The Unity of Acute Diseases
In the last chapter I endeavored to explain the three primary causes of disease, namely: (1) Lowered Vitality, (2) Abnormal Composition of Blood and Lymph, (3) Accumulation of Waste, Morbid Matter, and Poisons in the System.
We shall now consider some of the secondary manifestations resulting from these primary causes. Consulting the table on page 18 (Chapter 2, internet version), we find mentioned as the first one of the secondary causes or manifestations of disease, "Hereditary and Constitutional Taints."
On first impression, it might be thought that heredity is a primary cause of disease; but on further consideration it becomes apparent that it is an effect and not a primary cause. If the parents possess good vitality and pure, normal blood and tissues, and if they apply in the prenatal and postnatal treatment of the child the necessary insight and foresight, there cannot be disease heredity. In order to create abnormal hereditary tendencies, the parents, or earlier ancestors, must have ignorantly or wantonly violated Nature's Laws, such violation resulting in lowered vitality and in deterioration of blood and tissues.
The female and male germinal cells unite and form the primitive reproductive cell—the prototype of marriage. The human body with its millions of cells and cell colonies is developed by the multiplication, with gradual differentiation, of the reproductive cell. Its abnormalities of structure, of cell materials and of functional tendencies are reproduced just as surely as its normal constituents. Herein lies the simple explanation of heredity which is proved to be an actual fact, not only by common experience and scientific observation but also in a more definite way by Nature's records in the iris of the eye.
The iris of the newborn child reveals in its diagnostic details not only, in a general way, hereditary taints, lowered resistance, and deterioration of vital fluids, but frequently special weakness and deterioration in those organs which were weak or diseased in the parents. Under the conventional (unnatural) management of the infant, these hereditary tendencies to weakness and disease and their corresponding signs in the iris become more and more pronounced, proceeding through the various stages of incumbrance from acute, infantile diseases through chronic catarrhal conditions to the final destructive stages.
In the face of the well-established facts of disease heredity we have, however, this consolation: If the child be treated in accordance with the teachings of Nature Cure philosophy, the abnormal hereditary encumbrances and tendencies can be overcome and eliminated within a few years. If we place the infant organism under the right conditions of living and of treatment, in harmony with the laws of its being, the Life Principle within will approach ever nearer to the establishment of the perfect type. Hundreds of "Nature Cure" babies all over this country are living proofs of this gladsome message to all those who have assumed or intend to assume the responsibilities of parenthood.
Natural Immunity
Under Division II of "Secondary Causes or Manifestations of Disease" we find mentioned germs, bacteria, parasites, inflammations, fevers, skin eruptions, chronic sinus discharges, ulcers, etc.
Modern medical science is built up upon the germ theory of disease and treatment. Since the microscope has revealed the presence and seemingly entirely pernicious activity of certain microorganisms in connection with certain diseases, it has been assumed that bacteria are the direct, primary causes of most diseases. Therefore, the slogan now is: "Kill the bacteria (by poisonous antiseptics, serums and antitoxins) and you will cure the disease."
The Nature Cure philosophy takes a different view of the problem. Germs cannot be the cause of disease, because disease germs are also found in healthy bodies. The real cause must be something else. We claim that it is the waste and morbid matter in the system which afford the microorganisms of disease the opportunity to breed and multiply.
We regard microorganisms as secondary manifestations of disease, and maintain that bacteria and parasites live, thrive and multiply to the danger point in a weakened and diseased organism only. If it were not so, the human family would be extinct within a few months' time.
The fear instilled by the bacterial theory of disease is frequently more destructive than the microorganisms themselves. We have had under observation and treatment a number of insane patients whose peculiar delusion or monomania was an exaggerated fear of germs, a genuine bacteriophobia.
Keep yourself clean and vigorous from within, and you cannot be affected by disease taints and germs from without.
Bacteria are practically omnipresent. We absorb them in food and drink, we inhale them in the air we breathe. Our bodies are literally alive with them. The last stages of the digestive processes depend upon the activity of millions of bacteria in the intestinal tract.
The proper thing to do, therefore, is not to try and kill the germs, but to remove the morbid matter and disease taints in which they live.
Instead of concentrating its energies upon killing the germs, whose presence we cannot escape, Nature Cure endeavors to in-vigorate the system, to build up blood and lymph on a normal basis and to purify the tissues of their morbid encumbrances in such a way as to establish natural immunity to destructive germ activity. Everything that tends to accomplish this without injuring the system by poisonous drugs or surgical operations is good Nature Cure treatment.
To adopt the germ-killing process without purifying and invigorating the organism would be like trying to keep a house free from fungi and vermin by sprinkling it daily with carbolic acid and other germ killers, instead of keeping it pure and sweet by flooding it with fresh air and sunshine and applying freely and vigorously broom, brush and plenty of soap and water. Instead of purifying it, the antiseptics and germ killers would only add to the filth in the house.
All bacteriologists are unanimous in declaring that the various disease germs are found not only in the bodies of the sick, but also in seemingly healthy persons.
A celebrated French bacteriologist reports that in the mouth of a healthy infant, two months old, he found almost all the disease germs known to medical science. Only lately, a celebrated physician, appointed by the French government to investigate the causes of tuberculosis, declared before a meeting of the International Tuberculosis Congress in Rome that he found the bacilli of tuberculosis in ninety-five percent of all the school children he had examined.
Dr. Osler, one of the greatest living medical authorities, mentions repeatedly in his works that the bacilli of diphtheria, pneumonia and of many other virulent diseases are found in the bodies of healthy persons.
The inability of bacteria, by themselves, to create diseases is further confirmed by the well-known facts of natural immunity to specific infection or contagion. All mankind is more or less affected by hereditary and acquired disease taints, morbid encumbrances and drug poisoning, resulting from age-long violation of Nature's Laws and from the suppression of acute diseases; but even under the almost universal present conditions of lowered vitality, morbid heredity and physical and mental degeneration it is found that under identical conditions of exposure to drafts or infection, a certain percentage of individuals only will take the cold or catch the disease. The fact of natural immunity is constantly confirmed by common experience as well as in the clinics and laboratories of our medical schools and research institutes. Of a specific number of mice or rabbits inoculated with particles of cancer, only a small percentage develops the malignant growth and succumbs to its ravages.
The development of infectious and contagious diseases necessitates a certain predisposition, or, as medical science calls it, "disease diathesis." This predisposition to infection and contagion consists in the primary causes of disease, which we have designated as lowered vitality, abnormal composition of blood and lymph, and the accumulation of waste, morbid matter and poisons in the system.
Bacteria: Secondary, Not Primary,
Manifestations of Disease
In a previous chapter we learned how lowered vitality weakens the resistance of the system to the attacks and inroads of disease germs and poisons. The growth and multiplication of microorganisms depend furthermore upon a congenial, morbid soil. Just as the ordinary yeast germ multiplies in a sugar solution only, so the various microorganisms of disease thrive and multiply to the danger point only in their own peculiar and congenial kind of morbid matter. Thus, the typhoid fever bacillus thrives in a certain kind of effete matter which accumulates in the intestines; the pneumonia bacilli flourish best in the catarrhal secretions of the lungs, and meningitis bacilli in the diseased meninges of the brain and spinal cord.
Dr. Pettenkofer, a celebrated physician and professor of the University of Vienna, also arrived at the conclusion that bacteria, by themselves, cannot create disease, and for years he defended his opinion from the lecture platform and in his writings against the practically solid phalanx of the medical profession. One day he backed his theory by a practical test. While instructing his class in the bacteriological laboratory of the university, he picked up a glass which contained millions of live cholera germs and swallowed its contents before the eyes of the students. The seemingly dangerous experiment was followed only by a slight nausea. Lately I have heard repeatedly of persons in this country who subjected themselves in similar manner to infection, inoculation and contagion with the most virulent kinds of bacteria and disease taints without developing the corresponding diseases.
A few years ago Dr. Rodermund, a physician in the State of Wisconsin, created a sensation all over this country when he smeared his body with the exudate of smallpox sores in order to demonstrate to his medical colleagues that a healthy body could not be infected with the disease. He was arrested and quarantined in jail, but not before he had come in contact with many people. Neither he nor anyone else exposed by him developed smallpox.
During the ten years that I have been connected with sanitarium work, my workers and myself, in giving the various forms of manipulative treatment, have handled intimately thousands of cases of infectious and contagious diseases, and I do not remember a single instance where any one of us was in the least affected by such contact. Ordinary cleanliness, good vitality, clean blood and tissues, the organs of elimination in good, active condition and, last but not least, a positive, fearless attitude of mind will practically establish natural immunity to the inroads and ravages of bacteria and disease taints. If infection takes place, the organism reacts to it through inflammatory processes, and by means of these endeavors to overcome and eliminate microorganisms and poisons from the system.
In this connection it is of interest to learn that the danger to life from bites and stings of poisonous reptiles and insects has been greatly exaggerated. According to popular opinion, anyone bitten by a rattlesnake, gila monster or tarantula is doomed to die, while as a matter of fact the statistics show that only from two to seven per-cent succumb to the effects of the wounds inflicted by the bites of poisonous reptiles.
In this, as in many other instances, popular opinion should rather be called "popular superstition."
In the open discussions following my public lectures, I am often asked: "What is the right thing to do in case of snakebite? Would you not give plenty of whiskey to save the victim's life?"
It is my belief that of the seven percent who die after being bitten by rattlesnakes or other poisonous snakes, a goodly proportion give up the ghost because of the effects of the enormous doses of strong whiskey that are poured into them under the mistaken idea that the whiskey is an efficient antidote to the snake poison.
