The Stiffening Joint

The notation is closed. Every bracket, prefix, ring, glyph, arrow and secs suffix in this article was taught once and completely in Table 13 of How a Formula Is Built, "How a Formula Is Built", and is not explained again here. Every written rest — the minute between joints, the minute between rounds of breathing, the two minutes before a finger is re-checked — stands in Table 8 of that same article, with its reason attached. Two spellings you will meet on the cards below: ↑|↓ is the Round Arrow, and (½) Ku – 40 secs is a single hold of forty seconds, not a count of forty.

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The complaint, in plain words

A busy kitchen with a small pantry and a narrow back door

A joint is two bones meeting in a wet, closed, well-fed little room. It has a lining that makes the fluid, a cushion of gristle on each bone end, a bag around the whole thing, and a blood supply that is not lavish at the best of times. Everything about a joint that works well depends on things arriving and leaving: food and oxygen arriving, waste leaving. Nothing is stored there. It is a busy kitchen with a small pantry and a narrow back door.

Now slow the deliveries. Nothing dramatic happens on the first day, or the hundredth. What happens is that the room gets a little sour, the movements get a little shorter, and the person begins to arrange their life around not doing certain things. A stiffening joint, in this therapy's reading, is a joint whose supply line and whose drain have both been narrowed for a long time — and the pain is the room's way of reporting it.

That reading is why the first thing tried on these patients was the ordinary work: the formulas for putting the stomach right, because every tissue in the body is rebuilt out of what digestion delivers, and the heparin-family treatments that increase the blood circulation, because those open the road.

That sentence is worth sitting with, because it is the whole reason this article exists. A treatment that helps and does not finish is not a failed treatment. It is an incomplete picture — a signal that something is being added back faster than you are taking it away, or that something is being held somewhere your sequence does not reach.

The two findings that came before any formula

Pain at Gal, and a bad stomach — the ground floor of the chapter

Before any of the thinking, there were two plain observations, made by looking at a great many of these people one after another.

The thought that came from outside medicine

Told openly rather than tidied away: the planets, and where it led

Here the material does something unusual and worth respecting: it tells you exactly where the idea came from, including the part that a modern reader might find easier if it had been left out.

Guruji's mother taught him from childhood to honour the culture and family tradition of his country. He was himself skilled in reading the hand — palmistry — and had great regard for jyotiṣa and the other old sciences. He has always said that our forebears knew that when a child is born, all the affairs of its life proceed according to the positions of the planets at that time, about which the कुण्डली — the birth chart — is written; and that the effect of those planets falls upon the child's health.

So the thought that came was this: those diseases which for many years do not leave a person — their connection must surely be with the planets.

A student may do what he likes with that sentence. What he may not do is pretend it was not the sentence, because everything that follows is built on it, and the reasoning that follows is careful, physiological and testable at every step. Where an idea comes from is not the same question as whether it works. Ideas in medicine have arrived from dreams, from bad analogies, from plain religious conviction, and have then been judged by what they did at the bedside. This one is told openly instead of being tidied away afterwards, which is a point in the therapy's favour and not against it.

From the pineal gland to the spine — four steps

A message, a road, a traffic jam, and the arrow that clears it

The therapy's own long-standing observation supplied the bridge. In Neurotherapy it has been seen that after giving the treatment called Ku, the activity of the brain increases very much. For years Guruji has therefore said that by the Ku treatment we can stimulate the pineal gland.

From those pieces a decision was taken, and it is stated in one line.

The first formula that was made — Old Star

Four steps, twelve minutes — and the name the patients gave it

Several formulas were made on the basis of all these thoughts, and they were given the name Star treatments, because the treatment had been made to correct the effect of the influence of the planets. The one made first of all was this.

Table 1 — Card: the Old Star treatment formula Supine Prone 6 sec

Said aloud to a colleague: lift the feet three times, three passes down the left thigh, eight presses at the tail of the spine, twenty sweeps of the back. Four steps, perhaps twelve minutes, and nothing in it that a therapist did not already own.

