Learn To Respect Your Limitations - Herbert M Shelton - [a must read]

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Learn To Respect Your Limitations

Herbert M Shelton

Hygienic Review August 1973

 

Nutrition and reproduction are two of the leading functions of the body.

When they are abused the body and mind become perverted and it is no longer

possible to evolve the potentials latent in the individual. Few people ever

come into full possession of their biological legacies. They sell their

birthright for a mess of pottage a few years of sensuality, trampling their

potentialities by debaucheries. Food and drink, sex and gold (guts, gold and

gonads) the unholy trinity, reduced them to mediocre beings, without strength

of body and mind to achieve even a small part of their inherent potential.

 

Excesses not only spoil love, they spoil digestion. The food " turns

against " the glutton as certainly as love turns to the divorce court when

excess has destroyed it. Life is made miserable by excess which always leads

to disease. Diseases are palliated, but never remedied, for the reason that

the cause is never removed.

 

Our moralists and religionists hold that morality and health are poles

apart. They are so accustomed to partitioning man and dealing with only one

part of him that they are unable to grasp the fact that man is a unitary

being. Despising food, health and digestion in their superior codes of

ethics, overlooking the need for proper care of the body in producing and

maintaining a normal man or woman, they concentrate their contemplation upon

those " higher " attributes of man, ethics, morality, religion. The result is a

world filled with diseased and undisciplined people, a world full of sick

moralists and religionists. Normal people are self-controlled and poised;

abnormal people are impulsive, unpoised and filled with bad mental and

physical habits. Any system of ethics that neglects this fundamental fact is

divorced from life, from man. It is unrealistic and unworkable. The monstrous

incongruity existing between pretensions and confessions of the sick

Christian and the consequences of his mental and physical habits should lead

to a realization of the fact that neglect of the body leads to evil.

 

Both the religious man and the free thinker will assert that this is an

unkind providence. It is not; it is freedom. It is the ability of man to

choose a life of self-control or a life of self-indulgence and take the

consequences of either course of action, " Intellect, " says Tilden, " does not

thrive under prohibition. If man cannot thrive under freedom, he is unfit to

live, and he becomes his own executioner. "

 

Medical " science " coddles man and spends much of its time manufacturing

alibis for those who persist in abusing their privileges of enjoying.

Physicians revel in pathology, thinking to discover the cause of man's ills

in the necropsy room. They refuse to look for it in life. To the dead they go

in their search for the cause of the diseases of the living. In the living,

they spend their time palliating symptoms and encouraging the patient in the

very ways of life that are responsible for his ills. When the man dies, the

physician makes out a death certificate, which, instead of saying: died of

too much food or of alcohol, consoles the friends and relatives by saying

that he died of heart disease. He is a liar and all of the mortality

statistics based on lies of this kind are as false as the " medical science "

that makes out such death certificates. The alleged cause of the sickness is

given a fancy Greek or Latin name which removes the slightest suspicion that

the sick person is in the least responsible for his illness, or that the dead

man committed suicide executed himself and everybody is satisfied. That when

sensuality is finished it brings death, is a truth that neither the patient,

his friends nor his physician is willing to acknowledge. For do they not know

that sensuality brings enjoyment, happiness, and that microbes and viruses

cause man's diseases?

 

Not until we evolve to the point where we recognize that truth is more

important than lies, will we cease our practice of veiling the truth about

everything and promoting comforting fallacies. The lies that " your eyes shall

be opened and ye shall be as gods " and " ye shall not surely die, " are

pleasing to sensualists and ambitious seekers after wealth and power. Man

rejects the teaching that " the truth shall make you free. " The stupid but

wily serpent that haunts their garden of delight subtly whispers into their

all too willing ears: Give no heed to the advice of those who presume to

know. Eat of the forbidden fruit, for by so doing you will become as gods.

When " your time comes " you will die and not before. Perish the thought that

you can commit suicide; that you can by any means shorten your predestined

length of life. The, serpent is likely to be dressed in the guise of a

physician, who will tell you that if you are sick he can cure you, that if

you are well he can immunize you against sickness. He will probably be armed

with a load of lying statistics that " prove " that if your ancestors were

long-lived you will be, and there is nothing you can do to shorten your life;

if your ancestors were short lived you will be, and there is nothing you can

do to lengthen your life.

 

Self-indulgence to the point of enervation is the greatest single cause of

disease known to man. Enervation checks elimination, thus retaining the

poisonous product of metabolism in the blood-toxemia. Premature death is the

penalty for sensuality, and it came with law and order, with biology, before

man had developed the biological sciences. Although priests and physicians

are in the habit of annulling penalties with prayers, indulgences, panaceas,

immunizers, cures and all kinds of mutilations of the body, this law is

inexorable and immutable. Fool the people as they will with their plans of

vicarious salvation, they have not yet found, nor will ever find a means of

annulling a single law of life and enable man to dance without paying the

fiddler.

