Health and healing (historical)

Medical and dietary books from 1881 to 1918, kept as documents of their time. They describe treatments that medicine has since dropped, and nothing here should be read as advice for a living patient.

• Auto-intoxication as a Cause and Complication of Disease

  W. Louis Chapman · 1903

  A 1903 paper from Providence on “auto-intoxication”, the idea that the body poisons itself with its own waste: cytolysins, urinary components, bile acids, ptomaines and leucomaines.

  Contents45 sections listed

• Autointoxication Or Intestinal Toxemia

  John Harvey Kellogg · 1918

  Kellogg’s 1918 case for intestinal “autointoxication”: bacteria, putrefaction, meat and the intestinal flora. His preface mentions the “radical surgical measures” of the surgeon William Arbuthnot Lane, whose…

  Contents177 sections listed

• Destructive and Constructive Food Mixtures

  Axel Emil Gibson · 1914

  A 1914 diet book on which foods may be eaten together: cereals, cooked and raw food, fruit with vegetables, soups, gravies, pastry, meat, sugar and milk, with a chapter on Metchnikoff’s sour-milk bacillus.

  Contents38 sections listed

• On Diet And Regimen In Sickness And Health

  Horace Dobell · 1882

  The seventh edition (1882) of a London physician’s rules for health and diet, with the prefaces of earlier editions back to 1870. Dobell covers house drainage and gas heating as well as food.

  Contents107 sections listed

• Part 1. Obesity: The Indications for Reduction Cures

  Carl von Noorden · 1904

  When a “reduction cure” for obesity was thought worth the risk, in healthy patients and in those with heart, kidney, lung or joint disease.

  Contents16 sections listed

• Part 2. Nephritis

  Carl von Noorden · 1904

  The dietary treatment of kidney disease, then called Bright’s disease, built on the principle of “saving” the kidneys.

  Contents32 sections listed

• Part 3. Membranous Catarrh of the Intestines

  Carl von Noorden and Carl Dapper · 1903

  Colica mucosa, its symptoms and a coarse laxative diet as treatment, with a table of cases.

  Contents15 sections listed

• Part 4. The Acid Autointoxications

  Carl von Noorden and Dr. Mohr · 1904

  Acetone bodies, acetonuria and diabetic coma: the early clinical understanding of what is now called ketoacidosis.

  Contents24 sections listed

• Part 5. Saline Therapy

  Carl von Noorden and Carl Dapper · 1904

  Experiments with salt mineral waters on stomach secretion and the digestion of fat.

  Contents19 sections listed

• Part 6. Drink Restriction (Thirst Cures), Particularly in Obesity

  Carl von Noorden and Hugo Salomon · 1905

  The history of and experiments with restricting fluids, an approach to obesity medicine has since dropped.

  Contents17 sections listed

• Part 8. Gout

  H. Strauss · 1909

  The pathogenesis of gout, uric acid in the blood and the dietetics of gout as understood in 1909.

  Contents23 sections listed

• Part 8. Inanition (Fasting) and Fattening Cures

  Carl von Noorden · 1910

  Metabolism in fasting and undernutrition, and the opposite problem: cures for putting weight on.

  Contents27 sections listed

• Part 9. Technique of Reduction Cures and Gout

  Carl von Noorden · 1910

  The practical side of weight-reduction diets: degrees of restriction, fats versus carbohydrates, protein and water.

  Contents33 sections listed

• The Home Hand-Book of Domestic Hygiene and Rational Medicine. Volume 2.

  John Harvey Kellogg · 1881

  The second volume of Kellogg’s household medical encyclopedia, 1881: 783 sections on disease and its treatment, from the blood and tissues to individual illnesses. A document of nineteenth-century medicine…

  Contents783 sections listed

These are historical texts. Autointoxication, “thirst cures” and several of the diets described here were abandoned by medicine long ago. Read them for the history; ask a doctor about your own health.