Whoever had an old pain, their pain used to lessen at once with this treatment. And then something happened that formulas rarely do: before one's eyes it became so popular — so dear to the people — that it truly became a star, a star indeed. The name had been chosen for the planets. The patients made it mean something else. Later, when many further changes came into the treatment, this first form was given the name Old Star treatment formula, and it is still printed, still taught, and still given.

Why the Round Arrow follows Ku — a rule with a long reach

A step that makes a finding, and a step set behind it to cancel it

One further benefit was found from giving the Round Arrow after Ku, and this is one of the most useful small findings in the whole formulary.

The WD variant

The connection is from birth, so it must reach the generative organs

Then a second thought followed from the first. Since the planets' connection is from birth, their effect must certainly be upon the generative organs — and in this therapy the generative organs are stimulated by the WD treatment. So the formula was changed.

Table 2 — Card: the WD variant of the Star formula Supine Prone 6 sec

Both these treatments began to please all the patients with joint pain. Two formulas, four steps each, and a clinic full of people who had been disappointed everywhere else now getting up off the mat differently.

Why Gal was increased and Ku was changed — the New Star

A blocked pipe opened by force, and forty seconds in place of eight presses

But the full benefit did not come, and the patients always had pain in Gal. The same finding that had started everything was still sitting there after treatment, which is the plainest possible message a body can send: you have not yet done enough of the thing you know is needed.

Seeing this, Guruji thought about a blocked pipe. If there is a blockage — an obstruction — in some pipe, then if we release water through it with force, the pipe will open. In the same way, he thought, a greater quantity of bile is needed, so that the flow in the bile duct increases; and if there is any blockage in the ampulla of Vater, it may open.

So (3) Gal was increased and made (6) Gal.

And (4) Ku was changed to (½) Ku – 40 secs, by which patients were found to obtain greater benefit.

That second change is larger than it looks here. (4) Ku and (½) Ku – 40 secs are not two doses of one thing; they are two different treatments performed at one site. The old Kundali is eight presses of six seconds without stopping. The half form is one single hold of forty seconds, and its stated purpose is precisely the one the derivation asked for: to stimulate the pineal gland — for melatonin.

Table 3 — Card: the New Star treatment formula Supine Prone 6 sec

The New Star Modified formula

Three navel-setting stations in front, for the navel never set at all

Because of the success of the treatments above, the number of patients went on increasing. Even so, some such patients were still met with who did not get the full benefit from the treatment above.

After thinking it over, Guruji felt this must be because their navel was not set at all. By that time two further navel-setting treatments had been obtained — TF, that is Toe Fingers, and NNS, that is New Nabhi Set — and so the formula was changed by putting all three navel-setting stations in front of it.

Table 4 — Card: the New Star Modified formula Supine Seated Prone 6 sec

Said aloud: lift the feet three times; rub every toe joint twenty times on three sides; bend every toe down six times; six passes of the left thigh; six rounds on both forearms; one forty-second hold at the tail of the spine; twenty sweeps of the back. It takes a good deal longer than the Old Star, and every minute of the difference is navel-setting.

The line of development, in one table

Read the right-hand column downward and you read the patients

Four generations in a handful of years, each one a named answer to a named failure. Read the right-hand column downward and you are reading a record of what patients were still complaining of.

Table 5 — The Star family compared

Two things are worth noticing about that column of reasons, because they are how this therapy grows.

Every change answered a patient, not an idea. Not one of these generations came from re-reading the theory. Each came from a group of people who were still not well, and each was aimed at the specific thing they still had — the Gal pain that survived, the navel that had never been set, the finger that hurt on the wrong side. (Figure 36.1)

And nothing was thrown away. The Old Star is still printed here beside the newest. That is deliberate, and it is the same habit that has old formulas standing beside their successors all through this wiki. A therapist with a patient who cannot lie prone for long, or a household being taught four steps to give at home, still needs the short form.

