Man’s Higher Consciousness
Page 24
All the blood in the body passes through the lungs many times each hour, eliminating carbon dioxide gas and absorbing, in the lungs, the oxygen needed by the cells, and without which death comes quickly.
When not promptly eliminated from the body, carbon dioxide leaves a trail of damage in its course through the organism. It affects every cell, and as the cell is weakened the whole body suffers.
Carbon dioxide is present in all charged drinks, in all soda waters, all beverages of the soda sort, in beer and fermented liquids, in cake, bread, baking-powder cookery, self-rising flour products, yeast bread, and in all fermenting products.
EXHALED AIR IS POISONOUS
At each exhalation the lungs throw out enough toxic gases to poison a barrel-full of air. The amount of poison eliminated by the lungs in 24 hours as carbon dioxide is equal to a lump of charcoal weighing eight ounces. That poison goes back into the body when we inhale what we exhale or what others exhale, as is the case where several occupy a room not adequately ventilated.
When this exhaled air is breathed again and again, as it is in homes and hospitals, especially in winter when cold weather makes proper ventilation impracticable, the proportion of carbon dioxide and organic matter in it increases until it grows more dangerous to breathe.
That is the principal reason why patients in hospitals develop influenza or pneumonia especially after operations. Their blood is poisoned by the anesthetics administered to dull the nerves enough so the body is insensible to pain, and, in addition to this poisoning process, comes the carbon dioxide in the hospital air the victim breathes. Lucky is one to get out alive.
The early symptoms of mild carbon dioxide poisoning are sensations of uneasiness, drowsiness, sneezing, languor, headache, sensation of oppression, coughs and colds.
What fools one is the fact that the body, after a time, adjusts itself to a very vitiated atmosphere, and one soon comes to breathe, without sensible discomfort, an atmosphere which, when one first enters it, seems intolerable.
This process of adaptation medical art terms “immunity.” According to this theory, man becomes immune to a condition or a poison that fails to kill him on the spot.
Such adaptation can occur only at the expense of a general depression of all the vital functions, which must be injurious if long continued or often repeated. In this condition people die by inches while being treated for some “strange disease.”
The body is equipped with powers of adaptation that enable it to tolerate for a time an atmosphere so poisonous that it would kill a vital man in a few minutes if he suddenly walked into it. That makes it dangerous for a healthy man to breathe polluted air in smoke-filled rooms where half-dead men meet, play cards, etc., and do not seem to mind it.
This little-understood power of adaptation of the living organism to its environment is well illustrated by an experiment of Claude Bernard, as has been stated.
He showed that if a bird be placed under a bell-glass of such size that the bird will live for three hours, and is removed at the end of the second hour when it could have survived another hour, and a fresh, healthy bird be put in its place, the latter will die instantly.
That is the fate suffered by the healthy man who tries to breathe the polluted air of the smoke-filled room where half dead men notice nothing.
The vital body does not resist the dangers of its environment. That is a false theory. The weak body tolerates them because it lacks the vitality to protest.
Bernard demonstrated the body’s power of adaptation. That is ‘ the power that enables the poisoned body of civilized man to drag out a miserable existence of 50 or 60 years in a polluted environment that would quickly kill a vigorous Indian brought in from the pure air of his forest home and thrust into that polluted environment.
POISONS ENTERING THE BODY
The effect of poison on the body depends on how it enters the body. There is a vast difference between poison entering the body through the lungs and through the mouth and stomach.
Poison entering the body through the stomach does not contact the vital organs until it first passes through all the blood-making organs, of which the liver is the chief one, for which reason it is the largest of all the glands.
The venom of a rattler is very deadly if injected directly into the blood, as when one is bitten by the reptile. The poison, if taken into the stomach through the mouth, would be neutralized so fully by the action of the fluids of the blood-making organs, and the refining and renovating processes of the glands of the blood vascular system, that when the poison reached the general circulation of the blood, it would be rendered so innocuous as to cause little more than slight illness.
When poisonous gases, acids and fumes enter the lungs with the air, they meet nothing to neutralize them. God never intended that man should live and labor in air so foul, that it would require a process of renovating, refining before being fit to breathe. So when poisons enter the lungs with and in the air, they pass directly into the blood, and may even cause sudden death, as they often do.
BIG BATTLE FOR HEALTH
The big battle for health in civilization is the struggle for good air. The body is not equipped to handle and neutralize poisoned air. This makes such air exceedingly dangerous.
That is why one dies quickly in a closed garage filled with motor exhaust gas. That is why people are continually suffering with headaches and pains all over the body, in muscles, bones and joints. It is a case of blood poison and much of the poison enters the blood through the lungs.
One’s blood must be poisoned before one can be ill. The easiest and quickest way to poison the blood is to inhale polluted air.
Children in cold regions must remain indoors so much in winter, that they are sick with all kinds of ailments from coughs, colds, mumps and measles, on to the more serious conditions of whooping cough, tonsillitis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, asthma, influenza., pneumonia, etc.
