-bolt was an ignorant invention, that has produced a most fearful destruction of happiness and human health. BREAD, How TO MAKE. Good "bread is the staff of life." The best bread is made of wheat, rye, barley, corn and oatmeal flour, and without yeast, in the follow- ing way: UNFERMENTED BREAD. About fourteen per cent, of the nutriment of all flour is destroyed by the process of fermentation in making yeast bread. To make the best unfermented bread the basins must be made of cast iron, and twelve of these, small size, may be cast to- gether, being connected together at the rim. Put the Natures Secrets. 141 clean, empty pans in the oven and heat the stove or oven hot, so that it is in a good condition to bake quickly. Mix your flour with cold water, and a pinch of salt, so the dough will drop out *of the spoon. Remove the hot basins from the oven, and after greasing them, drop the dough out of the spoon, and fill two-thirds full; put them into the hot oven and bake quickly and thoroughly. FERMENTED BREAD. Mix your flour with good sweet hop-yeast and. cold water; knead thoroughly. The best French bread is kneaded four hours, made into small loaves, and baked on the bottom of the oven. The loaf should not be more than two inches thick, and baked in an oven moderately heated, until it is well done and nicely browned. In fact, the more thoroughly it J baked the sweeter and more digestible it will become, since the crust is always the sweetest part. WHAT MEAT TO EAT. Beef is the most nourishing of all kinds of meat; it contains iron, in its highest perfec- tion, and when skillfully cooked is the most wholesome. Inferior beef may be made digestible and wholesome by skillful cooking. Wipe clean and drop it into a kettle of boiling water for ten minutes. This will coagulate the albumen, and form a coating on the surface to retain all its saline matter and nutritive juices. Then add sufficient cold water to arrest the boiling, and set the kettle or pot on the back part of the range. Let the beef remain in the hot water, reduced twenty degrees below the boiling point, until it becomes very tender, or for three or four hours. If broiled or roasted the less it is cooked the better. Haw beef might cure scrofula and consumption, while fried beef will kill an ostrich. BEEF TEA. Take one pound of nice tender stake, re- move the fat, chop very fine, and add one pint of cold water, stir and soak one hour. Boil ten minutes, then 142 Natures Secrets. strain and season with salt to suit the taste. May be eaten by invalids suffering from extreme exhaustion and great debility of the digestive organs. WHAT VEGETABLES TO* EAT. Healthy people may eat vegetables freely, but it is quite notorious that they are less digestable than good bread, often causing flatulency and indigestion, especially among children and old peo- ple; in fact, they become laxative by virtue of their mechanical irritation and stimulation, which they pro- duce upon the mucous membrane and the intestinal canal. Peas; beans, rice, etc., are very nutricious, and should be eaten sparingly, if at all, by those who have diseases of the stomach and liver. Ho WTO COOK VEGETABLES. Oatmeal, cornmeal, rye and wheat, when made into mush, should be thoroughly cooked, or they will not agree with dyspeptics. Rice, potatoes, peas and beans should be boiled, and never fried or soaked in grease. WHAT FRUIT TO EAT. Eaw fruit is wholesome for healthy people, but does not agree with dyspeptics, or those who have diseases of the stomach and liver, causing acidity, flatulency and indigestion. When cooked plain, and without much sugar, may be used sparingly, except in cases of great irritability of the stomach, when every article of the kind must be carefully avoided. The sub- acid fruits are the most wholesome. WHAT AND WHEN TO DRINK. 'Drink nothing at meals. When the meal is finished an invalid may drink a little warm milk and water, and in some cases a little black tea, steeped only ten minutes and poured from the grounds. Tea and coffee are rendered more injurious by steeping too long; the peculiar stimulating qualities are extracted the first ten minutes, and then the bitter extractive and tannin, which are so constipating. Let the invalid dip the polished blade of a table knife into a Natures Secrets. 