The detail of how I treated each of the maladies might not interest the reader, and is too long a story to relate in this work. The principal things done in each case, however, will be chronicled under their proper heads in the second part of this work. See index. I do not now smoke, chew, nor drink intoxicants; the latter I did to a limited degree, and the former to excess, for a number of years, up to the close of 1869. On the 31st day of December of that year--the day I smoked my _last cigar_--I bought _twenty-five_ cigars and smoked _twenty-three_ of them. My cigar bill that year averaged $2.50 per day, and ran as high as $4.00. Having dissipated, and had nearly every form of disease, I speak from my own thorough experience and not from that of anyone else. Why should not my story, then, have a beneficial influence? If any man knows how he can improve the welfare of his fellows, it is his duty to spread the information. True it is that many of the _quasi reformers_, or informers, are cranks or dreamers; but we wish the fact distinctly understood and appreciated that we come not under that category. We raise no false standard; we send forth no untried hypothesis. There is a man in a New England State who annually lectures on agriculture, writes special and general articles for the country papers on the most improved methods of farming, appears before legislative committees as a successful tiller of the soil. But, alas! what superficiality is contained in this man's brain. His house is a barn, his garden a chicken-yard, his orchard a forest, and his meadow a pasture. There are like phantasmagoric geniuses interested in the health question. We simply say, Trust them not. Shun them and their advice as you would the presence and enticings of a bunco steerer. But you will get impatient to learn in what consists cleanliness, regularity, and temperance if I do not proceed. Indeed, I think I can hear some of you say, "I neither chew, drink, smoke, eat irregularly, or miss my stipulated number of hours in bed; yet I have all manner of aches and pains, and many lingering maladies." If such be the case, you do not understand the true principle and its practical application of _cleanliness_. A word here in regard to bathing. There is no doubt we all should bathe at least once a day. It should be done either at retiring or rising. If a warm or hot bath, at night; if cold or sponge bath, in the morning. Of course, if a person is not accustomed to a cold sponge bath, or is quite nervous, he must not attempt it too strongly at first. Commence and advance by gradation. Almost anything can be done to which an individual is unaccustomed if regular steps are taken towards the end, and not one leap. Whether it be beneficial or destructive, invigorating or poisoning, gradation will accomplish the end.