This poisonous air begins to eat away at the infant’s air organs as soon as born. Evidence of this appears in the first little cold, the first sneeze, the first cough, the first mucus flowing from the little nose—these are the first signs that poisonous air has begun its destructive work.
You are not told that vital statistics show the chief cause of death in children up to the tenth year is ailments of the air organs. The poisoned air of home and environment works fast and fatally.
The poisoned air begins immediately to eat away the lining membrane of the air organs, the nose, throat, tonsils, sinuses, trachea, bronchi and lungs.
By the time the child is four or five years old, the damage has gone so far it can be revealed by X-ray examination, which shows white spots in the lungs.
Some call these white spots “small stone coffins in which are buried the germs of tuberculosis.”
Those white spots are actually the remains of ruptured air cells that have healed. But they have lost their function. No more can they function as air cells. That early in life they are done. Their function is “gone with the wind.” To that extent the lung capacity has been decreased. To the same extent the vitality has been decreased. Your body begins to weaken and move toward the grave when you are a little child.
In those “small stone coffins” are buried the worthless remains of precious air cells which did their allotted part in forming the connecting link with the Cosmic Source of all things, by drawing into the lungs and digesting the Divine Breath of Life and passing it, with its precious cargo of vitality, on to the blood, nerves and lungs, but which cells are now as useless as a paralyzed arm.
In this age of smoking fathers and mothers, the children get regular doses of tobacco smoke, and what it does Dr. H. Bieler states as follows:
“When tobacco smoke is inhaled, by children and others, the irritating process occurs, but is not quickly felt because the lungs do not have a sensitive network of nerves. The lungs become red and inflamed, but the condition must grow serious before it can be felt because of the deficiency of sensory nerves in the lungs.
“The absence of pain makes one oblivious to the damage being done. One is unaware that one’s lung lymphatics are getting black with tarry irritants, and that the actual breathing capacity of the lung air-cells is soon diminished more than one half” (In Fact, July 1943).”
With the breath gone the life goes. Half of the body’s vitality is gone when half of the lung capacity is lost.
POLLUTED AIR
Medical literature contains no information of damage done to the lungs and body by poisoned air through the years. If germs are the cause of disease, poisoned air has nothing to do with the matter. The germ theory is protected by no study being made of the effect of polluted air on the body.
To sustain life and preserve the body, the air must be the land that man is made to breathe; and he is not made to breathe the filth, dirt, dust, smoke, soot and poisonous gases and acids of city air.
Professor H. Landsberg, Geophysical Laboratory, Pennsylvania State College, made a report on the Studies of Air Suspensions,” in which he said:
“Wherever human dwellings are, wherever industry has found a foothold, the numbers of dust particles in the air are vastly increased, and added to the list are many substances of high chemical activity. Among the more dangerous compounds in the air, nitric and sulphuric acids are always present in combustion gases.
“The constant irritation of the tissues of the respiratory organs is obvious when it is known that in city air about 900,000,000 of these nuclei pass through these organs daily, of which some 90,000,000 are retained in nose, throat, and lungs.”
Ninety million enemies of health and life, inhaled daily out of city air and retained in the air organs are enough to wreck any organism in time and send it to the grave.
The common cold is one of the symptoms of the damage being done. Yet the doctor told us that the common cold “is one of Nature’s most widely bestowed blessings.”
A scientific study of city air made by the Temperature Research Foundation of the Kelvinator Corporation showed that:
1. The average dust-fall in a large city is approximately 230 tons per square mile per month.
2. An average of 2,500,000 particles per cubic inch are constantly present in city air.
3. More than 1.2 pounds of various dust particles are precipitated in the lungs of the average city dweller in a year.
Nashville, Tennessee, is not considered a smoky city. A press report stated that a survey of its air showed more than two tons of soot per square mile fell from January 15th, to February 15, 1938.
Professor O. C. Gray, Engineer of the Bureau of City Tests at the University of Cincinnati, measured the filth fall in that city for the month of October 1930.
In the business section the fall for the month mentioned totalled 1,176 tons per square mile. In the filth were 2.72 tons of tarry matter, 161 tons of carbon, and 1,012 tons of ash.
Gray said that city air is a deadly compound of smoke, soot, fine particles of dust, glass, rubber, mixed with acids and fumes, which included carbon monoxide, sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, hydrocyanic acid, nitric acid, benzene, methane, sulphur and other dangerous chemicals.
Being thus informed, one can understand reports such as that in the press of December 14th, 1945, that “The sharpest weekly rise in influenza and pneumonia cases since the 1943 epidemic was reported today by the U.S.P.H.S.”
The most dangerous disorders are those affecting the air organs. The death-rate in pneumonia cases is appalling.
In the 1918-19 Flu-Pneumonia epidemic, 95 patients out of every 1,000 cases of influenza in New York City were lost and 640 out of every 1,000 cases of pneumonia. In the U. S. Army at that time 345 of those young, vigorous soldiers died in every 1,000 cases of pneumonia. (To Combat Disease is Dangerous, P. 35 by Dr. George R. Clements).
