Nutritional Deficiencies
According to recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, about one half of all Americans suffer from various degrees of malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies. It has been shown in more than a hundred studies from around the world that almost any serious nutritional deficiency of one or more vitamins, minerals or other nutritive substances can lower the resistance to spontaneous cancer and increase the risk of contracting the disease. Thus, even a mild deficiency of Choline will produce cancer of the liver, Vitamin E deficiency increases the risk of contracting cancer and leukemia, deficiencies of various B-Vitamins result in liver damage which leads to malignancies, serious deficiency of the mineral zinc may lead to cancer of the prostate, Vitamin A deficiency breaks down the body’s defenses against most carcinogens and leads to tumour development, Magnesium deficiency is also linked to cancer development, as shown in studies conducted at the University of Montreal, in Egypt, and other places.

Exposure to Sun
Numerous studies have conclusively established that excessive and continuous exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays can cause cancer of the skin in some people. Rimless eyeglasses, which concentrate the sun’s reflections, are especially harmful and they can lead to skin cancer on the face.
*19/355/5*

the term “compulsion,” like “obsession,” has taken on a broad, which is to say vague, meaning. Popularly, it is used to indicate anything done to excess: compulsively eating Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, for instance, or compulsively planning one’s day. But again, the clinical meaning is much more specific.
A clinical compulsion is sometimes defined simply as “a repetitive act that is performed according to rules that must be applied rigidly.” A better definition, however, is one that stresses the close relationship between compulsions and obsessions: A compulsion is a repetitive act that is clearly excessive and is performed in order to lessen the discomfort of an obsession.
An obsession strikes, anxiety mounts, and repetitive acts provide a way out. Why compulsions are effective in the short run to alleviate anxiety is not completely understood. As will be discussed in Chapter 8, animals are known to perform many stereotyped rituals when under stress (monkeys in the zoo strumming the mesh of their cage, or rocking back and forth continuously). Many OCD experts believe that compulsions are related to these and involve genetically programmed tendencies.
Compulsions can take an infinite number of different forms. Most often they are reasonable responses gone haywire, such as checking a gas stove a hundred times in a row for fear of a leak. They can also be acts that are completely foreign to reason, however, like jumping up and down eight times because of the thought that an accident will occur. But all compulsions have this property: Although they provide short-term respite from obsessions, in the long run they only make obsessions worse. Obsessions, in turn, make compulsions worse. It’s a vicious cycle.
*11/338/2*

Pneumonia was once one of the most feared of all human diseases. Its death rate was about a third of all those whom it attacked. The germ that caused it is one called a “pneumococcus” which lives ordinarily in the noses and throats of anywhere from five to sixty per cent of people. The condition comes on most often in the winter months and can affect people of all ages.
The pneumococcus gets down into the lungs and there sets up a severe infection which follows a typical course. For a few days the symptoms are like those of an ordinary respiratory disease. Then comes the sudden hard, shaking chill, rapid rise in temperature and pulse rate, with a severe pain on one side of the chest that the doctor recognizes as the beginning of pneumonia. The cough comes on painfully and with small amounts of pink or rust-colored sputum. Breathing is rapid, shallow and painful. There may be blueness because the blood is not getting enough oxygen.
The doctor, by the use of his stethoscope and by watching the motion of the chest, by thumping to discover areas of consolidation, recognizes that the lung is congested and unable to function. Usually after seven to ten days a crisis occurs. The body temperature falls to normal in from six to twelve hours, accompanied by profuse sweating, and the pneumonia as such is over.
The development of the new antibiotic drugs has changed the whole picture. Now, following the administration of penicillin, the pain in the pleura which lines the chest disappears in a few hours and the temperature, pulse, and respiration fall to normal in twelve to thirty-six hours. The spread of the inflammation can be stopped even before a single lobe is involved. This change in the nature of pneumonia is one of the most dramatic occurrences that has ever taken place in medicine and represents one of the greatest accomplishments of the present century.
For the treatment of pneumonia nowadays the chief reliance is on the drugs. The patient is kept in bed in a position in which he is most comfortable. He is given considerable rest but is permitted to sit up for examinations and for any other necessary procedure. He usually has little appetite and need not be urged to eat, but within a half a day after the specific treatment has been begun, he may be hungry and can take a soft diet. Formerly great efforts were made to keep the bowels moving; that too is no longer a serious problem for the doctor. If there is a real shortage of air and the person seems blue, oxygen can be given. It is customary to give oxygen now as soon as it is needed and not to wait until the patient seems actually to suffer from oxygen lack.
The pain in the chest can be controlled with suitable drugs. It is also possible to relieve severe pain by the injection of local anesthetic drugs or by strapping or wrapping the chest wall to prevent unnecessary motion.
The doctor is alert for complications. If penicillin is not as effective as seems to be desirable, aureomycin, the sulfonamides, such as sulfadiazine, and other methods may be tried. Particularly, however, the doctor must look out for complications such as secondary formation of pockets of infected material at the bottom of the lung.
The former fatality rate of 25 to 30 per cent has now dropped to less than 7 per cent. Pneumonia is stiff a particularly serious disease to those who have been long weakened by some other disease such as cancer or alcoholism or malnutrition, or some other serious complication involving the heart.
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