What is done

The All-joints ghisai — an addition after the formula, not a part of it

This treatment is another mark of long practice, and it is given after the New Star Modified, not instead of any part of it.

Table 6 — Card: All joints ghisai Seated Both sides

Why it works — the secret of it

Sixteen breaths, one minute, and the acid that leaves on the breath

Guruji has also discovered why and how this happens, and the account is worth learning properly, because it explains a rest and not only a rub.

During metabolism — chayāpachaya, the building up and breaking down that runs inside every cell — the processes inside the cells produce CO₂, carbon dioxide, within them.

Through lack of oxygen, or if the blood circulation in the tissues is low, this carbon dioxide will go on accumulating inside the cells and tissues in the form of H₂CO₃ — carbonic acid — by which the quantity of acid in the tissues will go on increasing. That is what is called metabolic acidosis.

Read that again and notice what kind of instruction it is. Most rests in most therapies are explained by saying the patient needs a moment. This one is explained by arithmetic: a number of breaths, a rate of breathing, and a minute that is the product of the two. The rest is not where nothing happens. The rest is where the work you just did leaves the body. (Figure 36.2)

Say it to a patient in the household's own language: I have just opened the tap in that elbow. The sourness that was sitting in it is now in your blood, on its way to your lungs. Your lungs need about sixteen breaths to blow it out. So we wait one minute, and then I do the next one — because if I hurry, the next joint's load goes into blood that has not finished clearing the last one's.

Before the material turns to rheumatoid arthritis, it stops and explains something larger, because without it the ring-finger sign that follows would look like a trick.

When a patient with a new disease came, the method of diagnosis was to check whether there was pain or not at several fixed places on that patient's body. If the patient had a report, what deficiency the report showed was noted. When the next patient arrived with the same disease, or with the same kind of report, the same points were checked — and among them there would be some points already known from earlier experience, and sometimes pain in some other point that the previous patient had also had. Then it was put together: which kinds of symptoms or diseases are linked with pain at which points of the body.

Doing that again and again, across four decades, one thing came to be known with certainty.

Yes indeed. This is the very truth. This method of diagnosis has proved a unique diagnostic tool — and it is for this reason alone that in many Neurotherapy centres across the country, those who have learned this knowledge, even if they are little educated, are obtaining success in the treatment of many kinds of diseases. That is why it is said again and again that there is no other therapy like this one, which is going to prove a boon for the human race; and to prove the truth of that statement, this one reason alone is sufficient.

Two practical consequences follow for you, today, on your own mat.

One: the sign comes before the name. You are about to be taught a bedside test which tells you something about a disease before any laboratory does. That is only possible because somebody spent forty years comparing patients rather than comparing diagnoses.

Two: a shared point groups conditions; it does not make them one condition. Several diseases meeting at one painful point is exactly what makes a single treatment useful across a list — and it is also exactly why a therapist must keep asking what else could this be? A sign that gathers conditions together is priceless for finding them. It is never a licence to stop looking.

This is the article's other half, and four earlier articles have been pointing at it. The Medulla Family named the both-ring-fingers sign and sent you here. Fire and Swelling · The River — Heparin met rheumatoid arthritis as a bar on Thymus, Thymus + Chest, Ton 'P' and Ton 'T' and sent you here. Water and Salt named it twice as a use of the Lactic Acid Conversion formula and sent you here. Here it is, whole.

Who is called an RA patient

What the report settles, what it does not, and what you write down

The sign

A great deal of pain at the middle joint of both ring fingers

Such patients did indeed have pain in many fingers and joints — but not everyone's pain was the same. One had more pain in one finger, another less. But after examining many patients, a similarity was found, and it was this:

The new method of diagnosis for joint pain

Both at the same time, the same squeeze — and let them answer

Since the success of this treatment, a new method of diagnosis has been started for patients with joint pain or sandhi vāta, which every therapist is to adopt.