Dr. Arthur Vos, M.D., wrote:
“Of all the food required by the body, 90 percent must be oxygen. A man weighing 150 pounds is composed of 110 pounds of oxygen by weight. If the oxygen contained in his body were set free, it is estimated that it would fill 750 cubic inches of space.”—Philosophy of Health.
Dr. E. E. Marin, M.D., said:
“Science tells us that over half of our maintenance comes in the air and oxygen we inhale. This means that pure air is much more important than the food we eat. We can live without food for three months without much inconvenience, but we can hardly live one minute without breathing” (Truth Teller, January 1940).
Dr. Thomas Darlington, former health commissioner of New York City stated:
“The products of combustion irritate the eyes, nose, throat, the respiratory tract, bronchial tubes, and gastro-intestinal area. In the lungs the carbon particles become imbedded in the air cells, and in time the lungs change in color from natural pink to black.
“I have performed many autopsies upon New Yorkers and almost without exception their lungs were as black as night.
“There is a striking parallel between smokiness of cities and higher pneumonia mortality. The soot, having coated the interior of the lungs, obstructs their natural eliminative processes and the flow of oxygen into the blood” (Quoted by W. B. Courtney in “Our Smoky Cities,” in Collier’s).
In 1945, 424,328 persons died of what doctors term heart disease. The cause was polluted air.
In 1945, 174,640 persons died of what doctors term cancer. In this condition polluted air plays a leading part.
In 1945, 129,144 persons, including the late President Roosevelt, died of what doctors term brain hemorrhage. This condition is largely the work of polluted air.
The press of March 6th, 1944, reported that coal gas from the locomotive of a freight stalled in a tunnel in Italy killed 500 persons. Only 49 lived to be taken to hospital.
A case is reported that 146 British men and women taken prisoners and locked in a small room that had only one window. The opening was too small to supply fresh ai
r for so many lungs, and by morning 123 were dead. Before these victims died they suffered from “shortness of breath,” then became unconscious, and expired gasping for breath, just as you will do when you die.
The press of October 26th, 1945, reported that in Los Angeles “heavy clouds of smoke clinging close to the ground, mixed with stinging fumes that caused people to gasp for breath, prevailed in Los Angeles this morning.”
The account said:
“The manager of one firm called up the Sanitation Director and told him that his employees threatened to walk off the job because their eyes smarted and they had choking sensations in their throats because of the ‘gas attack’.”
In the November 1943 issue of his publication, the Editor of Let’s Live wrote:
“This (Los Angeles) area has heavy fogs that hold down the fumes, prevent eliminating breezes and obstruct the healthful ultra-violet and other rays. Hiking to the top of Mt. Hollywood, I have seen the black pall of smoke hanging over the city (Los Angeles). I even went aloft in air-planes and found this dense shroud of deadly smoke, dust and fumes makes a ceiling 1,500 to 2,000 feet”
The hemoglobin of the blood has an affinity for carbon monoxide gas approximately 300 times greater than for oxygen. The air in the cities and on the highways where there is much traffic is so saturated with carbon monoxide gas, that the blood becomes only part oxygen-hemoglobin while the other part becomes carbon monoxide hemoglobin. This lack of oxygen makes people pale, weak, anemic, dizzy—and they look to food for relief.
ACUTE AILMENTS
Almost all acute ailments start with the common cold. The basic cause is polluted air.
Practically without warning the nose will often begin to drip and one feels awful in just a few moments. Polluted air frequently works that fast.
The patient is rushed to bed. The bed-room is often filled with polluted air and the bed is emitting poisonous fumes and odors. So a bad case of influenza or pneumonia may result.
Whole communities may come down with influenza and pneumonia in winter. The press of February 21st, 1943, reported that at Coshocton, Ohio, 1,500 persons were ill with influenza and all public schools in the city were closed.
The press of March 31st, 1936, reported that in Milwaukee “one-fifth of the city’s population was ill with influenza—120,000 persons.
The press of December 8th, 1943, reported that in Washington, D. C., 100,000 were ill with influenza; that Philadelphia had 200,000 cases, and Louisville, Kentucky had 25,000 cases. In Newark, New Jersey, 200 school teachers were ill with influenza, and in Detroit, 228 members of the police department had it. The press also said, “flu kills 2,000 in Berlin in a week.”
Nothing strange about this when the facts are known. We wonder why more are not sick.
The “common cold” is considered a very simple ailment because so little is known about the physiology of the body and its requirements, and nothing about the spiritual centers of man.
As the delicate lining of the sinuses become inflamed, it becomes swollen and congested. To relieve the misery almost everything is used from paralyzing drugs to poisonous sprays. That is the scientific way the spiritual function of the sinuses is destroyed, usually while man is still a child.
Polluted air, ailments of the air organs, then come the poisonous remedies, and man in modern civilization is reduced to a purely physical entity because his spiritual centers are destroyed. He is then limited in his acquisition of knowledge to his physical senses, which usually deceive him.
AIR CELLS BURST
When polluted air is destroying the air cells of the lungs, causing congestion and pains in the chest, that is called a “Chest Cold” and remedies are offered for the condition while no one seems to know the cause of the condition.