143 cup of tea or coffee that has been steeped half an hour, and he will know why they should not drink it, unless they wish that the mucous membrane lining their stomachs and bowels should resemble the leather of their old shoes. "WHAT FOOD TO AVOID. Eat no bread or cakes of any kind soaked, fried or baked in grease of any kind, such as corncakes, pancakes, doughnuts, etc., and all bread and sweet cakes composed of lard, butter, sugar, spices, etc., and all pastry, the crust of which is filled with grease, and fit only for the stomach of an ostrich or a gourmand. Eat no pork or sausages, nor any fat of beef or mutton, and cabbage only twice a year. The use of such food causes irritability of the stomach, shortness of the breath, flatulency, headaches, bilious attacks, vio- lent palpitation of the heart, paralysis, apoplexy, etc. SUGAR AND SWEETMEATS. Sugar and sweetmeats of every description are among the most unwholesome and indigestible of all kinds of food, and should be care- fully avoided by all invalids having an irritable stomach or liver, with a tendency to flatulency and acidity, or to diseases of the kidneys, rheumatism, etc. Very great distress in infancy with irritability and restlessness, is produced by too free use of sugar in the food prepared for children. EXERCISE FOR INVALIDS. After eating, exercise gently in the open air, or engage in light, pleasing conversation. Over-exertion, hard labor, strong mental excitement, especially soon after eating, will exhaust the brain, weaken the nerves of the stomach, and bring on the severest attacks of dyspepsia. Light out-door employ- ments are the best for invalids with weak and irritable stomachs. Exercise is the most beneficial when taken on an empty stomach. Short walks, often repeated, are the best for all persons in delicate health. Keep out in 144 Natures Secrets. the open air and in the sun; keep away from the lounge or bed, except at night for sleep. All invalids or old people, when they lie down much in the daytime, gen- erally live but a short time. Keep moving as long as you can. Nature's activities are incessant; let us all imitate and follow nature. BATHING AND FRICTION. " Cleanliness is next to God- liness." Wet a towel in tepid water and wash the skin all over daily, using a little castile soap only about the flexions of the joints. Two minutes only is required in applying the water, then use a dry towel briskly for two minutes, and then your own hands, or those of some friend, two minutes. Six minutes thus spent will save much suffering and heavy doctor bills. If quite feeble, do this in a warm room at 10 A. M. , otherwise at any time. DRY BATHING AND RUBBING, Passive exercise is very important for all invalids so feeble as to be confined to the house. Rub the skin all over twice a day night and morning with a coarse towel, especially along the spine, and over the seat of the pain or uneasiness, for the nerves of the skin sympathize with all the internal organs. Always finish with the hand, which is adapted by nature to impart health and strength in all cases of chronic diseases of long standing. CLOTHING. Wear your clothing warm and loose over all parts of the boiy, and more especially the extremi- ties. Arms, legs and feet should be well protected with warm clothing. It is estimated that at least one-sixth of all those children who perish under one year of age, die of diseases produced by want of sufficient clothing. Children require more clothing to preserve health than grown people. Bare arms and legs, with low neck dresses in infancy, are only a species of cruelty and wickedness, practised by those mothers who do not un-^ derstand that they are killing their offspring. Natures Secrets. 145 LADIES' DRESS. Ladies, especially, should wear their dresses loose around the waist, and short- waisted, and with short straps or waists upon their underclothing, raising up the binding of skirts close under the breasts, completely supporting the whole weight upon the shoul- ders, allowing no weight to press upon the spine, abdo- men or hips. Tight-lacing and neglect of the above simple rules is a frigh.ful source of pain in the side, pro- lapsus uteri, and dragging-down sensation when walking or standing. SLEEP. Sleep in a large well-ventilated room, with an open fire-place if possible. Husband and wife should always occupy separate beds in connecting rooms. Sleeping in the same bed is one fruitful source of divorce, Young people should never sleep with old people. If the invalid is confined to the bed or house, the sick room should be well lighted, and the blinds and curtains removed. All animals living in a state of na- ture, when sick, instinctively seek the sunlight. Human beings should imitate them; always live on the sunny side of the street. SUNLIGHT. The red coloring matter of the blood of animals, and the green coloring matter of the leaves of plants, the perfume of the flowers, and the delicious flavor of all fruits can only be elaborated by the golden rays of sunlight. We are all sons and daughters of the sun, and should be much exposed to our Father's be- nign heat. Dark rooms impoverish the blood, causing scrofula and consumption, and are fatal to all invalids. POSITION. Avoid carefully the stooping position, either sitting or standing, as it will soon round the shoulders, narrow the chest, weaken the lungs and stomach, causing debility and deformity. Learn to sit, stand and walk erect " blessed is the upright man" that every