Chapter V: Part 5

A mother possessed of a certain sexual irritation will produce a child having a redundant, superfluous, or abnormal condition, which, in time, will result through its irritation into a condition similar to the mother’s. Or, if the father be in a condition to impress the mother, in ninety times out of a hundred, the impression so produced on the mother will be reproduced in the child, physically. Here is the heredity. But a surgeon knowing (?) what is “normal,” has it in his power to remove the irritation or redundant tissue, and thereby put the child in a “normal” condition. How many male Jews do we find suffering from consumption? Not because their mothers did not have consumption, but as the cause of the consumption is removed from them.

[Sidenote: Inherit disease (?)]

A child, being born with a sound pair of lungs, could not possibly have inherited consumption, as the mind has but the one memory. To have inherited consumption would have meant to inherit a memory of building an imperfect pair of lungs. But the child did inherit a genital irritation which would result, in later years, in worrying the ganglia and cause (force) them to build an imperfect lung. Thanks to the discovery of orificial surgeons, many of these irritations are known, which, if removed at birth, will destroy the alleged inheritance.

A mother has astigmatism; baby is born with good eyes, and, mind you, that babe is getting a new pair of eyes every six months. It is strange that the ganglia which, according to the theory of our alleged scientists, should have inherited a memory of building bad eyes, should, after building thirty or forty pairs of good ones, suddenly recollect that it has forgotten to do what it inherited, and start in building bad eyes. The truth of the matter is this: The irritation that was inherited had not, until after a number of years, grown to be of sufficient importance as to disarrange the rhythm or memory action of the ganglia (mind) that build the eyes.

[Sidenote: Syphilis]

So it is with every one of the alleged inherited diseases. I do not believe that a mother, living on pure food, could transmit syphilis to her child. It is simply the furnishing of the mind of the child improper material out of which to build its body. A child born with a deformity, no mind treatment will cure; because the “normal” memory is not there to be re-established, for in hypnosis, or through what they call suggestive treatment, only memories can be revived. Where there is no memory there is nothing to revive.

[Sidenote: The beginning]

A child is born into the world with its cerebrum inactive. In a short time consciousness, or registration of ideas through the cerebrum, begins, and the child now must respond to external suggestion as well as internal (physical). The child, being born into a new environment, must learn through suggestion to adapt itself to (become part of) that environment. If it succeeds in doing so, it will be the survival of the fittest, and live. If it fails it will die. The environment by which it is surrounded is the environment of the mother; the habits (manner of responding) of the mother are now being transferred to the child. As the child progresses in life, its accumulation of associated ideas are in response to its environment, and are but the gathering together of the reproduction of the mother, subject to changes or modifications of the present external environment, called the advancement of “civilization.”

[Sidenote: Responsibility of marriage]

When the girl reaches womanhood she marries, which is the beginning of new creatures. Ah, if our women could only appreciate the magnitude of the responsibility that they take on their shoulders when they get married, if they could but learn that marriage is not for the gratification of sensuality, brutality and puppy-dog love; but the beginning, the starting point, the sending forth into the world of beings who will carry on the good or ill that this young mother suggests to them (surrounds them with). Is it not a sin, a shame, that women, not understanding themselves, lacking in knowledge that is unmistakably possessed by animals, are allowed to marry? No woman should bear children until she has learned as to _how to bear them_. A dog is her own midwife, as is also a squaw; but civilized (?) woman, being unprepared, has to send for a doctor. Truly, this is proof positive of the advancement (?) of man. The young mother, differing from the lower (?) animals, does not know what to do with the child, now she has it.

[Sidenote: Nurses]

The ignorant bring forth the most young. The rich place the child in the inexperienced hands of an ignorant nurse. Nurses for new born babes should be thoroughly schooled, and be the highest paid of all employés, for they can make or damn the future of the child, inasmuch as the first response to its environment are, and should be, under the guidance of the nurse. Give me a child until it is eight years of age, and I will promise much for its future.

[Sidenote: Inheritance of environment]

[Sidenote: To banish an inheritance]

The wife carries into her new home the same environment that her mother was possessed of, because she had no means of learning other. Mother’s sanitation, mother’s style of cooking, mother’s mode of abusing her neighbors, of having two manners in the family—one for company, all are hers and in the new home. If that environment resulted in certain moral traits in her brothers and sisters, why will not this environment repeated produce the same result in her children? It will, and the inheritance is not in the blood, but in the environment. This you may rest assured of, that where the father dictates the environment of the home, or his mother comes and does so, the inheritance will be entirely on the side of the father, and _vice versa_. But, if you wish to be rid of the inheritance, send for the old lady who has reared a family of children lacking in all the disagreeable attributes which are creeping into your family. Allow her to have full sway in the household, and see how quickly the heredity will disappear, and how uncomfortable you will all be for the time being. She will turn the house topsy-turvy, thereby forcing laws of sanitation which you declared you could never endure; she will change the entire regimen of the table, cause you to eat food that you affirmed you could never eat, and will throw out the food which you were certain you could not exist without. In fact, everything that you avoided she will bring into the house, and those things to which you were most partial, will be immediately eliminated.

