CHAPTER X.

SCRATCHING THE HAND FOR SICK STOMACH.

Many of us know that if we are threatened with sneezing and we press the upper lip tightly against the teeth with the fingers, that we can usually stop the sneeze. Also, that if we drop a cold piece of metal down the back, or press a piece of ice against the back of the neck, it will frequently check nosebleed.

But not many of us know that the reason these things are thus is because, by these actions, we are stimulating normal function in the first zone.

Were we to press our cheek over the wisdom tooth--which is in the fourth zone--or, rub the ice on our third zone ear, the sneeze and the nose bleed would pursue uninterruptedly the even tenor of their ways.

If you never had heard of these things, you would probably say “pish,” and look around with some trepidation for your informant’s keeper. Yet, in all earnestness and sincerity, I would, if you are one of those whose stomach is easily upset, urge that the next time you board a train or boat you arm yourself with a wire hair brush and a metal comb.

When the first faint qualms, premonitory of an eruption or some other seismic disturbance in your interior are felt, get busy with the comb and brush--not on your head--but on your hands.

For sickness of the stomach is quite generally relieved by steady pressure made over the first and second zone on the backs of the hands with the teeth of a metal comb. The comb should be pressed firmly over the areas running from the thumb and first finger of both hands, including the web between the thumb and first finger--which seems to have a very intimate connection with the stomach. If there is no comb handy, the finger nails will do good substitute work, but the metal is best, as it seems to stimulate an electrical contact that helps the “impulse.”

This procedure is to be used only where the stomach is irritated and threatens convulsive contractures, or where there is pain, or distention from gas. Relief of these conditions may generally be expected in from five to ten minutes.

If, however, the stomach is “dead”--the doctors call it “atonic”--when it lies inert and unambitious after a heavy meal--or even a small meal that is heavy for that stomach at that particular time--the best results are found in gentle stroking or scratching with a wire hair brush, or with the teeth of the comb. If these are not available scratch with the finger nails, but, as with the pressures, the most favorable results follow the use of metal.

Remember that scratching stimulates, while deep pressure with the teeth of the comb, finger nails or wires of the hair brush relaxes.

Also the next time the baby is restless and inclined to double up and yell murder, instead of doing a slippered constitutional up and down the room with him, scratch the backs of his hands. If he’s had too much to eat this may quiet him. If, however, his little “tummy” is “working,” try some pressures on his hands or feet, and see how soon the “tummy” will knock off work.

And, for the same sufficient reasons, try the same thing on yourself and the family, instead of “banging” the stomach over the head with a dose of dope.

The morning sickness of pregnancy yields quite uniformly to deep pressures on the backs of the hands, and it is much safer to try and control this nausea from the hands than it would be to resort to the severe pressures on the tongue. For these latter, if too drastic, might produce a miscarriage.

Also, while it isn’t exactly zone therapy, it might be interesting here to note that eating salted popcorn has a tendency to help correct the nausea of pregnancy, car sickness, and indigestion. Many patients of mine keep a bowl of it on a chair right alongside their beds, and commence to eat it so soon as they awake in the morning. A handful of popcorn, thoroughly chewed, seems to help pacify the otherwise rebellious stomach.

Zone therapy pressures are valuable not only in nausea and vomiting, but also in indigestion, gastric catarrh and all forms of stomach disorders. It has even been successfully employed in gastric ulcer, with dangerous hemorrhages and the other distressing symptoms of this painful malady. Dr. Reid Kellogg has cured three of these cases, one in ten treatments, the others in two or three months. Two of these patients had had an acute condition for two months--no food whatsoever passing through the pylorus (the exit of the stomach). They had been, of course, fed by the rectum.

Dr. Kellogg used the probe (Fig. 9), low down on the posterior (back) wall of the pharynx, and used pressures over the thumb, first and second fingers of both hands with the aluminum comb.

In less than a dozen treatments these patients were able to retain food taken into the stomach, and practically conduct the entire subsequent course of their own cure.

To disabuse the minds of any who may evolve the idea that zone therapy is of value only in conditions that “don’t matter anyhow,” I want to emphasize that these cases were most grave, and that they had received skilled medical attention for many weeks--without apparent benefit.

It has been current knowledge--even before those halcyon days when the banqueter retired to have his throat tickled by a dutiful slave--that by touching definite areas in the throat and at the base of the tongue--vomiting could be induced.

And now we have discovered how to put the reverse English on the tickle, and keep it down when it wants to come up. Which discovery should also help increase the sum total of the world’s health and happiness.