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Everybody�s Guide To Nature Cure
The Fevers. Part 3.
By Harry Benjamin ND
Compiled and Edited by Ivor Hughes.

Measles (also German Measles). See general remarks on fevers in the preceding pages re general treatment; see also Childhood Ailments in the library where the disease is dealt with in detail.

Meningitis. See general remarks on fevers in the preceding pages re general treatment; see also Childhood Ailments in the library where the disease is dealt with in detail.

Pneumonia. The treatment for pneumonia is no different from that for any other fever, and should be exactly along the lines indicated in the general plan given in the preceding pages. In this case, though, chest packs will be more helpful than full body packs, or else the two can be alternated with good effect.

The general symptoms of pneumonia are as follows : The disease usually begins with chill, high fever, severe headache, and soreness and aching of the whole body. There is a cough, with evidence of pain in the lungs, whilst breathing is much faster than usual, and there is often duskiness of the skin. The patient coughs and expectorates to release the mucus and other toxic material which is fast accumulating in the air-cells of the lungs. As pointed out more than once in the present book, pneumonia often results from the suppressive medical treatment of former disease, especially influenza. Pneumonia in children is dealt with in detail in Children's Ailments in the main library.

Rheumatic Fever. See general remarks on fevers in the preceding pages re general treatment; see also Children's Ailments where the disease is dealt with in detail.

Scarlet Fever. See general remarks on fevers in the preceding pages re general treatment; see also Children's Ailments where the disease is dealt with in detail.

Smallpox. It is generally considered that in vaccination the medical profession has a sure preventive of smallpox; but when once the origin of fevers in the human system is understood, the futility of measures such as vaccination for the prevention of disease is at once made obvious.

Smallpox is a virulent type of fever, and it flourishes where conditions of living are very unclean both without as well as within the system. It is because of the vastly improved methods of sanitation and general living in most civilised countries to-day that smallpox is growing so scarce in these same countries, and not at all because of the practice of vaccination.

It is a noteworthy fact that those countries which still insist upon compulsory vaccination at regular intervals, such as Japan, have more smallpox than those countries in which the practice is no longer strictly enforced, such as Germany and England; and it is the contention of the Nature-Cure School of Thought that vaccination ITSELF serves to keep the tendency to smallpox alive in those civilised countries still liable to the disease, by passing the virus on in the blood-stream of one generation to the next, and that if the practice were discontinued altogether, there would be far less smallpox in the world than even now.

Editors note ● http://www.vaccinationdebate.com/

Cholera is another type of fever which was just as prevalent in civilised countries a century ago as smallpox, and this fever has died out even more completely than smallpox, simply because of the better methods of sanitation to-day. The medical profession ascribes to vaccination the reason for the decline in smallpox, but why should cholera, a fever of almost identical origin, be almost wiped out in civilised countries without any forms of preventive treatment whatsoever, except better methods of sanitation and general living ?

As a matter of fact, the practice of vaccination not only serves to perpetuate the possibility of smallpox in countries where it would otherwise have died out altogether by now, but it serves to introduce into the system of the one vaccinated morbid products which intensify any disease-tendency already present; and many a person who has been vaccinated has been found to develop this or that serious disease after vaccination without being able to account for the cause of it, and even death has been known to occur as a direct result of the practice of vaccination. In any case, how can the morbid and diseased products of human beings or animals serve to protect the human organism from disease ?

Surely it must be obvious to any sensible individual that such a practice only adds still more poisonous matter to a system already burdened with hereditary and acquired poisons ? The result must be an adding to the disease-bill of the nation, rather than a subtraction from it.

It is true that smallpox itself is far less prevalent in this and other civilised countries than it was a century ago, but what about the " newer " diseases such as influenza, neurasthenia, diabetes, cancer, etc., which have arisen to take its place ? Surely no one can say the world is less free from disease to-day than a hundred years ago ?

There is more disease now than then. And the practice of vaccination has played its part in bringing about this increase of disease � especially chronic disease � in the countries in which it has been practiced upon an unsuspecting population, who were led to believe that through its agency they would be warding off disease instead of courting it.

In many countries vaccination is now no longer strictly enforced, and application to a magistrate or Justice of the Peace will secure exemption for any child in this country, if the parents will make the application when asked by the local medical authority to have the child vaccinated.

As regards the treatment for smallpox, this should be exactly the same as for any other fever, as outlined in the present section. The surest preventive against smallpox is cleanliness INSIDE as well as OUTSIDE the body.