Let us build a story. Let us follow a young man from the country through a generation and see the effects.

[Sidenote: John and Mary]

John Smith is a farmer, and, being like most farmers, dislikes manual labor, not so much as his father, who is a very hard-working man, and desires that John will not have to work as he has. So he sends John to a business college and gives him a thorough (?) course in business (?). And now John becomes imbued with the thought that he should not soil his hands, that he must go to the city and be a “real fellow.” John’s mother—good woman—has told John that he should not steal, that he should go to church, has taught him his prayers; hence, John is a good boy, having been surrounded with a healthy environment. He goes to the city and takes a job of keeping books in a store.

Probably, in a week or ten days, the well-meaning minister comes around and invites John to attend services, which he does, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, John sits in a back pew, awfully lonely, thinking of mother and, perhaps, paying but little attention to the sermon.

The trouble lies here: The stores close early, and John, not working hard now, and being full of energy which he cannot give vent to in his present occupation, does not respond to sleep until ten or eleven o’clock at night, and does not know what to do during the hours between the closing of the store and the time that sleep gathers around him. Some of the other clerks invite him to play pool and billiards, which games of themselves are perfectly harmless; but as a rule, the only place that you can find the appliances for the game is connected with a bar room. John, being ruled as all men, animals and plants are, by suggestion, goes, watches the game, and, in time, learns to play it. The saloon is warm, no one interferes with him, he has money, his companions drink, John drinks soda-water. In a little while his stomach rebels at the “soft stuff,” his curiosity is aroused and he takes a drink.

[Sidenote: The Y. M. C. A.]

We will assume that John is a reader; he is anxious for knowledge and is willing to read. He is a member of the Y. M. C. A., but those good people, so afraid that the secretary will fail to get sleep enough, insist on his closing their establishment at nine or nine-thirty, and poor John, having an hour and a half on his hands knows where he can go to find warmth, good-fellowship, and perhaps congeniality; although he does not drink while there. On Sundays, when time hangs heavily, the good Y. M. C. A. people, so afraid of the soul of their secretary, close the place and turn their fellowmen adrift, feeling that it is much better to save the soul of _one_ secretary than those of a thousand of their fellowmen, forgetting that the good that one secretary can do would make a great big mark in favor of both himself and the Y. M. C. A. with the Supreme Ruler (?).

[Sidenote: The devil knows how to cater]

But the devil and his followers are wise. They know how to cater to man, and at the times when all other places are closed, the side door of the saloon is always open, and in there is warmth, and reading matter, and enjoyment, and poison.

[Sidenote: Oppose the saloons]

I remember my experience in New York City. I had no love for liquor, was wildly desirous of reading, found that the Y. M. C. A. on Twenty-third street was a very congenial place. My time was my own; I slept late mornings and, consequently, remained up late nights. Every night, at nine-thirty or ten o’clock, the bell rang and I was sent into the street. As it was cold, and damp, and uncomfortable, I was naturally forced to go where there was warmth, and in the saloons I found all comforts for physical man, and the only thing expected of me was that I spend a reasonable amount at the bar, so that the landlord could pay rent, pay for the gas, pay his employés and buy diamonds. Many is the drink, many the glass of beer I drank, not because I desired it, but to make a return for the environment furnished me. If the Y. M. C. A.’s would only learn, taking lesson from the saloon-keepers, to run their association rooms in opposition, by offering all physical comforts with the mental food, and keeping their establishments open at the time all others are closed, allowing the wanderers—those without homes—a refuge, they would accomplish more good in one year than they are accomplishing now in one hundred, with their strict adherence to antediluvian rules.

[Sidenote: First place your man]

Idleness is the workshop of the devil. When a time of idleness is, give the people something to do, but the first thing they must have is a place—“first place your subject, then give him his attributes.” If you would make converts, if you would lead man into the pathway of goodness, give him a place (environment). But if a man is accustomed to a homely place, a “swell” place of meeting is always a suggestion against you, forcing him to feel uncomfortable. Give him an environment which will be _his_ ideal and at the same time not above him. After you have caught your bird by giving him a place, you may cause him to do many things, but it is impossible to catch him without a proper “cage.”

[Sidenote: Pure food law]

John is thus forced to visit the saloons, and he drinks whisky. Now, whisky is one of “nature’s” gifts. If our temperance advocates would only force the lawmakers at Washington to enact a pure food law compelling all saloon people to sell _pure_ liquor, our insane asylums and penitentiaries would be plenty large enough to supply the demand. The adulteration of food, and lack of knowledge to prepare it, is doing more to fill our insane asylums and penitentiaries than all the “bugs” in Christendom. The taking into our stomachs of impure liquors and adulterated foods produces irritations that result in insanity and crime.

John takes into his stomach an irritant called whisky. In the course of time he takes enough of it to produce a reaction, and some morning wakes up lacking an appetite. He goes to the store. One of his fellow clerks says, “Old man, what is the matter? You look broke-up.”

“Yes, I am; I couldn’t eat any breakfast.”