 

View the mortality statistics-see the great army of lives that are yearly

snuffed out twenty to a hundred years prematurely-the causes of death are

given as heart disease, apoplexy, uremia, acidosis, cancer, Bright's disease,

diabetes, a short, unexpected pneumonia, or other symptom-complex-but all of

these so-called diseases are but results of a subtle intoxication, the

ripened fruit of the lotus flower of pleasure carried beyond limitations.

Abuse of privileges brings as its punishment, discomfort, organic change and

premature death.

 

Enjoyment of biologically legitimate pleasures within nerve limitation,

which means short of sufficient enervation to check elimination, is

healthful; but when excess is practiced nerve energy is dissipated in excess

of supply, and enervation is the result. Add to toxemia (auto-developed

poisoning) the insidious poisoning of tobacco, nicotine, caffeine, alcohol,

gastrointestinal putrescence (the result of wrong eating and overeating), and

a vulnerable state of the body results which is progressive, explosive and

dangerous. All heart stimulants enervate the heart. In nervous and emotional

people the heart often becomes so irritable that a slight stimulation from

toxin or an unusual emotion may result in spasm of the heart, causing death

from " heart failure. "

 

The signs and symptoms of toxic saturation are variable in character.

Seldom does a single overindulgence produce more than a passing discomfort,

but habitual overindulgence-in eating, in sex, in enjoying, in work, etc.

-slowly but surely builds up a toxic saturation which requires only the

slightest added overtaxing of the nerve energy to result in a crisis. The

three most common and socially accepted indoor sports are overeating, sexual

overindulgence and drinking (alcoholic liquors). These are so widespread, so

commonly practiced and so fully accepted that hardly any one questions these

sports, no one recognizes that there is anything abnormal in such

indulgences,

 

Until we have learned that overindulgence overtaxes the nervous system,

that, in the case of the sick man or woman, overeating, drinking, etc., place

a heavy burden upon the organs of elimination, that the enervating effects of

overindulgence of all kinds reduce the functioning powers of the excretory

organs, we are in no position to understand how our pleasures build our

diseases. It is a big job for the excretory organs of a vigorous and healthy

person to get rid of his habitual excesses; it is a much more difficult task

for the excretory organs of a sick person to accomplish, and they simply do

not do it.

 

If overwork, sexual excesses, habitual stimulation, emotional irritations,

over bathing, over-sunning and a host of other enervating pastimes overtax

the powers of the healthy and strong and, if persisted in, weaken and impair

the most vigorous organism, how much more will they overtax the weak and

impaired organism! If the digestive system, of the strong and robust has

difficulty in disposing of the three heavy meals daily eaten by our people,

how much greater difficulty must the digestive system of the weak and ailing

have in disposing of the same amount of food! Yet, is it not common to advise

the sick to eat more, rather than less, in a vain endeavor to build them up?

With centuries of experience behind us we seem not to have learned that

overeating does not produce strength and functioning power. It will not even

maintain the strength already possessed. " Plenty of good nourishing food to

keep up the strength " of the sick is an even greater fallacy than the same

overeating to keep up the strength of the strong and vigorous. Basically it

is the same fallacy in both instances, but in the weak and sick its effects

are more immediate and pronounced.

 

To save the people of this land from the inanities and insanities of

scientific medicine, we need a Pentecostal outpouring of common sense. When

the people demand education instead of immunization, removal of causes

instead of cures, the medical profession will know that its day is drawing to

a close. It will know that its age long dream of reaching therapeutic

perfection is never to be realized and that the whole sorry muss of

therapeutic monstrosities is headed for a well-deserved oblivion. When the

people really understand what disease is and what its cause is, they will be

in a position to save themselves, both from suffering and from the worse evil

of the two-treatment, both medical and cultistic.

 

Enervation, however produced, not only inhibits excretion, but it also

checks secretion. The checking of digestive secretions lowers digestive

power. The more enervated the individual, the less digestive power he

possesses. Instead, in such a state of functional weakness, of reducing the

daily food intake in keeping with the lowered digestive power that remains,

it is customary to continue the habitual gluttony, even under the advice of

practitioners of the various schools of so-called healing, or of increasing

the amount of food eaten, in the hope that " plenty of good nourishing food "

will increase the power to digest and utilize food. Not more digestive power

but more food to digest, is the prescription when digestive function has been

impaired by lowering of nerve energy.

 

Cicero may have been speaking, either from personal experience or as a

careful observer of the men around him, when he declared: " Better be a

temperate old man than a lascivious youth " ; when he declared temperance to be

a " bridle of gold " that makes a man like unto a god, for, continuing, it

" will transform a beast to a man " and " it will make a man into a god. " The

gods Cicero knew, especially those who sat on the throne of the Caesars, were

intemperate beasts, made so by debauchery and conceit.

