The Bell bill limitations would drive the osteopaths
out of the State. Oh, dear me! when you drive
somebody out of the State you create the same condition
as prevailed in the Garden of Eden.
You want the thing that you can’t have.
I didn’t care much about the osteopaths, but
as soon as I found they were going to drive them out
I got in a state of uneasiness, and I can’t
sleep nights now.
I know how Adam felt in the Garden of Eden about the
prohibited apple. Adam didn’t want the
apple till he found out he couldn’t have it,
just as he would have wanted osteopathy if he couldn’t
have it.
Whose property is my body? Probably mine.
I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who
must be answerable? I, not the State. If
I choose injudiciously, does the State die?
Oh no.
I was the subject of my mother’s experiment.
She was wise. She made experiments cautiously.
She didn’t pick out just any child in the flock.
No, she chose judiciously. She chose one she
could spare, and she couldn’t spare the others.
I was the choice child of the flock; so I had to
take all of the experiments.
In 1844 Kneipp filled the world with the wonder of
the water cure. Mother wanted to try it, but
on sober second thought she put me through. A
bucket of ice-water was poured over to see the effect.
Then I was rubbed down with flannels, sheet was dipped
in the water, and I was put to bed. I perspired
so much that mother put a life-preserver to bed with
me.
But this had nothing but a spiritual effect on me,
and I didn’t care for that. When they
took off the sheet it was yellow from the output of
my conscience, the exudation of sin. It purified
me spiritually, and it remains until this day.
I have experimented with osteopathy and allopathy.
I took a chance at the latter for old times’
sake, for, three tines, when a boy, mother’s
new methods got me so near death’s door she had
to call in the family physician to pull me out.
The physicians think they are moved by regard for
the best interests of the public. Isn’t
there a little touch of self-interest back of it all?
It seems to me there is, and I don’t claim to
have all the virtues—only nine or ten of
them.
I was born in the “Banner State,” and
by “Banner State” I mean Missouri.
Osteopathy was born in the same State, and both of
us are getting along reasonably well. At a time
during my younger days my attention was attracted
to a picture of a house which bore the inscription,
“Christ Disputing with the Doctors.”
I could attach no other meaning to it than that Christ
was actually quarreling with the doctors. So
I asked an old slave, who was a sort of a herb doctor
in a small way—unlicensed, of course—what
the meaning of the picture was. “What
had has done?” I asked. And the colored
man replied “Humph, he ain’t got no license.”