The fellow clerk, meaning well, asks, “Why not take a cocktail?” and John now takes a cocktail, a combination of two poisons, the whisky plus the bitters, which, being an irritant, stimulates the secretions, and the nerve-ends begin reaching forth for food upon which to do their natural work. In a little while John gets into such a condition that he cannot do without his cocktail.

[Sidenote: Marrying a drinker]

About this time, John, being frugal and of gentlemanly demeanor, meets a fool girl, who marries him. Any woman who marries a man who drinks intoxicants is a fool, and I say it unreservedly. John and Mary get married and start a home of their own in a small town where they can be closer to “nature” than in the large cities, which are entirely artificial.

[Sidenote: Counter-irritants]

Mary, having a clever mother, has learned to cook and knows how to do her own housework; but, strange to say, for some reason, her cooking does not suit John. Why, Mary often wonders and talks with her mother. After some six months, when Mary and John have become thoroughly acquainted, he informs Mary that she does not know how to cook; that every time he eats one of her meals he is subject to a fit of indigestion, which is true. Mary learned to cook for people with “normal” digestions, but John, having an “abnormal” digestive apparatus, so induced by the liquor, cannot digest the plain food of his wife’s cooking. He prefers to eat in a night restaurant, which caters only to the drinking element, and, obeying the law that “like cures like,” or _similia similibus curantur_, the food is highly seasoned, and on the table are all kinds of condiments; or, in other words, John, to digest his food, must partake of such food as is full of counter-irritants.

Mary, being a dutiful wife, and grieving because John cannot digest meals prepared by her, has a long consultation with her mother. For the sake of novelty, we will assume that this mother-in-law, differing from the others, is a good, rational, sensible woman, who informs Mary that the best thing she can do is to visit this night-lunch establishment and discover, if possible, why it is that the food cooked there is more digestible than hers. Mary does so, and the first thing she finds, ninety-five times out of a hundred, is that the place is what she calls filthy, and wonders how food prepared in such a kitchen is digestible. Assuming that the proprietor of this night-lunch is a man who means well, he imparts to Mary the information that he is very liberal with all kinds of spices in the seasoning of his food; that on his table are nothing but the hottest of pepper sauces; that his biggest expense is for condiments, and that all of his customers use them freely. So Mary goes home, has a long “think,” goes to her grocer and says, “Send me every condiment in the place that is hot.” He does so and Mary prepares on a certain Sunday—which is generally the feast day—a dinner full of spices, places the bottles of condiments on the table, and begs John to dine at home once more. John does so, uses freely of the condiments, smacks his lips, and for the first time in several months kisses his wife, saying, “Mary, you have hit the scheme.”

[Sidenote: “Hot stuff”]

Mary, like a good and loving wife, continues to fill John’s food full of “hot stuff,” and the “hot stuff,” being a counter-irritant, stimulates the secretions and digests John’s food, keeping him in good humor, and Mary believes she has entered her Elysium. At first Mary cannot partake of the food she cooks for John; but, as constant association will reconcile one to anything, in time she learns to partake of this food, with the result that she becomes an invalid. The irritations produce an abnormal condition that may be noticed in many ways, ill-temper, nervousness, a desire for something which is not gratified until some fool doctor first administers a drug to her. The moment she has learned of the counter action she becomes a drug fiend. If this fool doctor fails to be the family physician, she is saved from that, yet is nervous, irritable and sickly.

[Sidenote: A child born]

A child is now born into the family. The father, being full of counter-irritants, digests his dinners in _good humor_; the mother, being full of irritants, is in _bad humor_, and baby is attracted to the caresses and expressions of good-will on the father’s face. Father takes a spoonful of soup so hot with condiments that it would make a salamander wince, and gives baby a taste; this continues until in a short time baby is sickly, and a demand is made for a doctor, whom they expect, with drugs far more vicious than the condiments, to re-establish a healthy condition in baby that has been destroyed through the use of food prepared for a drunkard father, instead of for a child just learning to digest and assimilate food.

Time goes on; the sickly wife, the undeveloped child—perhaps more children—all drain on the purse, keeping the doctor in wealth and affluence. No! because the poor doctor rarely gets bills paid in full; but, at any rate, the drain is such that John, seeing nothing but bills payable in front of him, drinks the harder.

[Sidenote: The boy becomes a drunkard]

The first child which, perhaps, is a boy, at the age of fifteen, being irritated and desiring something that he cannot explain or gratify, takes a drink of liquor, and behold, a change takes place. The counter-irritant soothes and quiets that hitherto unsatisfied longing. Having once acquired the knowledge through the proper sense, that a drink of liquor will produce a quieting effect, it is not long before the boy becomes a drunkard, and the good kind neighbors and the all-wise (?) scientists claim that he inherited it from father. No! He inherited the _environment_ of a drunkard father, which was certain to produce by reaction the cause that made his father’s present environment.

[Sidenote: Heredity is of environment]

A daughter born into the family, acquiring the surroundings and attributes of a drunkard father, marries and carries into her home the same environment. Why, then, will not her family respond in the same way? Or, if the husband’s desires are gratified, why will not that environment, which the father carries from his home, produce on his children the same result as it produced on him. Therefore, our heredity is one of environment.