move- ment may be instinctive with grace and beauty. If 146 Natures Secrets. troubled with cold, damp feet, wash them with cold water and salt, at bed-time, and after wiping dry rub them thoroughly with a dry, coarse towel, and finish with the application of the hand. ALWAYS BE CHEERFUL. "A merry heart doeth good like medicine, but a broken spirit dryeth up the bones." Every invalid must cultivate a cheerful disposition. A sorrowful, morose, fretful mind, absolutely neutralizes all remedial agents, and drives away heavenly influences. Let invalids be firm and determined, and they well get well, for "the gods help those who help themselves," is a Grecian aphorism. THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP. "Man is of the earth, earthy," God, our Father, the positive, the earth, our mother the negative. The earth commences to sleep at 12, meridian, attaining its greatest density, or most profound sleep, be- tween 9 and 12 P.M. Man to-day is but a child, and as children sleep best with their mothers when young, should always (urgent business excepted) retire at 9 o'clock, P. M., and rise at 5 or 6, A. M. Thousands have filled premature graves by neglecting ' ' early to bed and early to rise." ADDENDUM. When religion, law, science and philoso- phy shall be sufficiently expanded and enlightened to admit that " whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap," (for it is a demonstrable fact in the divine science of God's laws during utero-gestation and lactation,) together with the planets ruling at this period, form the sickness or health, the happiness or misery, the virtue or vice of our race, and make the poet, the warrior, the statesman, the politician, the divine, the successful financier, the murderer, the robber, the atheist, and the religionist. When mankind have learned these facts, an. I learned to regulate their lives accordingly, then, and then only, may we expect to see the race attaining to Natures Secrets. 47 that high standard of physical, intellectual, moral and spiritual excellence to which it is privileged by nature. Parents daguerreotype their own inmost thoughts and secret actions in the lives of their children, and by this law can we read the most secret actions that otherwise would be beyond human ken. None but the perfectly pure and healthy should become parents. Parentage is the most solemn and sacred of all things on earth, and the least understood of all of God's laws. WHAT is HEALTHY FOOD. The following chemical analysis shows the composition of several of the most common articles of food generally used, and also the time in which they are digested : Water. Albumen Cassin Fats and Sugar and Time to Digest. Fiberine.etc. Oils. Starch. Hours. Minutes Milk 870 47 35 48 2 15 Wheat Bread 125 130 220 150 13 60 642 660 3-30 3 15 Rice 90 140 12 758 1 00 Beans 130 250 30 590 2 30 Potatoes 790 15 30 192 3 00 Turnips 830 10 2 158 3 00 Cabbage 850 8 2 140 4. 30 E^gs . 7*5 193 82 3 30 Beef 650 225 125 3 00 Veal 680 205 115 4 30 Fork CH 260 80 660 5 15 Sometimes it is found necessary to bring up a child on cow's milk. Whenever this is the case there are certain conditions to be observed, else the milk may prove poisonous. First, then, the milk should be from one cow only, and never mix together the milk of two or more cows to give your child. You should also be sure that the cow has wholesome food and drink and is kindly cared for. Under no circumstances should the milk be given to the child if the cow has been misused, beaten or irritated. Nor should she be hurriedly driven to or from the pasture, since the heating of her blood affects 148 Natures Secrets. the milk; and there have been cases where disease han been caused by a boy running the cow, or dogging her, from the pasture to the stable, which has resulted in death in a few hours. Sometimes it is- observed that men sit down to a meal in perfect good nature, but rise from the table cross, angry, and ready for a fight. It is the food which has caused this change of conditions, and among the fruit- ful sources may be mentioned beef. Cattle are smothered into densely packed cars, while being taken to market, deprived of food and water, hurried to the slaughter- house, often beaten and worried until they become per- fectly furious. All the nerves and fluids are affected in sympathy until even the whole muscular system has been permeated with rage. Slaughtered in this condition the "spirit" of combativeness remains, and whoever eats the meat catches the influence just as surely as he would catch a disease from eating diseased meat. Let the reader bear these things in mind and avoid being poi- soned, either physically or mentally. The liver and panereas form a large amount of alka- line fluid, which is poured into the intestinal canal, six or seven inches below the stomach, and is designed to digest the starch, sugar and fat of our fo