Table 7 — The ring-finger sign and its recording

The grading marks are the ones you already use everywhere else on a diagnosis card, and they mean here exactly what they mean there: what you found, not what you will give. An empty box is not examined; a minus is examined and silent.

And note the value of the negative. A therapist who squeezes both ring fingers of a patient with trembling hands, finds nothing, and writes it down has not wasted thirty seconds. He has removed a question from the case.

The patient whose report says negative

The same finger, the same treatment — and the word you may not write

Then something was seen which turned a treatment indication into a piece of clinical foresight.

Those who had joint pain but whose blood report was found RA Negative had the very same pain in the ring finger as the RA positive patients had. So, according to the experience above, they too were given the New Star Modified Formula, and all those patients' pain went out.

The foresight in that passage deserves saying out loud, because it is the most valuable half-page in the article. A person with joint pain and two sore ring fingers and a negative blood test is a person about whom something has been noticed early. Whatever else you do, that is a patient to tell, plainly and without alarming them, that their joints are showing a pattern worth a doctor's opinion — and to keep telling until they have had one. A sign that arrives before a report is only worth having if somebody acts on it.

The full protocol for joint pain and RA

Three parts: the medulla and T1/T2, the formula, then every joint

The best results have been got in the following order. (Figure 36.4)

Table 8 — Card: the full protocol for joint pain and RA Seated Supine Prone 6 sec

Two notes on part I, both of which a student will otherwise get wrong.

The Medulla here is the one member of its family with a direction. (4) Medulla is given clockwise, with T1/T2, and is credited with the neck's own territories — the C1–C4 group, which carries the chest, the mitral valve, the spleen and the upper diaphragm, and the C5–C8 group, which is the arm written out from the shoulder to the fingertips. In a article about pain in the joints of the arm, that is not an ornament at the front of the formula. It is the road the arm's pain travels on.

And the conditional stays conditional. If there is pain in the neck, then also do Neck ghisai. No neck pain, no Neck ghisai. A conditional addition is a gate, not decoration, and the habit of giving it anyway because it seems to belong is how formulas quietly stop being formulas.

The order in which pain leaves the body

Hands first, soles last — and the chart that keeps a patient coming

This treatment proved so successful in sandhi vāta that — as the material puts it — do not ask. People got such relief that those who came weeping and stumbling went home after the treatment as if flying.

But it does not all go at once, and knowing the order is how you stop a patient losing heart in week three.

Give that table to the patient on the first day. It is the single most useful thing you can hand a person with joint pain of fifteen years, because it converts the thing they will otherwise experience as failure — my hands are better but my feet are as bad as ever — into evidence that the treatment is running to time. A patient who knows the order does not stop coming in the sixth week. (Figure 36.5)

And notice what the table asks of you: that you record where the pain is, region by region, at every visit. Without that, none of this is visible; with it, you can show a patient in the fourth month a line of your own handwriting from the first week.

The patient for whom no treatment could be given

Hands could not be laid on her, so the answer needed no hands

Why Mukha Dhauti is given, and to whom

The left finger that comes back in a few hours, and the dose for it

Now understand to whom, how and why Mukha Dhauti is to be done, because it is not an extra for everybody.

Table 10 — Card: Mukha Dhauti dosing for RA Seated Left

When the New Star Modified formula is to be given

A two-key rule: Mu-zero at three plus, and any one of four

Table 11 — Indications for the New Star Modified formula

That is a two-key rule, and it is the same shape as the two-key rule you used for Kidney Clear: a required finding, and at least one qualifier. Neither key alone opens the door.

Read the four qualifiers together and something obvious appears: three of the four point the same way. More pain at Mu°. Left ring finger. Mu° greater than Liv°. In this therapy's scheme those all say acid — and the fourth, equal pain in both fingers, says acid at least as much as alkali. The New Star Modified is the Star for the patient the therapy reads as acidotic. Hold that sentence, because the next formula is its mirror.

The uses of the New Star Modified formula

Seven conditions offered, and two vitamin points still being watched

To cure joint pains — which is often found in RA patients. Besides this it is also beneficial in the following.