The air of your environment, your home, the place where you labor, where you live and sleep, is constantly saturated with a hundred poisons, and anything can happen to you by inhaling that horrible air. You have a case of blood poison from which you may suffer with any ailment.
If the condition is not serious enough to kill you instantly, you live; but you are certain to suffer from time to time in some way, from a cough and cold to the more serious states.
It is easy for you to test a serious case of blood poison. Enter your garage, close the door and all ports of ventilation, then start the motor of your car and see what happens.
You will soon faint and fall to the floor, yet suffer no pain; and that will be your end unless help quickly comes.
Now for a milder case: You live in the cold region where doors and windows of the home are kept closed in winter to keep out the killing cold. In that home the air is unfit to breathe. First it is poisoned by the fumes of your own lungs; then the fumes of the cook stove and heater; then the fumes of cigars, cigarettes, pipes, etc.
One hundred times each hour every drop of your blood is sprinkled through that poisoned air in your lungs in a shower of Red Mist. Your lungs are filled with that polluted air; your blood becomes saturated with poisons. The surprise is that the body holds up as well as it does under such blood-poisoning conditions.
If the air were sufficiently polluted, you would faint and die as you would in your garage. If it were that serious, something would be done to improve the situation. Yet helpless infants die in their sleep because of the foul air of the home. Adults come down with sickness, and they are told it is the work of germs.
MILLIONS CHRONICALLY ILL
The press of September 7th, 1951, reported a statement of Dr. A. C. Knudson, chief of the Veterans Administration’s physical medicine and rehabilitation division, made to the 29th annual session of the American Congress of Physical Medicine; at Denver, Colorado, that 25,000,000 people in the U.S.A. are chronically ill, “and warned that their number is annually increasing.”
Included in Knudson�
�s list were 1,000,000 persons paralyzed on one side, 2,500,000 orthopedically disabled, 1,000,000 diabetics, and about 10,000,000 afflicted “with disease of the heart and arteries.”
In the face of this horrible record we are constantly told in the big publications, of the “great strides being made by medical science.”
LESSON NO. 26—POISONED AIR
“Human experience with the poisonous effects of carbon monoxide gas probably had its beginning in the prehistoric ages....Dr. L. Lewin, who states that his report on the history of carbon monoxide poisoning is the first of its Kind, has traced references to the action of this gas back through the ancient Greek and Latin literature and concludes that this poisoning of all stands alone in its close relation to the history of the civilization of mankind’.”—Review of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning, 1936, by R. R. Sayers, Senior Surgeon, U. S. Public Health Service.
It seems strange that this matter should be so late in receiving attention, when one author says the Carbon Monoxide Gas is the deadly agent, the great killer, the leading life destroyer.
When man made his first fire, he thought he had something and little dreamed that he was setting into motion the production of a destructive gas that has killed millions, and will continue to kill millions until the present arrogant civilization has disappeared.
The first materials used for making fire were grasses, wood, and other vegetal matter. Ancient records show that many cases of fatal poisoning followed from the fumes of fires.
It would seem that early men were unaware of the dangers linking in the poisonous gases set free by fire. Modern man knows little more after living in the midst of these gases for thousands of years. He knows not that carbon monoxide kills thousands quickly and millions by slow degree.
Physiologists declare that progressive damage occurs to the body from the inhalation of any gas so deadly as to cause death under certain circumstances.
The gas may be so weak as not to cause sudden death; but constant contact with it induces a deteriorative process in the organism, the destructive work of which appears in various symptoms which are called “disease.”
It was not until Gustavus Magnus in 1837 proved the presence of the “blood gases” in different proportions in the blood, that the present theory of respiration assumed definite form. That cast some light on the secret of respiration and animation.
Little is known about the function of respiration—yet it is the primary process of living. The object of all other function is to keep the breathing organs in condition to perform their work properly. When they fail, death ensues.
CARBON MONOXIDE GAS
From birth to death man must breathe constantly to live. When he stops breathing he stops living. Naturalists use this evidence to show that the most dangerous substance to health and life is polluted air. Yet this important branch of knowledge has been considered so lightly that little literature bearing on it has been produced.
When Dr. Sayers wrote his “Review of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning” in 1936, it soon went out of print because it covered a field in which there is no use for vaccines and serums.
It was not until 1920 that Dr. L. Lewin published in Berlin his work of 369 pages on the dangers of Carbon Monoxide Gas, and in it he stated that his report was the first of its kind ever written.
Lewin found carbon monoxide cases mentioned in ancient literature, quotations from which show that this poison was a frequent cause of death by accident, by suicide, and by use as an agent of punishment and torture. He quotes a statement from Lilius that during the second Punic War, about 200 B. C.—
“The commanders of the allies and other Roman citizens were suddenly seized and fastened in the public baths for guarding, where the glowing fire and heat took away their breath and they died in a horrible manner.”
