Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise. Bernarr Macfadden

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PREFACE.

       Table of Contents

      The great truths of Nature are here ready for you, reader.

      Are you ready for them?

      Are you free from prejudice, and willing to read and reason without considering the opinions of so-called authorities? To a free and intelligent human being there is no authority for him higher than his own reasoning power.

      If you are free from the slavery of prejudice this book will give you food for thought. It will teach you that weakness is a crime—that it is the result of plain, easily avoided causes—that if your body is weak, or diseased, there is not the slightest excuse for remaining so—that health and strength of a high degree is the natural heritage of man and woman, and if this superb condition ​is not possessed, this book will clearly and concisely furnish the knowledge necessary to acquire it.

      Refuse to be an invalid, reader!

      Refuse to be a physical nonenity!

      Are you depending upon drugs?—that gorgon horror that is torturing more human lives into misery, weakness and death than all the combined cruelties and barbarism of past ages.

      Drugs! Drugs! ! Great heavens, will this crime of the century never end?

      Drugs never did and never will cure disease. The body cures itself if it can secure an opportunity, but with the poisonous drugs always at hand, and with their authorities standing at your side, I know it is difficult to refuse. But, friends, strengthen your minds and strike for freedom. You must be free from the drug delusion mentally before you can ever be free physically.

      Years ago when my own soul was rent by the torturous belief that the health of a fully developed man was never to be mine, I tried drugs. Nauseating and disgusting pills, powders and liquids were swallowed. The pain of my disappointment, as remedy after remedy was tried without benefit, can never be described. If I live ​to be a thousand years of age, there could be no experience in my life that would be stamped upon my brain quite so vividily as this.

      And when freedom came at last—when the truths of Nature were revealed to me one by one, a great joy overcame me.

      For I was free!

      Free, friends! Free from pain, free from misery; free from weakness.

      Think of it! ! A freedom as glorious as the most happy moment of life!

      And with this freedom came an intense desire for others to share my freedom; and drugs, the humbug, the delusion that saps your strength while they pretend to cure, will find in me a life-long enemy. As long as I have the power to think, as long as I have the power to utter a sound, my voice, my pen, my utmost energies will be expended in fighting and exposing the horrible crimes to modern humanity committed by drugs.

      Read this book! !

      Act upon its suggestions. Secure health with all its joy.

      Be a man, complete, superb.

      Or a woman, beautiful and strong.

      ​And help me in this glorious work of stamping out the curse of weakness and disease, and the drugs that often cause this unnatural condition.