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weight had increased he must have been cured and

that he was only imagining disease/' Imaginary

indeed ! If the patient gets " a feeling of sudden

stiffness " and becomes " unable to walk when

passing along the road/' is it an imaginary disease?

The heavy eating has clogged the nerves and other

tissues to such an extent, that the muscles of loco-

motion suddenly fail sometimes. This is not the

way to cure diseases of the digestive organs,

It is nonsense to say that dyspepsia and neuras-
thenia are imaginary disease, and advise the patient
to imagine himself healthy/ as a means of getting
well* " The honest doctor is one who freely con-
fesses that these disease conditions are beyond the
power of medical science to cure/ or even to relieve/
without, in the end/ making the patient worse than
ever before/'

A TYPICAL CASE OF NEURASTHENIA

patient in this case was my father/ treated
by himself. He began life with a heavy inheritance
of the seeds of disease ; constipation/ piles, fistula
of the, anus/ dyspepsia and their kin were among
the best known ailments in the family. The up-
bringing was, as my father himself puts it, anything
but right. It is not necessary here to trace the
whole history of his progress in ill-health/ because
he has given it in detail in his " Practical Nature-
Cure." I shall content myself with describing { in
his own words ) the state of his body and mind at
the time he sought refuge in Nature in the year 1912
(he was then aged thirty-three ) and his health ward
progress under Nature-Cure.
" The nerves and skin had by this time completely
all powers of adjustment to the climate; suxrimer