Julian the Apostate (331-363 A. D.), tells how he was almost suffocated while in winter quarters in Paris. Because of cold, he had a small fire in his room. The fumes from it affected his brain, put him to sleep, and he was carried out unconscious. Otherwise he had perished.
Campaigns, who lived in the 15th century, told of two merchants, travelling toward Lyon in winter, who stopped at an inn for the night and, to warm the room, made a fire in the fireplace and went to bed. Next morning they were found dead in bed.
After the 15th century, with the increased use of coal as fuel, poisoning by the gas greatly multiplied.
With the inventions of methods of producing heat for homes and industrial use, dangers of poisoning by the gas have increased at an alarming rate, until today, with many additional hazards from the wide use of gas-burning appliances and manufactured gas containing large amounts of carbon monoxide, this form of poisoning has become one of the most widely distributed and most frequent causes of accidents and death.
Kober and Hayhurst investigated the matter and reported a list of 24 possible sources of contact with carbon monoxide gas in industrial operations alone.
The increasing use of motor cars, trucks, buses, and other gasoline-burning engines has made exhaust gases a constantly increasing source of carbon monoxide poisoning.
The dangers have been increased by adding certain chemicals to the fuel to prevent accumulation of carbon in the engine. These chemicals in the exhaust gases are more poisonous than the fumes of the gasoline.
The fact that no noticeable odor warns one of the danger from carbon monoxide gas, was first mentioned by Baconis de Verulamio in 1684, and, unlike most of his predecessors, he was careful to mention “vapor carbonum” instead of “fumes.” Van Halmont was the first investigator to term such fumes “carbon gas.”
It was not until 1732 that Boerhave made what is probably the first animal experiments with carbon monoxide gas. He found that all red-hot matter, as wood and coal, produces a vapor so fatal that it quickly killed an animal shut up in a confined space.
It is terrible to think what that vapor does to people in cold regions who live all winter in closed quarters, with little or no ventilation, and breathe that vapor for weeks and weeks. Their spiritual (air) organs are damaged beyond repair.
In 1919 the Bureau of Mines published a technical paper on the results of studies made of the degree of vitiation of garage air by motor car exhaust gases, in which it was said:
“In tests made by the authors, garage air was rendered decidedly dangerous after an automobile engine had been running ten minutes.”
Henderson and Haggard report that when a motor car is running ten miles an hour, occupants of a car 40 feet behind are surrounded by exhaust gases diluted to a concentration of one or two parts of carbon monoxide to 10,000 parts of air. They further state that one part in 10,000 is a frequent condition of the air in city streets where traffic is heavy, and increases as traffic increases.
In 1920 certain research workers made an investigation in which 1308 garage and repair shops, 341 in New York City and 967 in the rest of the state, were visited. These shops employed 5908 men.
DANGERS OF POISONED AIR UNKNOWN
Most of the men in these garages and shops were totally ignorant of the dangerous properties of the exhaust gas of cars and trucks. Some did know it contains “knock-out” properties, but knew not that serious and even fatal results would follow its inhalation. Others believed that they acquired immunity and could not be injured after working in a garage a certain period.
People know not that they are constantly surrounded by an unseen foe to health and life. They know not that most cases of sudden death from so-called heart attack are the work of this unseen foe. They know not that in a certain area that is free of this unseen foe, people live to be 200 and 250 years old. Inform yourself before it is too late and avoid this dangerous enemy.
Study this picture and see how that unseen foe, in the form of invisible gas, enters nose and mouth and goes directly into the lungs, where there is nothing to prevent the poisonous gases from passing directly into the blood and being carried into the deepest recesses of the body.
In
experiments at the Bureau of Mines, dogs became unconscious after a motor was run ten minutes in a single car garage with the door and window closed. One dog died in 30 minutes and the carbon monoxide concentration was only 1.5 percent.
Acute cases of poisoning by carbon monoxide gas result in death by asphyxiation through its deadly action of—
1. paralyzing the nerves of the breathing centers of the brain, and of
2. changing oxygen-carrying hemoglobin into non-oxygen carrying carbon monoxide hemoglobin.
Chronic cases of poisoning by the gas result in a lingering death, in which the victims, before they die, suffer sometimes for years, while their poisoned bodies present various symptoms resulting from the destructive work of the gas. The symptoms are named and treated as “diseases,” while no effort is made to locate the cause.
While billions of the tax-payers money are spent annually for the alleged improvement of the public health, under the direction of political health officials, this terrible menace to health and life marches on unmolested, striking down the millions in its path.
BRAIN POISON
As the mind grows feeble, man’s physical world grows smaller. Civilized man has lost contact with the Spiritual World because he has lost his Spiritual Powers, and he loses contact with the physical world as he loses his physical intelligence because of damage to his brain.
The press of October 13th, 1947, contained an item headed, “Insanity More Prevalent in City,” which said: