Excerpt from Baunscheidtismus or the New Curing Method: Improved by Dr. J. Firmenich, to Which Is Added a Treatise on the Eye, Its Diseases and Cure, Illustrated With Several Wood Engravings

Throughout the boundless creation of the Almighty, in the forests and in the fields, in the water and in the air, kind nature, embracing all her children with equal love, has accumulated her benefits and blessings for all mankind the Esquimaux, the poor children of the icy polar regions, the anachorites of the arid des ert, rejoice, like the inhabitants of the luxurious south, in sunshine and rain, and gratefully enjoy the gifts of a long, happy and joy ous life, which flow out of an inexhaustible fountain. Man, in his primitive state, knowing no other law than that of the Crea tor, which is testified on every leaf of the trees, and on every blade of grass in the meadows, his desires keeping pace merely with his physical wants, stood nearest to nature, and could and did, during centuries, defy all noxious influences: for he was truly and purely her child and pupil. Thousands of years rolled on before the natural and healthy corporal existence of man was broken in upon by artificial foods and sensual pleasures, when it became enervated and feeble under the direction of the social system, and thus was life pressed forward, by these, means, to wards those deplorable sicknesses which bring death to the innate spirit's freshness, by violence done to nature's laws, inflicting upon the primitive bodily strength numberless diseases and dis appointments of every description.

Having for the reasons before stated, considered, more closely, life as it now exists, it appears to us like a transient shadow, lim ited to a few years, and its tenure held under feeble health, dissi pated strength, and frustrated hopes. Disease disturbs the vigor of the human body, and operates detrimentally on the mind un der its baneful influence, all faculties which could otherwise ad minister to the pleasures that surround us on all sides, bepome partially or wholly destroyed, and nature, the ever-living source of so many enjoyments, becomes a temple filled with the altars of death, on which the flame of love and enthusiasm burns no longer. The eye, the mirror of the soul, looks faintly and senselessly around, and is unable to distinguish in creation that fulness of life which is of such paramount importance to a healthy and con tented mind; and thus, man, whose spirit of inquiry embraces every department of science, loses his most beautiful crown, the desire for truth, and the joy of life. To him who is lying pros trate on the bed of sickness what does it signify how much wealth he may possess when he is no longer able, even to count it, what avail him the most delicious meats and the choicest wines, which he is no longer capable of enjoying? A confined and ignoble spirit embitters the life of the covetously wealthy man, even when sickness has not visited him, but on the contrary health has Open ed her beneficent hand to bestow upon his misled fancy all the pleasures of life]; instead of availing himself of such bounteous offers, he embraces the weariness of life which frequently leads forth the unfortunate victim to his own destruction.

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