I have spoken of the external environment, environment proper, of the body. As our body is our closest environment, the state in which our body is, is the state of our mind, _i. e._, our actions.

[Sidenote: Latent tendencies]

In looking over the paper this evening I see that some great (?) French scientist has made a record of a large number of criminal children, and traces back (?) and lays the entire fault—the cause of their criminality—to inherited alcoholism, their fathers and forefathers were drunkards. It is strange, if that were the case, that the children did not refuse the breast and make a demand for gin. A milk punch would have been refused by them. The child is satisfied with the breast until it is placed in the same physical condition as explained in the story of John and Mary. The philosophy of latent tendencies, of the desire for the unknown, laying dormant in the cerebrum for years and all at once asserting themselves, is rot.

[Sidenote: All is good]

Study environment; learn the Law of Suggestion, the suggestions that force results; learn cause; learn how to respond properly to cause, and effect will take care of itself. All is good, all is consistent, results are always in accordance with the suggestions; therefore, nothing is “abnormal.” Study the suggestions (cause), and you will find that the result is good, correct, as to the positive forced either for or against.

[Sidenote: Sex]

Sex is entirely the result of the mental condition of the mother. Breeders of animals seem to show that it is during the latter part of the menstrual period, when, through the physical irritations, a desire for the male is dominant in the mind of the female, that she conceives a male offspring. A couple of years ago a great (?) French scientist claimed it was the food that decided the sex of a child. That was simply suggestion, a prospective mother eating a special food trying to bring forth a male; the constant suggestion was what did it, not the food. You will find, as a rule, the exceptions easily explained, but not here, that the “nervous, irritated” women have families of boys, while the lymphatic and phlegmatic women have families of girls.

[Sidenote: Birthmarks, etc.]

A thought constantly in the “mind” is either from a rational external suggestion or a mind suggestion. The idiosyncrasies shown in a child as birthmarks, monstrosities, are from _instantaneous_, severe stimulus, causing the cerebral impression to dominate and disarrange the proper mind action.

[Sidenote: Degeneracy]

Degeneracy I will define to mean other than the general acceptance of “normal.”

A degenerate can be plus or minus, or of each; both being the result of a mal-condition of the body.

[Sidenote: Degenerates plus]

If the nerve-ends of an organ are irritated, the corresponding orifices to these irritated nerve-ends may be super-sensitive, hence up to a certain point will be super-acute as to sight, hearing, smell, tasting or feeling. I class them as degenerates plus, and include all genius, poets, painters, musicians and phenomenal freaks; otherwise as possessing an orificial lesion. Of all so-called genius, the history and lives of these men demonstrate them to be physically unsound, producing thereby a super-sensitive perceiving condition. This accounts for all of them having “failings,” many of which, perhaps, are not known to the public until after their death. The treatment of Oscar Wilde was an outrage. He was a sick man, a _curable_ man, and one of the brightest minds of the day.

[Sidenote: Why is man cruel?]

We will now speak of the degenerate minus, one whose nerve-end irritations has dulled his senses. Why is a man cruel? Because the act which we call cruelty does not arouse in his mind a memory of the suffering inflicted upon the object of his torture. That man’s sensibilities, through proper orificial work, can be restored, and he will lose his seemingly brutal nature. Putting the man in the penitentiary will not make his nerve-ends any more sensitive.

The same with children who do not object to being whipped; their nerve-ends are dull, they cannot comprehend or appreciate pain the same as the alleged normal mind.

[Sidenote: Degenerate minus]

Degeneracy minus is really due to the physical condition of man, _the nerve-ends of his senses being so dulled that he fails to properly or normally receive impressions_.

In a store window across the street is the lithograph of a blind violinist who is to appear here this week. The paper last evening stated that his hearing is so sensitive that if he hears a discord he immediately faints, (lucky for him that he is not rooming in this house; he would be in a constant faint). In the previous pages I told you that all orifices are connected; that two in the head always respond to the irritation of the other end of the nerve. In this case the eye is inactive, dead, the ear super-sensitive. ’Tis very plain. These two extreme responses are daily demonstrated, with your “real nice” person, and the gross. Same cause, practically the same thought, only “extra fine” instead of “extra coarse.” You get either of two positives from every suggestion, positive for—plus; positive against—minus.

[Sidenote: Positive, for or against]

Every suggestion forces either one or the other of these positives. We will assume that there are two men standing on the street corner, one whose ideas are so associated with everything connected with drinking, that it is abhorrent to him; with the other everything is congenial. A third party approaches and says, “Let’s have a drink,” which arouses in the “mind” of the first party all of his ideas contrary to drinking and he refuses, not of his own choice, but because the ideas associated in his mind are forced into play. The second man immediately accepts, because his ideas associated are all positive for and in favor of such an act.

The same lesion will result in either a prude, a masturbator, or a prostitute; different modifications forced by external environment.

Cesare Lombroso tells us much as to statistics, but offers no cure. I have but little use for that kind of science.

[Sidenote: Degeneracy curable]

If the reader will comprehend the foregoing, he will readily see that degeneracy is simply physical, as I have just described. My experience with orificial surgery has proven to me that these conditions can be changed.