Table 12 — The conditions this formula is offered for

What may not be given to a body whose defences have turned round

Seven points withheld, and the rule that the prohibition wins

Rheumatoid arthritis is not a wearing-out. It is a condition in which the body's own defences have turned round and begun taking its joints apart — and that fact governs a whole column of the atlas.

Two further things belong beside that list, and both are commonly needed in exactly this patient.

If the joint patient also has thin bones, remember the rule that governs them: (4) Para is not given separately by itself in osteoporosis — the 1,25 DCC formula is given as the mandatory whole. The bar is on the point given alone, not on the point.

And during an acute flare — a joint hot, swollen and exquisitely tender — do not work the joint itself. Work around it, give the formula, give the breathing if it is indicated, and come back to the joint when the heat has gone.

The discovery that made a fourth generation necessary

Gal reduces alkali, WD reduces acid — so the order decides the lean

In the clinic some new discovery or another goes on every day. So, watching the pains of patients, it was found that some people feel good when WD is given after Gal, while some other people get relief when Gal is given after WD.

Then the reason was found.

When the New Star Modified is not to be given at all

Two exclusions, both describing one body from two directions

The Alkaline Star Formula

Gal and WD changed places, and the old Ku brought back on purpose

If there is pain in both ring fingers and Liv° is ⁺⁺⁺, or if there is more pain in the finger of the right hand — then for them a new formula was made, in which the order of Gal and WD was reversed. And in this treatment the old Ku is to be given.

Table 13 — Card: the Alkaline Star Formula Supine Seated Prone 6 sec

Four things are different from the New Star Modified, and it is worth naming all four rather than remembering the line whole: TF drops from twenty to six · NNS drops from six to three · WD and Gal change places · and the forty-second (½) Ku is replaced by the old Kundali at (4). The three navel-setting stations are all still there, in the same order, at different counts. (Figure 36.6)

And notice the honesty of step 6's reasoning. The old Ku was known to produce pain at Mu° in some people — which is why the Round Arrow was put behind it in the very first formula of this article. Here that same side-effect is the reason for choosing it. The thing that was a problem in a patient leaning towards acid is the tool in a patient leaning towards alkali. Nothing about the point changed. The patient changed.

July 2006 — the Star formulas are broken apart and rebuilt

One push, a reading on a finger, the push back, and the re-centring

However good a treatment may be, it is not the case that everyone will get the same benefit from it. So even after this, some new treatment was bound to be made — this is exactly the speciality of this therapy, that new discoveries go on being made.

From July 2006, the New Star and Alkaline Star formulas above were broken apart and a new order was made, which is very effective in all kinds of joint pain.

Look at what the rebuild actually does before you learn its steps, because then it learns itself. The two earlier formulas each pushed a patient in one direction and left him there. The rebuild pushes him first one way, then the other, and then brings him back to the middle — and it checks the finger in between to see whether the first push has arrived. (Figure 36.7)

Table 14 — Card: the July 2006 rebuild, stage by stage

Notice, finally, what stage II implies about stage I. A protocol that deliberately pushes a patient one way, measures the result on a finger, pushes back the other way, and then spends two whole stages re-centring is a protocol that takes its own effects seriously. The re-centring is not the tail of the treatment. It is the reason the treatment can be given at all.

The page turns here, and the material turns with it to a formula for severe constipation built in the same way — every aspect of a problem studied, and the organs then stimulated in that very order which sets right the body's own way of working. That is LSTF, the Left Side Treatment Formula, and it is taught whole in Water and Salt, "Water and Salt".

Questions students ask

1. I am twenty-two and studying science at college. The Star formula came from astrology. How am I supposed to teach that to anybody? Teach it exactly as it stands, and separate two questions that students collapse into one. Where an idea came from and whether the thing works are different questions, answered by different evidence. Plenty of useful medicine began in bad theory and good luck. What you are given here is not believe in the planets; it is a formula of four points with a stated purpose for each point, and forty years of people getting off a mat. Tell a patient what you are doing and why each step is there. If someone asks where the idea came from, tell them the truth — it is a more interesting story than a tidied one.

