The diet expert, the hydropath, the physical culturist, the adjuster of the spine, the mental healer, and Christian scientist, do not pay much attention to the pathological conditions or to the symptoms of disease.  They regulate the diet and habits of living on a natural basis, promote elimination, teach correct breathing and wholesome exercise, correct the mechanical lesions of the spine, establish the right mental and emotional attitude and, in so far as they succeed in doing this, they build health and diminish the possibility of disease.  The successful doctor of the future will have to fall in line with the procession and do more teaching than prescribing.

I realize that many of the statements and claims made in this volume will seem radical and irrational to my colleagues of the regular school of medicine.  They win say that most of my teachings are contrary to the firmly established theories of medical science.  All I ask, of them is not to judge too hastily; to observe, to think and to test, and I am certain that they will find verified in actual experience many of the teachings of the Nature Cure Philosophy.  Medical science has had to abandon innumerable theories and practices which at one time were as firmly established as some of the pet theories of today.

By none of the statements made in this book do I mean to deny the necessity of combative methods under certain circumstances.  What I wish to emphasize is that the regular school of medicine is spending too much of its effort along combative lines and not enough along preventive.  It would be foolish to deny the necessity of surgery in traumatism, and in abnormal conditions which require mechanical means of adjustment or treatment.

Such necessity, for instance, will exist in certain obstetrical cases, as long as women have not learned, or are not willing to live in such a way as to make surgical intervention unnecessary in child-birth.  The same is true with regard to the treatment of germ diseases.  As long as people persist in violating the laws of their being, and thereby making their bodies prolific breeding grounds for disease taints, germs and parasites which are bound to provoke inflammatory, feverish processes (Nature’s cleansing and healing efforts), combative measures will have to be resorted to by the physician, and precautionary measures against infection will have to be observed, but these should be in harmony with Nature’s endeavors, not contrary and suppressive; they should tend to conserve and not to destroy.

Natural dietetics, fasting, hydropathy, osteopathy, chiropractic, and mental therapeutics, are combative as well as preventive, but if properly applied they do not in any way injure the organism or interfere with Nature’s intent and Nature’s methods.  This cannot be said for much of the surgical and medical treatment of the old school of medicine.  We criticize and condemn only those methods which are suppressive and destructive instead of curative.