[Sidenote: Inheritance only physical]

That man inherits aught else than a physical condition is false, and he can inherit that only directly from his mother; the male ancestors are eliminated.

[Sidenote: Cleanliness]

[Sidenote: To lessen crime and insanity]

Degenerates breed degenerates in several ways. The degenerate mother passes the degeneracy or mal-transformation and also her environment to the daughter. The degenerate is forced to the gross, the coarse, responding naturally and readily to a coarse environment; in fact, everything affecting the senses that is repulsive to the refined, is attractive to this coarse nature. Taste is vitiated; coarse, decayed, cheap food is palatable. He lives in a foul atmosphere, and, consequently, builds his house out of the “foul,” and as the body, so is the mind, foul from environment. Clean your cities, “cleanliness is Godliness”; it is of God,—good. Instead of for penitentiaries, spend the taxes on clean environment and food for the poor, thus lessening crime and insanity. Putting a man in a penitentiary results in nothing but an expense to the state. If this man was sent to a hospital and he was put in a proper physical condition, his new body and mind (he gets one every six months) would be built out of better material; in a few years the rebuilding out of good material, with pure food and good sanitation, the degenerate would be in a fair way to become a moral man.

I feel as certain as that I am sitting here, and hope ere long to prove, that I can take a young child of the most degenerate parentage, showing a vicious and degenerate nature, and in five years make a reputable being of him.

[Sidenote: A New York “authority”]

[Sidenote: Breaking up habits]

A writer in one of the New York evening papers, who professes to be a hypnotist, has written many words concerning the cures he has made on some degenerates. I deny them to be cures, inasmuch as the cause was never removed. An alleged hypnotic cure, the removal of the cause through hypnosis, I doubt. You may break up the habit, but my experience has proven to me that some new habit replaces it. All cause must give voice in effect, remove one effect and another will appear. I have cured hundreds of people of stuttering through hypnosis alone, but have always found that a new nervous trouble appeared. To-day, I will treat no stutterer by personal suggestion until he has submitted to an orificial operation.

[Sidenote: Can drunkenness be cured through hypnosis?]

I doubt if drunkenness or morphinism has ever been permanently cured through hypnosis. These diseases are of the secretive nerve-centers. Telling the subject that he will not desire these things, or substituting some other desire in their place, will not deceive the Abdominal Brain (mind) when it wants something and knows what. If, through hypnosis, an operator can learn of an inspiration that will stimulate the proper secretions, the patient can be very readily cured. Taking morphine or liquor from a man does not cure him; stimulate the secretions and he will be freed from the desire or need for the poisons.

[Sidenote: Hospitals needed]

[Sidenote: A healthy man gained]

The criminal, being a sick man, should be sent to a hospital. If a man suffering from delirium tremens be brought before a judge, he should be sentenced to the hospital until pronounced able to work, then put to work for a period decided by the _physician_. The patient should first rest in the hospital for a week, then be put on the operating table and the cause of his disease removed; then, two weeks later, when he has recovered from the operation, be put at some light work and given _proper_ food and work until he is re-established. From the day he goes to work his family should weekly be paid by the state for the work done. Thus no one would suffer and all gain. A healthy man would be gained both to the state and to his family. So with all criminals, remove the cause and surround them with a _healthy body_ and external surrounding of “normal” work, not iron bars and walls, but freedom of health.

NOTE.—My experience with the deaf, dumb, and blind, particularly where the cause was given as resulting from scarlet fever, measles, et cetera, is that the so-called cause was based only upon the assumption of a follower of an ignorant philosophy. I challenge those in charge of institutions for the deaf, dumb and blind to produce an inmate that has no orificial lesion, providing the result was not caused by a direct lesion in the organ affected.

[Sidenote: Not a creature of choice]

If our all-wise legislators would pass a law imposing a fine and punishment on anyone who had diphtheria, typhoid fever, or consumption, would that lessen the extent of disease? Penitentiaries do not lessen crime. Man is not a creature of choice, but of environment. When he responds opposite to what we call normal, it is because his machinery is working wrongly; he is sick, and instead of penitentiaries we should have hospitals. Our thoughts are forced on us through our environment; and our bodies are our closest environment; as our body is, so are our thoughts (actions).

[Sidenote: Prostitution a disease]

Prostitution is a disease. If a person has a sexual irritation what thought will always be dominant, what ideas will permeate every thought? That of sexuality. Remove the irritation and we will have a person “normal” to external environment, barring for a short time the recurrence of the old associated ideas (nerve habit). By orificial operations, I have also cured young men of blackguarding, smutty story telling, swearing; they making no effort to be cured, after the operations they ceased to give voice to these expressions.

A few weeks ago I visited a family in which was a child some eight years of age, showing in her face perfect health, hence purity, the father and mother carrying in their faces every sign of degeneracy (minus). The more I studied the child, the more I became satisfied that she was not of her seeming parentage. By the time dinner was finished, I had firmly concluded that either that child was not theirs, or my philosophy was an entire failure. A half-hour later, the father, through a series of questions forced upon him, remarked that the child was not theirs, that it had been adopted when it was a few weeks old.