2. I have no science at all. What does it mean to say a joint has acid in it? Think of a small room where people are working. Working makes warm, stale air. If the window is open, the staleness leaves as fast as it is made and nobody notices. If the window is half shut — and a joint with a poor blood supply is a room with a half-shut window — the staleness builds up, and the people in the room get headaches. The treatment opens the window. The minute afterwards is the time the stale air needs to actually get out of the building.

3. Why is the rest exactly one minute and not two? Because it was counted, not chosen. Sixteen breaths are needed for more than about ninety per cent of the carbon dioxide to leave, and an ordinary person takes one minute to take sixteen breaths. That is where the minute comes from. Give less and the clearing is incomplete; that is the reason written down, and it is a better reason than most rests in most therapies have.

4. I am a physician. You are asking me to write "RA hai" on a card for a patient whose rheumatoid factor is negative. Why should I? Two answers. First, the material is careful in a way you will recognise: it explicitly forbids writing RA positive in that patient, precisely because that would be a claim about a laboratory result. Second — and you will know this better than the rest of the class — a negative rheumatoid factor does not exclude the disease. A substantial minority of people with genuine rheumatoid arthritis are seronegative, and the classification rests on the pattern of joints, the symmetry, the duration and the inflammatory markers together. So a symmetrical small-joint picture with a negative test is exactly the patient who should be seen again and worked up properly. Read the phrase as what it functionally is: this needs a rheumatologist's opinion. I would write the finding out in full and let the label go.

5. I run a village centre. I have no laboratory at all. Can I use this article? More than most articles, yes. The whole diagnostic apparatus here is two fingers, two kidney points and a question about the morning — no equipment, no electricity, no report. That is the therapy's own claim about its diagnostic method: that those who have learned it, even if they are little educated, are obtaining success with it. What you must have instead of a laboratory is the habit of sending people onward. Find both ring fingers sore, and make sure that person sees a doctor, even if it means a bus.

6. My patient's joints hurt but only the right ring finger. I gave the New Star Modified anyway because it is the formula for joint pain. Nothing happened. Why? Because it is not the formula for joint pain; it is the formula for one direction of joint pain, and you gave it to a patient facing the other way. Pain only in the right ring finger is one of the two written exclusions, and pain only at Liv° with none at Mu° is the other. That patient wants the Alkaline Star, with WD before Gal and the old Ku in place of the forty-second hold. Nothing happened is the kind outcome; going backwards is the other one.

7. A housewife asking for my mother: she has joint pain and her periods are due this week. Can I still give the formula? Not as written, because Ku is not given to women during menstruation, and every formula in this article contains Ku in one form or the other. The bar belongs to the point and travels into every formula holding it. Do the parts you may do, keep the week for the digestive and circulation work that suits her, and give the Star when the period has finished. The same applies to low blood pressure, which is the point's other bar.

8. How long before a patient believes this is working? On the stated experience, sooner than you expect in the hands and much later than they hope in the feet. Within two or three days the pain goes out completely from the fingers and the wrist. Then elbows, shoulders, waist, thighs, heels — and last of all the feet, upper toes before soles. Show them that order on the first day. The patients who stop coming are almost always the ones who were not told that slow feet were expected.

9. I am sixty-six and learning this for my husband. I cannot stand between two chairs. Can I still do the ghisai? That is the part of this article most suited to you. The All-joints ghisai is done with your own palms, seated beside him, and the instruction is very, very light — so hand strength is not what it asks for. What it asks for is patience with the minute. The Mukha Dhauti you do not do at all; you sit with him and count while he does it, and you stop him when his finger stops hurting.

