You Can Be Healed

I found this nondescript little black book at a thrift store: You Can Be Healed by Clara Palmer, published by Unity School of Christianity, Lee's Summit, MO, 1950.  This is a book about the body and its functions written from the point of view that the body and everything it does is pretty miraculous, with some very reasonable and common sense advice on healthy living, including promoting vegetarianism.

For example, about "Your Intelligent Liver," the author tells us:  "There is no laboratory in the world where a greater or more painstaking work is done than that which is carried on within your liver. It is helpful for you to know something of the functions of your body in order that you may work intelligently with them instead of thoughtlessly working against them.  Have you ever joyously thought of your liver in terms of appreciation for the good work that it does for you?  It is a tireless worker.  It is constantly abstracting certain materials from the blood and converting them into new substance that can be appropriated by the body for its upbuilding or eliminated from it when its purpose has been accomplished."

What interests me most about this book, however, is not the book itself, but the notation left behind by a previous owner:

"Tonsillitis:  To heal tonisilitis I use the testicles of a rabbit and the (sometimes) inside of a perches mouth.  (Sometimes the grayling chicken is very helpful in these cases.)  (Also in cases where a new life has no testicles) from having had tonsils removed before death.)  The penises of men that I have used instead of my size they are larger is a fish (not a tarpon are the larger sword fish as these are what is found in the caskets or on the horses) but this smaller sword fish I use for sizing men's penis is a replica of the ram's penis which normal size for now the use of extremely large fish has caused many monstrous abnormalities such as I have seen in Ronnie Fields, etc."

Yow.