Dear reader, I have proven comprehensively to myself _all_ that is written in this book; it may not be perfect, but it is on the right track.

[Sidenote: Crime an attribute of disease]

All confirmed criminals, if they live long enough, go insane, become cripples or pronounced invalids, showing that their criminality was only one of the early attributes of a physical disease. Lombroso tries to show that epilepsy is the ultimate development of a criminal, but I cannot accept that. I unhesitatingly affirm that cigarettes, grief, anger, disgrace, et cetera, never were the cause of insanity; the body was ill and the so-called cause, at most, only hurried the result. The “excessiveness” is a demonstration of the disease. (No well being has an excessive temper, et cetera.)

SUGGESTION

Suggestion, anything that arouses an action.

The following incidents will make my meaning clearer than all the dissertations that could be written. This book is not to teach you how to specifically apply suggestion, but to open your eyes to the power that rules—cause—suggestion.

Man’s closest environment is his body.

[Sidenote: Story of Lily]

A few summers ago, I spent some four months with a family in Ohio, studying particularly a three-year-old daughter of the woman employed to do the housework. The child dined at the table with the others of the family, was very fat, having chops like a monkey and eyes like a pig, and the mother made it her special duty to stuff the child. When the child’s eyes wandered around the table more food was given her, and when she said she had enough her mother insisted on her having a little more. I asked why this was, and the mother replied that she had had a hard time getting enough to eat, so she was going to be sure that the child had enough. I said, “Madam, you are ruining the child, you are making of her a hog.”

She replied, “No, the child is all right.”

The child simply was a two-legged hog.

[Sidenote: The routine]

[Sidenote: Hog nature]

The day’s routine was something as follows: Being accustomed all my life to staying up nights, I rarely fall asleep until daylight, and get the better part of my sleep in the forenoons. At nine a. m., I would hear, “Lily, Lily, come in out of that, or I will spank you.” In a few minutes a repetition would occur, and I would hear Lily being spanked. The child seemed to enjoy the spanking, and it simply wallowed in the dirt. At noon the mother would change the child’s frock, complaining of the many frocks soiled and how dirty she became, stuffed her little belly full of food and put the child on the sofa to sleep, which it would do until about four p. m. The child would then get up, wallow in the dirt, soil another slip, and at night the mother would stuff her again. After supper the mother would undress her, wash her and put her to bed. At about one a. m., we would hear, “Mamma, mamma, dink, mamma.” The mother, who ate as vigorously as the child, slept like a hog and was hard to arouse. So little Lily would call, “Mamma, mamma, dink, mamma,” until the mother awoke and gave her a drink of water; the child would then sleep till morning. The same repetition day in and day out. Lily’s greatest pleasure was rolling on her belly in the dirt.

[Sidenote: An experiment]

[Sidenote: Great change in five days]

In about a month the mother took a vacation of two weeks, leaving the child with the family. I immediately asked the lady of the house if she would treat the child my way for a couple of weeks and see what would be the result. She acquiesced. “First of all, place on the child’s plate a reasonable amount of food, about one-quarter of what the mother is in the habit of giving her, and the moment the child’s eyes wander around the table to see something to tempt her appetite, dismiss her.” We began, and that night Lily feebly called for a drink; after that she failed to call, inasmuch as the stomach was not full of undigested food to cause a feverish condition. In five days Lily stopped rolling in the dirt. Instead of dirtying five frocks, she soiled but one, and that not very badly. Instead of sleeping in the afternoon, she was wide-awake; the pig look left her eyes, they became bright; the fulness of her chops began to disappear. Up to this time it had been impossible for her to control her bladder. One spanking settled that. In a week Lily was an entirely different girl, and a very pretty child. At the end of the second week, when the mother returned, her first remark was, “My goodness, how beautiful and nice Lily is looking.” But in two or three days the mother went back to the old regimen—Lily must not be starved, and I suppose by this time she is a big hog.

To look at the mother, the scientists (?) would say it was inherited from her. No; it was her mother’s ways—the environment. The environment given the child by her mother was her inheritance.

[Sidenote: Wallow in the dirt]

Why did Lily wallow in the dirt? Because she had learned that the irritation caused by rubbing her abdomen against some object would relieve the congestion; that the cool earth relieved the feverish congested condition of her abdomen, which came from overloading her stomach.

[Sidenote: Loved to be spanked]

Lily loved to be spanked. Why? Because the spanking drew the blood from the congested parts and was a relief, and she always felt better after this operation. The same congested condition was the cause of her not being able to control her bladder action. When the congestion was removed, the child could do as others. Therefore, the child being in the condition that she must be in now, it is plain to see she inherited nothing but an environment which was possible in the early stages to correct.

