Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by J. H. RUTTLEY, M. D., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. Stereotyped by Painter & Co., PREFACE. The market is flooded with books which purport to treat upon the various topics included in the title which I have given to this work, and yet there is no one of them that meets the public demand. Two motives seem to have influenced the authors and publishers, namely: 1. A desire to make money by the sale of the books; 2. A desire to advertise certain quack nostrums. Many of these works are the merest trash, crowded with indecent language, apparently for no other purpose than to attract the ignorant and vulgar. All of them cater more or less to the popular prejudices, seeking to curry favor with the influential classes. In view of these, and many other considerations, I have been induced to undertake the task of the present publication. In the present day, it seems to me that "the three learned professions," as they are called, are contributing more than all things beside to the perpetuation of the errors and superstitions of the dark ages. A mystery is made of everything, so that the common people shall not understand, and whoever can employ the highest sounding terms, or quote most fluently from the dead languages, is accepted as an oracle of wisdom. Thus, error is popularized and transmitted to future generations. The people themselves have long been aware that they are being doctored to death, yet they do not comprehend a tenth part of the misery that is being entailed upon them by the administration of poisonous drugs. Nor can any one, save an educated physician, even approximate to a knowledge of the dreadful sufferings and cruel murders that are daily inflicted. A realization of these things have prompted me to take up my pen in behalf of the common people, and the reader has now before him the first installment of what I have undertaken. 159785 When I commenced this work my first thought was to abridge so as to include all within the compass of the present volume; but a very little reflection assured me that this could not be done without greatly impairing the benefits which I was anxious to confer upon mankind, and then I decided that if my life was spared other volumes should follow as I could spare the time for their preparation. Still, something will depend upon the demand for the first volume. If the people stand by me I will not only fight their battle for them, but will teach them how they may secure life and health without employing doctors, and what is far more important, how beautiful, moral and intellectual children may be born to them, in place of the sickly unfortunates which everywhere meet the gaze. The second volume will begin where this one leaves off, continuing to tear down the errors of the popular systems of medical practice, and giving instead the vis medicatrix naturea, so that the mother may take proper care of herself during gestation; and when the child shall have been born, then full directions as to the care of both it and the mother. If permitted, I shall follow the child through all the stages and epochs of life, including diet, clothing, bathing, exercise, employment, study and education, courtship for both sexes, and finally marriage, the greatest event of life. In the meantime let the reader study the present volume and accept for his and her best prosperity the kind regards of the AUTHOR. Science is a knowledge of facts and forces; Art is the exercise of intellectual and physical power in the control of these forces for the benefit of mankind. Between the organic and inorganic there is no such gulf as men have in the past ages thought. From crystal to protoplasm, the way seems long and impassable by the laws of chemistry as formerly understood, or indeed, even to-day. But the flinty crys tal has come through the geologic ages, from silic acid diffused through water, colloidal or dynamical condition of the atoms which the crystal holds at rest; and between that crystal and the simplest form of organic matter. Nature could show you many colloidal states, many compounds formed and forming, many activities, an unrest of the atoms, a discontent with death, a struggling upward in search of life. These ever varying phenomena, the passage of a colloid into a protoplasm, or the genesis of an animalculæ from the decaying atoms of a leaf or muscle, to a bioplasm, give the lie to Atheism and proclaim a spirit of Infinite Intelligence which Christians are agreed in calling God. Moral philosophy teaches that force is spirit in motion. What is that spirit? Is it an aggregation of spirit from mortal life? By no means, else it would be finite, whereas this spirit which pervades the entire universe must be infinite. Alexander Pope was inspired with a most sublime comprehension of this spirit when he exclaimed: "See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth, Again, while describing the manifestations of this infinite spirit, he says: "Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, The nimble fingers of the sunbeam have stirred up all the reservoirs of Force, from the coal in the rock to the brain in mankind. The most complicated organ known to Science is the thinking Brain. From the moment we wake in the morning until sleep closes our eyes at night, it is in constant activity, and we cannot keep from thinking even if we would. The Brain is the great volume of nervous tissue that is lodged within the skull; it is the largest and most complete of the nervous centres; its maximum weight in the adult male is five pounds, and in the female four and a half pounds; but the loss of weight in the female is more than compensated in the fineness of the texture, etc. Within the skull the brain is enveloped by certain membranes which at once protect it from friction, and furnish it with a supply of nutrient vessels, the one called the arachonid or "spider's web," the dura |