10. What do I do if I cannot give stage IV of the rebuild because my patient is diabetic? You do not give it, and you do not invent a substitute. (10) Medulla is not given in diabetes, nor in cancer; and in heart patients only (10) Left Medulla. No substitution is written for stage IV, and this wiki does not manufacture one. What that leaves you with is a question for whoever supervises your practice and a card that is not written until it is answered. Meanwhile the New Star Modified or the Alkaline Star, chosen on the findings, stand on their own.

11. My patient feels wonderful for two hours after each session and then it all comes back. Have I failed? No — you have been handed the finding this article was partly built on. Ask which part comes back, and when. If it is the left ring finger, within a few hours, that is the picture for which Mukha Dhauti exists, and the reasoning is that every few hours the acid is rising again. Add it, teach it to the household, and check the finger as you go.

12. Does it matter that I do the ghisai from the fingers upward and not from the shoulder down? Yes, and for the same reason that everything else in this article has an order: the instruction is from the fingers up to the shoulder. You have no results for the other direction because nobody has counted any. Where a direction is written, it is part of the treatment and not a matter of convenience — and in a article whose central table is about pain leaving the body in a fixed order, working against that order is a strange thing to do on purpose.

Questions patients ask

1. "My blood test says I do not have arthritis. So why are you squeezing my fingers?" Because the test and the finger answer different questions. That test looks for one particular thing in the blood, and it can be negative in people who do have this trouble and positive in people who have something else entirely — a liver problem, an old infection. What I am feeling for is how the joints themselves are behaving, in both hands, at the same moment. If both your ring fingers are sore in the same place, that is worth knowing, and it is worth a doctor's opinion even with your report in your hand. I am not contradicting your test. I am adding something to it.

2. "You have written something on my card. What does it say?" It says what I found with my hands today: that the middle joint of the ring finger is painful on both sides, more on the left, and how much. Under it I have written the date of your report and what your report said. I have not written that your blood test is positive, because it is not, and I will not put a word on your card that your laboratory did not put on your report. You may read the card any time you like; it is about you.

3. "Should I stop my medicines now that I am coming here?" No, and I will not ask you to. We use no medicine at all in this work and we do not tell anybody to stop theirs. Keep taking exactly what your doctor gave you, on the days he said. If a time comes when your complaint has gone completely, go back to him and ask: "I have no pain at all now — must I still take the same quantity?" That decision belongs to him. In this particular illness I will also ask you to keep your appointments with him even when you are feeling well here, and I will keep asking.

4. "My hands are better but my feet are exactly the same. Is it not working?" It is doing exactly what it does. The pain leaves the body in an order, and the order is the same in everybody: hands and wrists first, in the first days; then elbows, then shoulders; then the waist, the thighs, the heels — and the feet last of all, with the soles of the toes at the very end. Your hands clearing first is the sign that we are on the road, not a sign that your feet have been forgotten. Look at this chart with me, and I will show you where your own card says you are.

5. "Why do you stop and stand there doing nothing between each joint?" I am not doing nothing — I am waiting for your lungs. When I rub that joint, the sourness that has been sitting in it goes into your blood, and your blood takes it to your lungs to be breathed out. That takes about sixteen breaths, which is about a minute. If I went straight on to the next joint, I would be sending the next load into blood that had not finished carrying the last one. The minute is part of the treatment, the same as the rubbing is.

6. "The breathing makes me feel light-headed. Should I push through it?" No. Stop, sit quietly and breathe normally until it passes, and tell me. Light-headedness, or tingling in the lips or fingers, means it has gone a little too far a little too fast — which is exactly why we take the full minute between every set of ten and why we stop the moment your finger stops hurting. This is a dose, like anything else. More is not better here; more is a different treatment, and not one I want to give you.

7. "My neighbour says there is a treatment here that builds up immunity. Can I have it?" Not in your case, and it is worth understanding why. In your illness the difficulty is not that your defences are too weak — it is that they have turned round and begun troubling your own joints. So the treatments that stir the defences up are the ones we deliberately keep away from you. Your neighbour is not wrong about the treatment; it is simply not for this body. What I can give you is everything in this article, which is aimed somewhere else entirely.

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