[Sidenote: Degenerate children]

If the child is a degenerate, a criminal, it should not be punished. It is doing only what its environment forced upon it. Many children enjoy being punished. Why? For the same reason that Lily enjoyed it. Many children have no fear of a whipping, simply because the nerve-ends of feeling are so dulled that they fail to receive the effect usually produced. Those children should be sent to a surgeon, who generally can remove the cause. Their food should be changed. I know of a case of a very estimable lady who had two of the handsomest and sweetest little children I had ever seen. She came to me and said, “Mr. Santanelli, I have two beautiful children, but they are the two meanest young ones in the city, they are quarreling with everybody; they are vicious. I have whipped them, I have punished them in every manner, but I cannot cure them. What can I do with them? Can they be cured?”

[Sidenote: Animals]

“Yes, madam; it is very easy. You simply have two little animals. What do you feed them?”

“Oh, in the morning we have a little ham and eggs, bacon or a little steak, at noon a little cold meat of some kind, and at dinner hot meat of some kind.”

“And you wonder that your children are as they are? What can you expect. You are feeding them on flesh. Their bodies are one mass of _concentrated energy_. Their digestive organs are all worried, irritated and overtaxed; they are in a naturally vicious mood. Take meat from their bill of fare, particularly the pork, and you will find you have no trouble with your children.”

The mother did so, and some three months afterwards wrote to me that the change was marvelous; the children were what she hoped them to be.

[Sidenote: Hunger]

Dear reader, were you ever hungry? Do you know what hunger is? As everything is a combination of attributes, what are the attributes of hunger? Hunger, as we know it, is entirely artificial. A child is born and put to the breast, and the “good” mother does her best to force the child to fill itself; in a short time the child learns never to release the breast until its little abdomen is distended, and soon associates the feeling of distention as one of the attributes necessary before the cessation of filling up. As the child progresses, it learns or associates the ideas as to eating at certain hours; being in an uncomfortable (not comfortable now) but an “abnormal” condition, to always eat until its clothes are too tight, until it has a distention about the stomach; when these conditions are present it is not hungry, at all other times it is (?).

If you think a minute, you would conceive that what _we_ call hunger is false—acquired; few of us have ever experienced real hunger. I believe that real hunger is only when the digestive apparatus is forced by the mind to manifest an action with which we are unfamiliar, and even that action, or the necessity of the action is mostly acquired, learned of the different foods, the kinds of foods, the temperature of the food, and builds up an artificial or false memory condition.

[Sidenote: All is acquired]

Everything man does after birth, other than the replacing of his body, is acquired. Any action connected with the cerebro-spinal system is acquired and responsive to present environment (suggestion). It can be trained in any way, provided we know what environment to place around it.

Theoretically, a healthy man should digest one hundred per cent of all food taken into the stomach, and the quantity of such food should be at most one-tenth of the amount he now consumes. He can be taught to live on anything. His digestive apparatus, if taken in time, can be taught, within a certain limit, to be satisfied and to properly take care of himself by any simple combination.

[Sidenote: Sleep false (?)]

Speaking of the acquisition of habits, sleep is nearly all false and acquired; aside from the inactivity of the “mind,” sleep is greatly false. A babe falls out of bed, man does not, provided he is sober. Some require a soft bed, some a hard one, some need a high pillow. A monkey must learn to wrap his tail around the branch of a tree, the chicken to hold on to the roost with its feet. How much of man is inherent? I think nothing other than the building of his body.

[Sidenote: Try to comprehend this story]

[Sidenote: The face tells]

Some three years ago in Cleveland, Ohio, I placed an advertisement in the morning papers asking for the services of a young lady to travel with me and assist in hypnotizing, receiving some two hundred answers. Knowing well my nerve-ends, and being able to read the physical conditions, thereby the mental conditions, of a woman, by the “reflexes” in her face, I chose one, refusing several whom I had much rather have engaged, but whose faces told me that their troubles were such that, in the ordinary experience of mankind, they had responded to their deplorable suggestions, therefore, were not such as I desired. The face of the young lady whom I engaged plainly indicated her purity, inasmuch as I deduced from it that her purity, physically at least, had to be. I hired this young lady on the condition that the first time I desired her to go on the surgeon’s table for an operation she would do so, telling her her troubles. The girl’s eyes opened in astonishment, and she asked if I could look into people, wondering how it was possible for me to state the condition of her health, as I had, without asking her questions.

[Sidenote: A real doctor]

Note here, dear reader, that I am different from a doctor. When you go to the doctor, _you_ tell him what is the matter with you, and then he prescribes. It strikes me that a real doctor could tell you what is the matter with you.

Now, my troubles began. The girl’s mother undertook to blackmail me; then the girl’s father; then her brother; and then the newspapers of Cleveland were full of stories about Santanelli hypnotizing and stealing away a young lady. The would-be professional men who were hypnotists (?) had an excellent opportunity of telling the newspaper reporters what they didn’t know about hypnosis, what was possible, and what was not possible; but I, being a good (?) showman, did not object to all this valuable advertising, and found a good many of my friends ready to assure the young lady that it was a terrible thing; that, now she was in my power, there was no telling what I would do with her. For some strange reason, probably because the young lady was possessed of what is usually called “common sense,” failed to accept their advice, and after they had locked her up in the Home of the Good Shepherd and her good minister refused to extend a helping hand, I sent word to her to promise anything demanded, which she did, and was taken “home”; on that night she jumped out of a second-story window and disappeared.