Typhoid Fever. Typhoid (or enteric) fever is very frequently met with in these days, and consists primarily in inflammation of certain small glands in the small and large intestines, from which inflammation a great variety of symptoms proceed, giving rise to the characteristic features of the disease. Typhoid fever is supposed to be due to a germ known as Eberth's bacillus, which is taken into the body through the medium of food, water, etc. As already pointed out in the general remarks re fevers at the beginning of the present section, it is not the germ as such which is of importance in the development of a fever, and this is equally true of typhoid as of all other fevers.

Typhoid fever can only develop in a system where there is a great accumulation of toxic waste and other putrefactive material in the intestines, for it is upon this that the germ flourishes. Without such a soil it is harmless. If one's intestines are full of such morbid matter (as a result of constant constipation following on general wrong living), then typhoid can readily develop there, especially if much meat or other flesh food is habitually eaten ; because it is the nature of such food to decompose and putrefy readily within the intestines and so bring a large quantity of bacterial and other toxic material in its train.

More especially is this so in a hot country or during a hot spell, for in these cases decomposition and putrefaction take place with greater rapidity than at other times. This accounts for the greater prevalence of typhoid fever in a country like America, where much meat and other flesh food is eaten, in a hot climate, than in a country such as, say, England, where the temperature is less sultry.

Typhoid may sometimes take two or three weeks to develop, and is therefore often very baffling to the physician to diagnose at first. It begins with a tired feeling, loss of appetite, intense headache (especially in the forehead), nausea, and frequent diarrhoea. The tongue is coated, and the back and body and bones ache unmercifully. Often there is bleeding from the nose, and frequently chills, followed by sweating, which may lead to the erroneous diagnosis of malaria.

Many precious days are often lost by medical practitioners in waiting to see if the disease really is typhoid, and many a case has been lost or great harm done to it in this " waiting " period. From the Natural-Cure point of view it does not matter in the least if the disease is pneumonia, or typhoid, or what not. If there is fever, the patient is at once fasted, and so the cure is in progress and the patient well on the way to recovery before the orthodox medical practitioner has made up his mind what the disease is !

Treatment. It has already been said that fasting is often employed by the medical profession for the treatment of typhoid fever, with �as one would expect�excellent results. But this is not so always. Many hospitals insist on feeding their typhoid patients with milk or other " suitable " food, with the result that all sorts of complications ensue.

The only correct treatment for typhoid, one from which no ill after-effects of any kind, need be expected, is that of fasting ; and the general plan of treatment for all fevers given in the preceding pages can be carried out with nothing but the very best results in any case of typhoid fever.

If such treatment is employed, the individual so treated will start off afresh with intestines thoroughly cleansed of putrefactive material (as a result of the fever and its proper treatment) ; and if sensible feeding habits and ways of living are adopted thereafter, the said individual will have literally a new lease of life given him. His general health-level will be 100 per cent, higher than before. And all because of the fever, mark you (and its right treatment, of course).

Typhus Fever (Yellow Fever, Cholera, etc.). These, the most virulent types of fever, are just as amenable to natural treatment as any of the less serious forms. Their origin is due to filthy conditions both outside and INSIDE the body. It is customary in these days to ascribe these fevers to bad external conditions of living, and entirely to ignore the internal condition of the sufferer as a factor in the matter, yet that is the most important factor of all. The fact that cholera and typhus are so rare these days, because of better methods of sanitation, etc., shows how readily Nature will respond to any effort made to keep her laws regarding cleanliness and health.

NOTE RE ANTI-TOXIN TREATMENT OF FEVERS. Anti-toxin treatment for fevers has been hailed as one of the greatest medical and scientific blessings of our age. It is said that many thousands of individuals who would most assuredly have died otherwise have had their lives saved through its aid. When disease statistics are looked at, there is no denying that the mortality rate for certain fevers has subsided to a certain extent since the introduction of anti-toxin treatment, but, on the other hand, there are many instances on record where such treatment has most definitely brought about the death of the patient.

It can be stated quite definitely and finally that treatment aimed solely at destroying the germs of fevers which is what anti-toxin treatment is, can never really cure the fever. It may succeed in destroying the germs, but in that case all it has done is to put an end to the self-cleansing work (with the germs as superficial agents) which was going on within the system of the individual concerned as a result of the fever.

In other words, the disease has been suppressed, in exactly the same manner in which drug treatment operates. Thus, although a fever may be checked (" cured ") by anti-toxin treatment, the morbid material which was at the root of the trouble is still left in the system after the treatment, plus the sera of the doctor, etc. So the way for future disease � especially chronic disease � is readily paved. No treatment which does not aim at the removal of the toxic material underlying all fevers, and which it is the express object of the fever to burn up, can be curative in any real sense of the word.

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