Since Dr. E. so strongly questions the efficacy of our methods, I may be permitted to say something about my own professional experience.

Nature Cure in America

During the last ten years, I have treated and cured all kinds of serious acute diseases without resorting to allopathic drugs.  In a very extensive practice, I have not in all these years lost a single case of appendicitis (and not one of them was operated upon), of typhoid fever, diphtheria, smallpox, scarlet fever, etc., and only one case of cerebro-spinal meningitis and of lobar pneumonia.  These facts may be verified from the records of the Health Department of the City of Chicago.

After the foregoing statements, I leave it to my readers to judge whether the Nature Cure philosophy is inspired by blind fanaticism and based upon ignorance and inexperience, or whether it is justified in the light of scientific facts advanced by the Regular School of Medicine itself and demonstrated by the wonderful success of the Nature Cure movement in Germany, which in its different forms has attained world-wide recognition and adoption.

There is a popular saying:  “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”  The following letter will explain itself: 

January 20, 1913.

Dear Dr. Lindlahr:—­

You may remember that last winter, Mrs. White and I attended your Sunday afternoon lectures in the Schiller Building.  Those lectures were an education—­I might better say a revelation and an inspiration.

On the 11th of November last, our boy, aged thirteen years, was taken ill with diphtheria.  I called at your office and asked your advice.  You replied:  “You know what to do—­wet packs, no food except fruit juices, osteopathic treatment and no antitoxin.”

We called an osteopathic physician, who at once sent a specimen from the boy’s throat to the city laboratory, where it was pronounced diphtheria.  A physician from the Board of Health came and quarantined us and inquired if we had used the antitoxin treatment.  When Mrs. White replied “No,” he said:  “I suppose you know that the percentage of deaths of those who do not have it is very high.”  She said:  “Yes, I know, but we do not intend to use it.”

The boy had all the acute symptoms, was drowsy, with headache, and on the second day his temperature went to 105 degrees.  We applied the wet body pack and by night had reduced his temperature to 100 degrees.  With the aid of the osteopathic treatment, which he had each night, the boy slept well all through big illness.  On the fifth day, the membrane spread from his throat to his nose, and his temperature rose again; but the wet body packs again reduced it so that it was never again over 100 degrees.

The boy was bright, his mind was clear, he was able to read, and after the first week was able to play chess with his mother.  The only unfavorable symptom he had at all was an irregular pulse.  He took no medicine and no food except fruit juices.  We used occasionally the warm water enema.  On the tenth day he took a little lamb broth, but refused it the next day, and again asked for fruit juices.  It was not until two weeks had passed that his appetite returned and he began to eat.  He lost flesh, but did not lose strength in the same degree—­he was able to go to the bathroom each day unaided.