Zone Therapy; Or, Relieving Pain at Home. Edwin F. Bowers

consulted several European experts. Her heart was in a very dangerous condition, owing to the amount of antipyrin and other headache powders she had taken.

      Her pain was located most generally in the forehead, and during the height of the attacks extended up as far as the top of the head.

      It was not relieved by sleep—indeed, it was worse, if anything, after such poor and inadequate sleep as she was able to get. This fact eliminated eye-strain as a cause, for eye-strain headaches are almost invariably better after a night’s rest.

      Every organ in the body had received a most thorough overhauling, and still those headaches held the fort. So the diagnoses settled down into “pain habit.”

      Christian Science, magnetic healing, faith cure, and most of the modern medical fads had all been tried, without success. She was on the verge of suicidal melancholia.

      The afternoon I first saw her she was almost in hysteria—her pain was so acute. For when telephoning for her appointment she had been told not to take any opiates—as they might “mask the symptoms,” and confuse the diagnosis.

      Without stopping to question her, I washed my hands in an antiseptic solution, placed the tips of the first and second fingers of my right hand close against the roots of her incisor, or front teeth, held her head rigidly with the left hand, and pressed firmly for two minutes. I then moved my finger tips an inch further back on the hard palate, and repeated the pressure for another two minutes.

      Releasing her, I stepped back, much as an artist might, in viewing a piece of work that pleases him. That I was justified in so doing was proved by the fact that, for the first time in three years, except when under the complete influence of an opiate, this lady was absolutely free from pain.

      I instructed her husband, who accompanied her, just where to make the proper pressures when the pain returned, and within a week had a report from him that there were now no further attacks of the neuralgic headaches. This relief has persisted for more than a year.

      Headaches frequently respond to pressures exerted over the joints on the thumb or fingers, or sometimes it may be necessary to “attack” it from the inside of the nose, or from some other point of vantage in the zone affected.

      As an illustration of how pain can be squeezed out of the head through the fingers, a typical case, reported by Dr. George Starr White, of Los Angeles, California, may be helpful.

      A lady suffered from a very severe headache on the top of her head, which had persisted for more than three weeks. She had consulted several doctors, who had given her “coal tars,” opiates, and hypodermics, but the relief was only temporary.

      Dr. White told her nothing of what was contemplated, but took hold of her hands, and began firmly pressing on the first, second and third fingers—the pain being diffused over the frontal regions—at the same time engaging her in conversation concerning her condition.

      After about three minutes he asked her if she would locate with her hand just where the pain was. She hesitated, looked up, and said, “Do you use mental therapy?” Then, after blinking perplexedly for half a minute, she added: “For the first time in three weeks, except when I’ve been under the influence of narcotics, the pain is entirely gone.”

      Dr. White told her to have someone repeat these finger pressures, at the same time emphasizing that if she failed to get relief from this method to come back. He has not seen her since.

      But the same condition in the same patient may not be cleared up from the same point every time. For instance, if the pain is in the second zone of the forehead, at one time we may stop it by “attacking” the forefinger. The next time, however, pressure upon that finger might not have the slightest effect, and we would have to go to the tongue or the roof of the mouth to get results. Another time we might be successful only from the nose—or by pressing the teeth of an aluminum comb on the skull, above or below the seat of pain—and so on.

      Now, physicians have for many years, been consistently teaching our patients and the public how not to get sick. Why not carry this teaching to its only logical conclusion, and teach them how, by perfectly safe and harmless means, they may, if sick, cure themselves of their minor ailments?

      It would add marvelously to the sum total of health, happiness, and economic efficiency if all headaches, for instance, which could be cured by zone therapy were cured and kept cured—by spreading the knowledge of how to keep them cured.

      We feel certain also that the medical profession, as soon as it is generally informed concerning zone therapy, will eagerly welcome the opportunity to promulgate the advantages of a safe and harmless method of relieving headache and pain. And also of doing away with the necessity for longer resorting to dangerous antipyrin or phenacetin tablets and powders. This is a crusade worthy of their highest altruism and noblest self-sacrifice.

CHAPTER III. CURING GOITRE WITH A PROBE.

       Table of Contents

      One of the most obstinate disorders that afflict humanity—and one which seems to be rapidly on the increase—is goitre. Goitre is a general condition, in which the thyroid gland becomes progressively enlarged, producing an unsightly swelling low down on the front of the neck.

      Associated with this swelling—whether as a cause or as an effect no one knows for a certainty—is a distressing state of nervousness, apprehension, and general discomfort.

      Frequently the case becomes “exophthalmic” in type, running a pulse of 150 or more to the minute, and later developing irregularities in the heart’s action. In this form there is also a marked protrusion of the eye-balls, from pressure behind the globes of the eye, due to disturbances in the local circulation.

      Many causes have been assigned for goitre, but no one knows for certain which is the correct one. Because of its prevalence in Switzerland and in other mountainous regions, where the inhabitants are obliged to depend upon water which was originally snow for their drinking supply, it was thought that the condition arose as a result of the lack of lime and other mineral salts ordinarily found in water which had been more intimately in contact with the earth. Yet the feeding of these mineral salts to those afflicted with goitre made no appreciable difference in the condition of these patients.

      Other observers have ascribed goitre to the influence of the nervous tension, under which we live in this era of break-your-neck-to-get-there-and-do-it. Others locate the seat of this disease in the brain itself, in the blood vessels, and in the blood; others, who favor the so-called “mechanical theory,” ascribe the symptoms to compression by an enlarged thyroid gland of the nerves and vessels in the neck, although they neglect to tell us how the gland became enlarged, in the first place.

      Many authorities claim that the trouble originates most frequently as a result of eye strain. They insist that the visual centres, using as they do, one-third of all the brain energy, are overworked, in our intensive modern life, and react upon the body to produce the toxins of fatigue. The thyroid body, one of whose functions it is to secrete a product which tends to neutralize these toxins, works overtime on the job, and not knowing when to quit, keeps right on working—with the result that the system is overcharged with thyroid extract. This thyroidism, as it is called, ultimately produces the goitrous symptoms.

      Other clinicians contend that the disease is of microbic origin—which is quite unlikely—because when the glands have been brought to the autopsy table and the pathological laboratory, microbes have not been found in quantity sufficient to cause these grave symptoms.

      But what interests and discourages those afflicted most is that if the cause is known, the successful treatment is even more unknown.

      Medical men have treated these conditions on the general supposition that there was either too much or not enough thyroid extract secreted and discharged into the circulation by the thyroid gland.

      So they gave thyroid tablets, made from the dried and pulverized glands of sheep. If these diminished the intensity of the symptoms, the doctors knew that