 

The days of reckless indulgence, the days of excesses at the table, must

become and remain memories that are no longer able to whet jaded appetites.

Now there is nothing left for our Solomons save to write their proverbs and

complain that all is vanity and vexation of spirit; there is nothing left for

our Davids but to write their Psalms. The old man who has had his day and

wasted it, now sits by his fireside and bemoans the fact that he is no longer

young; no longer can he indulge his appetites and passions as though life has

no limitations and vigor will last forever. His pleasures are now old

memories and his regrets are his constant companions. The man who does not

respect his limitations, but indulges excessively, becomes enervated, fails

to eliminate, builds toxemia and develops all kinds of symptoms. Then he is

in line to be humbugged by all kinds of cures.

 

Every individual, whatever his age, has a certain amount of potential

functioning power and when he has learned his limitations concerning food,

pleasure, work, social life, etc., and has learned to respect his

limitations, he will continue to live within his capacities and thus will go

on living long after his carelessly living neighbors have been ushered into

the henceforth by the surgeon or the hypodermic-armed physician.

 

The surfeited are disintegrating and their numbers dwindle daily, were it

not for the fact that their ranks are continually replenished from new

converts to the merry chase after pleasure. When warned by friends and

advisers, these young people, who are about to embark upon the " pace that

kills " brush aside the advice and point out that others are doing the same

with apparent impunity. The pace-setters are equally blind and deaf to

counsel. They never tire of trying to convince others that they are " very

moderate " compared with Jones or Smith. My grandfather smoked all his life,

they assure us, and he died at the age of ninety. " Good food never hurt

anybody; I am going to have my share of it. " " We live but once, we may as

well enjoy life while we can. "

 

It is not good food that is objected to; but excess. It is not enjoying

life that we are cautioned against; but excesses. Let the people have good

food and let them enjoy life; but if they want to go on enjoying it and not

end up in a wheel chair, let them stay within their normal limitations. When

they have enervated themselves by their excesses until they are suffering all

the discomforts described in the best medical texts and are being serviced by

specialists and having their organs removed, their pains palliated and their

secretions substituted for by extracts from the glands of Armour and Co.'s

bulls and goats, they will discover that there is not much pleasure left in

life. They have come to the end PC their " enjoying life " long before they

reach the end of life itself. What a travesty on real life! What a mockery of

genuine enjoyment!

 

They and their medical advisers never cautioned them against their

excesses in the days when they were young and vigorous; rather, they told

them that disease is due to germs and viruses and that they should go out and

have a good time. " Eat anything you darn please, " and " eat anything that

agrees with you, " they were told. Food combining is a senseless fad. Tobacco

and alcohol, tea and coffee " in moderation " are harmless. "

 

Excessive eating builds plethora, nasal catarrh, inflammation and

ulceration of mucous membranes. When these subjects develop a nose bleed it

tends to continue bleeding until the excess of blood is expelled. Nicotine

poisoning dulls sensibility. Taste, smell, sight, hearing are more or less

impaired by indulgence in tobacco. The vasometer nervous system is affected

by nicotine. The trophic or nutritional system is also impaired, the heart is

overworked and the arteries are hardened. The victim of the nicotine habit

either loses weight or becomes obese.

 

So long as a man's nerve balance is on the positive side of the scale, he

may boast that his habits are not injuring him, but the sickness and

death-rate between the ages of thirty and forty-five indicate that his habits

have drained him of energy to the danger point by this period of life. When

men and women in the very prime of life are prostrated and die, as it is

said, of acute disease, there must be a cause and this cause is not to be

found in mere fortuitous causes. Lowered ability to live must be the answer.

Persistent stimulation lowers the ability to live.

 

Man builds his own grotesqueness nature never makes a clown of old age.

Dotage and dribbling belong to diseases not to old age. The normal man's

adjustments to ordinary changes in his environmental stresses are

unconscious, as they should be. Consulting physicians and other types of

disease-treaters who frighten you is a very bad and disease-building habit.

To tell a sick man the cause of his trouble and educate him into the how of

correcting it should dispel fear. The childish assertion that teaching people

to eat carefully, live carefully and to care for the body prudently is

disease-building or that it causes worry about the body is tantamount to a

condemnation of education. Certainly we can teach the truth about life and

living and about the body and its care without producing either bodily

sickness or mental disturbance. We have taught children the dangers of guns

without creating any trouble. Can we not teach them the injury that comes

from other sources without creating mischief? Is there anything wrong with

imparting proper knowledge on any subject to people?

 

When all the people are well aware that they build their own disease and

that they do their own recovering, there will be a demand for schools of

health to supplant the present schools (hospitals) that devote much time to

cultivating the sick habit.