The myth of medicine.

The first edition of this little book was published under the simple title, Rubies In The Sand. It is presented here unchanged except for this Foreword and the Addendum. The book was originally written in an effort to uncover from the sands of time precious jewels of truth about health, disease and healing and to discover, if possible, the means of preserving and restoring health that were so successfully employed by our primeval forebears before the origin of the first shaman, priest and physician. It is a source of much satisfaction to the writer that he was eminendy successful in this effort. It is also gratifying to know that mankind never actually lost these precious jewels. They have simply been pushed aside and neglected while all the emphasis has been placed upon anti-vital, inhuman and unnatural methods and systems that have been offered as substitutes for nature's own plan of care. The system of Natural Hygiene that I have stressed in the following pages is not a new discovery, but a revival. Hygiene is the employment of materials, activities and influences that have a normal relation to life, in the preservation and restoration of health. In other words, hygiene is the employment of nature's own means of life in the care of both the well and the sick. Vegetarianism and other forms of dietary reform, physical culture, the various psychological and metaphysical movements, etc., are mere fragmentary approaches to the many and complex problems of life and are inadequate to meet the needs of modem life. Hygiene, by insisting upon an all-out approach to life's problems and upon a total approach to these, constitutes a full system of mind-body care in both health and illth. Other systems resort to treatments, substitutes and compromises. All systems of so-called or alleged healing, both drug and drugless, employ therapeutic means and measures that bear no normal relation to life, fulfill no need of the living organism, and are positively harmful, while their use is predicated upon no known law of life.