If the air is sufficiently foul, the lung cells grow inflamed and swollen, producing tightness in the chest. Some cells burst, and then their air function is forever gone.
As the larger cells burst, the victim coughs up blood that seeps into the air cavity of the lungs.
Polluted air is the cause of nasal stuffiness, sinusitis, laryngitis, tonsillitis, diphtheritis, bronchitis, mumps, hay fever, measles, scarlet fever, chickenpox, smallpox, influenza, pneumonia, and the chronic conditions of asthma, cancer, tuberculosis, etc.
VITAL ADJUSTMENT
In Lesson 4 we discussed Vital Adjustment. The body, vigorous in youth, has a health standard at birth much above that of the environment. So an adjustment must occur to produce harmony.
The state of the environment is fixed and stationary. It cannot be changed. Any change to produce harmony must be made by the body. So by the means of various disorders of a degenerative character, the body begins its long, painful adjustment to the low health standard of the environment—where it is shocking to know that “civilization has created conditions of existence,” declared Carrel, “which render life itself impossible” (P. 28).
The mechanism of this adaptive process begins to work in the body as soon as the child is born. By a long series of sickness, called children’s diseases and beginning with the common cold, the vital body of youth is weakened and reduced in vitality to the harmonious level of the low health standard of the environment.
Perfect correspondence between the body and its environment must prevail; and here is how that condition is produced. The adjustment does not come suddenly. It is a slow process, instituted by Infinite Intelligence to prolong the life of the body as much as possible.
Were the body’s constitution so rigid and unyielding that this process of vital reduction, of degeneration, could not occur, the shock of the health-destroying agencies of the environment would cause sudden death. It does occasionally, as where a baby dies in its crib from breathing polluted air in the home.
The press of June 6th, 1945, reported that a young couple solicitously moved their baby’s crib into the kitchen and lighted the gas range oven to keep the infant warm. Later they found the baby dead of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Each illness through one’s life, from the common cold onward, is a step down the ladder of degeneration to the grave. If the illness is slight, the downward step is short. If severe, the downward step is longer.
NO COMPLETE RECOVERY
All recoveries from each illness are only partial—unless one makes a complete change in habits and environment.
You change your world by changing your habits and environment. If you continue in the same path without change, you sink in degeneration. There is no return unless you act while there is yet time and make the change mentioned.
Otherwise, you go down, down, down—and you never come up again. You never return to that point where you were prior to your first illness.
Comes the day when you may have influenza or pneumonia. They are the same, differing only in degree of intensity. Influenza is a bad cold, and pneumonia is a worse one.
You may not die, but you will experience a weakness that will remain, if you have reached mid-life; and it will remind you that you are sinking. Some call it the work of the aging process.
As your lung capacity decreases because of ruptured air cells, your vitality decreases in the same ratio. You see your energy fading. You begin to slow up, to get wobbly on your feet. Old age they say.
Barring accidents, internal poisoning, and the poisonous remedies of today, you will never die until your lungs have degenerated to a point where they can no longer take in enough of the Breath of Life to supply the body’s requirements.
The cause of nasal stuffiness is polluted air, which irritates the nasal membrane, resulting in congestion, swelling, and a flow of mucus.
The result is a decrease in the nasal passages. The condition gets worse from continued breathing of polluted air. The nasal passages are closed by congestion and swelling of the lining membrane, making mouth breathing necessary.
Continued breathing of foul air makes the condition still more serious, and it extends into the throat, causing sore throat and hoarseness.<
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This is the cause of diphtheria in children, which is said to be caused by germs, and to prevent it poisonous serums are injected into the children.
Extending down the air-tube, the trachea, the foul air irritates it and the smaller tubes (bronchi) which branch off and enter the lungs.
When the irritation, congestion and swelling reach the lungs, the patient is in grave danger.
The victim now finds breathing hard and painful. This is lung stuffiness, and results from the same cause as nasal stuffiness. The body temperature rises (lung fever),—influenza or pneumonia. A leading medical doctor wrote:
“Pneumonia is always with us, has a frightful mortality, and its lesson is always one of humility to the medical profession. It is doubtful whether the death rate today from pneumonia is any less than it was a thousand years ago.”
The breathing organs are so badly crippled by polluted air in the pneumonia stage that they are unable to do their work properly.
The suffering body cries out for oxygen. The air cells and air tubes of the lungs are slowly being closed by irritation, congestion and swelling.
The patient now breathes hard and fast through his mouth, and his heart-rate increases. The lungs are rushing the blood through the heart and out over the body, striving to save life by supplying the necessary oxygen.
The next step is to rush the patient to a hospital, where he is put in the “oxygen tent.”
The air in the hospital is filled with foul fumes, drug odors, tobacco smoke, motor car fumes, and what not. The patient may die quickly and it is often said to be a “heart attack.”
Mucus is excreted freely by the air organs during a cold. That is the body’s only protective measure against the irritation caused by polluted air.
The mucus is not composed of accumulated body waste, as many claim, but of the serum of the blood, elaborated into mucus by the membrane mucosa of the air organs and excreted by the mucus glands.
Man’s Higher Consciousness Page 27