[Sidenote: Perversion]

The young lady joined me and soon became an adept as a hypnotist, and to me an exceptionally interesting study. She had graduated from one of the best seminaries in Ohio, was full of alleged learning, and hated above all things “love” poetry and married men (to her women that had more than two children were beasts), in her opinion, the most disgusting thing in the world was kissing, and she failed to understand how people could tolerate pets. If you will note, she objected to, or was positive against, anything that had at the root of it connubial love (sexuality). Ask her why she disliked these things and she could give no comprehensive answer. It was only after six weeks’ study that I discovered the key-note to be a perverted love nature. Now, dear reader, remember a perversion is not always bad, it is other than the accepted “normal.”

In Kentucky, I placed this young lady on the surgeon’s table and she was operated upon, my diagnosis being pronounced perfect by the surgeon, who, when I made it known to him, laughed at me, stating that I was some kind of a fool. After he had made a physical examination, he wondered greatly at my ability to “look into” people, as he called it. The most important trouble was an undeveloped uterus, which was properly curetted. I might note here that the young lady, although not being hypnotized, was, in the first quarter of a minute after the chloroform cup was placed over her face, completely unconscious; that several times during the operation when I remarked to the surgeon who was giving the anesthetic, to “crowd it, and she would do so and so,” the moment that the cup was replaced she immediately responded. At the completion of the operation she was laid on the bed, and I remarked that in one minute she would be herself, and in that time she was. Here is a case of “suggestion,” pure and simple. I had never attempted to hypnotize this young lady, inasmuch as I was ever expecting to again be the object of an attempt at blackmail.

[Sidenote: Suggestion]

This girl was not anesthetized by the chloroform; the suggestion of the chloroform emphasized by her perfect confidence in me, knowing the result desired and being of an intelligence capable to respond, took on the entire condition at the _suggestion of the chloroform_.

[Sidenote: A quick change]

One hour after the operation my wife told her that, as she was now comfortable, she—my wife—would go down and have supper, and the young lady turned to her, saying, “Mrs. Santanelli, will you kiss me before you go?” My wife dropped the glass that was in her hand and remarked, “Why, you don’t want me to kiss you?” And the young lady said, “Yes.” Later the same night, she turned to my wife and said, “Mrs. Santanelli, do you know, I believe I did not mean all I said when I laughed at you for caring so much for your little dog that died.”

Lady visitors came, and the young lady seemed much hurt if they did not kiss her on departing.

The girl made a quick recovery, traveled with me for several months, during which time her entire nature and disposition changed. Those things that she had so disliked were now reasonably liked. At one time I was a bit frightened, being fearful that perhaps I had stirred up irritations that would result in a much more detrimental manner than had been the ones removed, but I can say that the good expected was accomplished.

[Sidenote: Positive against to positive for]

The _sudden_ change was brought about through the inflamed and now counter-irritated parts that previously had produced the positive against, and now were forcing thought positive for. If her mental state and its explanation to you is comprehensible, you can readily understand how it is possible for me to state that in many cases of insanity, perversions, et cetera, I can positively name the lesion or cause, and it is always orificial—excepting injury to the brain centers.

[Sidenote: No mental diseases]

_Insanity is a physical disease, there are no mental diseases._

So-called mental diseases are the result of a physical disease, and the disease, _per se_, is not mental. Many of the so-called insane cases of mothers are the result of scars in the cervix. I have had examinations made where surgeon after surgeon had denied the existence of a scar, I still insisting, and in the end found a surgeon capable of discovering that which I persistently maintained; after removal, complete mental recovery has always followed.

[Sidenote: Fear, et cetera]

I have never known of a case with a fear of dying, a feeling that everyone hates one, that one has no friends, sometimes going to extremes as to “spirits,”—seeing and hearing them, et cetera,—where there was not a scar in the cervix, always the result of improper delivery.

[Sidenote: Loss of memory]

Loss of memory, where there is no lesion in the head, will always be found the result of an enlarged or shrunken prostate. The prostate gland in man may be compared as to its reflexes with the uterus in women. Loss of memory in old age among men is always accompanied by, or the result of, an “abnormal” prostate. Remember, reader, every nerve has two ends; at one end is cause (suggestion), at the other is result (response).

[Sidenote: Negro problem]

The negro problem of the South could readily be adjusted by enforcing the law of Moses. The negro’s body is built of sow-belly—his brain likewise. Give him proper orificial treatment, thus removing the suggestion of sensuality, and your negro will be a harmless, valuable citizen.

[Sidenote: Not free agents]

They are burned for rape, yet that fails to lessen the number of assaults. If burning fails to stop it, surely “mind” has nothing to do with the act. The history of rape cases is that the ones assaulted are, as a rule, children, old women and those whom a “normally” passionate man would fail to be attracted to, proving that this so-called reason is lacking when the assault occurs. Hence, I again affirm that we are not free agents, we are ruled by our environment; our bodies are our closest environment; crime and insanity are physical diseases.

[Sidenote: Pasteur and “bugs”]

[Sidenote: Hydrophobia]