Nature Cure: Philosophy & Practice Based on the Unity of Disease & CureLindlahr, Henry
Philosophy
Nature Cure: Philosophy & Practice Based on the Unity of Disease & Cure
Lindlahr, Henry
Naturopathy
That accounts for the mysterious sequelae or chronic after-effects
which so often follow drug-treated acute diseases. I have traced
numerous cases of chronic affections of the lungs and kidneys, of
infantile paralysis and of many other chronic ailments to such
suppression. In the following I shall describe a typical case, which
came under our care and treatment a few years ago.
Suppression by Means of the Ice Bag
A few years ago several gentlemen of Greek nationality called on me
with the request that I visit a friend of theirs who had been lying
sick for about two months in one of our great West Side [Chicago]
hospitals. On investigation I found that the patient had entered the
hospital suffering from a mild case of pneumonia. The doctors of the
institution had ordered ice packs. Rubber sheets filled with ice
were applied to the chest and other parts of the body. This had been
done for several weeks until the fever subsided.
As a matter of fact, ice is more suppressive than antifever
medicines. The continued icy cold applications chill the parts of
the body to which they are applied, depress the vital functions and
effectually suppress the inflammatory processes.
The result in this case, as in many similar ones which I had
occasion to observe during and after the ice-bag treatment, was that
the inflammation in the lungs had been arrested and suppressed
during the stage of destruction, when the air cells and tissues were
filled with exudates, blood serum, pus, live and dead blood cells,
bacteria, etc., leaving the affected areas of the lungs in a
consolidated, liver-like condition.
As a consequence of suppression in the case of this Greek patient,
the pneumonia had been changed from the acute to the subacute and
chronic stages and the doctors in charge had told his friends that
he was now suffering from miliary tuberculosis, and would probably
die within a week or two.
After receiving this discouraging information, the friends of the
patient came to me and prevailed upon me to take charge of the case.
He was transferred to our institution, and we began at once to apply
the natural methods of treatment. Instead of ice packs we used the
regular cold-water packs, strips of linen wrung out of water of
ordinary temperature wrapped around the body and covered with
several layers of flannel bandages.
The wet packs became warm on the body in a few minutes. They relaxed
the pores and drew the blood into the surface, thus promoting heat
radiation and the elimination of morbid matter through the skin.
They did not suppress the fever, but kept it below the danger point.
Under this treatment, accompanied by fasting and judicious
osteopathic manipulation, the inflammatory and feverish processes
suppressed by the ice packs soon revived, became once more active
and aggressive, and were now allowed to run their natural course
through the stages of destruction, absorption (abatement) and
reconstruction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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