People do not know that the death rate from snakebite is so very low, and therefore they attribute the recoveries to the whiskey, just as recoveries from other diseases under medical or metaphysical treatment are attributed to the virtues of the particular medicine or method of treatment instead of to the real healer, the~ vis medicatrix nature,~ the healing power of Nature, which in ninety-three cases in a hundred eliminates the rattlesnake venom without injury to the organism.
To recapitulate: Just as yeast cells are not only the cause but also the product of sugar fermentation, so disease germs are not only a cause (secondary) but also a product of morbid fermentation in the system. Furthermore, just as yeast germs live on and decompose sugar, so disease germs live on and decompose morbid matter and systemic poisons.
In a way, therefore, microorganisms are just as much the product as the cause of disease and act as scavengers or eliminators of morbid matter. In order to hold in check the destructive activity of bacteria and to prevent their multiplication beyond the danger point, Nature resorts to inflammation and manufactures her own antitoxins.
On the other hand, whatever tends to build up the blood on a natural basis, to promote elimination of morbid matter and thereby to limit the activity of destructive microorganisms without injuring the body or depressing its vital functions, is good Nature Cure practice. The first consideration, therefore, in the treatment of inflammation must be to not interfere with its natural course.
By the various statements and claims made in this chapter, I do not wish to convey the idea that I am opposed to scrupulous cleanliness or surgical asepsis. Far from it! These are dictates of common sense. But I do affirm that the danger from germ and other infectious diseases lies just as much or more so in internal filth as in external uncleanliness. Cleanliness and asepsis must go hand in hand with the purification of the inner man in order to insure natural immunity.
The Laws of Cure
This brings us to the consideration of acute inflammatory and feverish diseases. From what has been said, it follows that inflammation and fever are not primary, but secondary, manifestations of disease. There cannot arise any form of inflammatory disease in the system unless there is present some enemy to health which Nature is endeavoring to overcome and get rid of. On this fact in Nature is based what I claim to be the fundamental Law of Cure.
"Give me fever and I can cure every disease." Thus Hippocrates the Father of Medicine, expressed the fundamental Law of Cure over two thousand years ago. I have expressed this law in the following sentence: "Every acute disease is the result of a cleansing and healing effort of Nature."
This law, when thoroughly understood and applied to the treatment of diseases, will in time do for medical science what the discovery of other natural laws has done for physics, astronomy, chemistry and other exact sciences. It will transform the medical empiricism and confusion of the past and present into an exact science by demonstrating the unity of disease and treatment.
Applying the law in a general way, it means that all acute diseases, from a simple cold to measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, smallpox, pneumonia, etc., represent Nature's efforts to repair injury or to remove from the system some kind of morbid matter, virus, poison or microorganism dangerous to health and life. In other words, acute diseases cannot develop in a perfectly normal, healthy body living under conditions favorable to human life. The question may be asked: "If acute diseases represent Nature's healing efforts, why is it that people die from them?" The answer to this is: the vitality may be too low, the injury or morbid encumbrance too great or the treatment may be inadequate or harmful, so that Nature loses the fight; still, the acute disease represents an effort of Nature to overcome the enemies to health and life and to reestablish normal, healthy conditions.
It is a curious fact that this fundamental principle of Nature Cure and Law of Nature has been acknowledged and verified by medical science. The most advanced works on pathology admit the constructive and beneficial character of inflammation. However, when it comes to the treatment of acute diseases, physicians seem to forget entirely this basic principle of pathology, and treat inflammation and fever as though they were, in themselves, inimical and destructive to health and life.
From this inconsistency in theory and practice arise all the errors of allopathic medical treatment. Failure to understand this fundamental Law of Cure accounts for all the confusion on the part of the exponents of the different schools of healing sciences, and for the greater part of human suffering.
The Nature Cure philosophy never loses sight of the fundamental Law of Cure. While allopathy regards acute disease conditions as in themselves harmful and hostile to health and life, as something to be cured (we should say suppressed) by drug or knife, the Nature Cure school regards these forcible housecleanings as beneficial and necessary, so long, at least, as people will continue to disregard Nature's Laws. While, through its simple, natural methods of treatment, Nature Cure easily modifies the course of inflammatory and feverish processes and keeps them within safe limits, it never checks or suppresses these acute reactions by poisonous drugs, serums, antiseptics, surgical operations, suggestion or any other suppressive treatment.
Skin eruptions, boils, ulcers, catarrhs, diarrheas, and all other forms of inflammatory febrile disease conditions are indications that there is something hostile to life and health in the organism which Nature is trying to remove or overcome by these so-called "acute" diseases. What, then, can be gained by suppressing them with poisonous drugs and surgical operations? Such practice does not allow Nature to carry on her work of cleansing and repair and to attain her ends. The morbid matter which she endeavored to eliminate by acute reactions is thrown back into the system. Worse than that, drug poisons are added to disease poisons. Is it any wonder that fatal complications arise, or that the acute condition is changed to chronic disease?
Why Does the Greater Part of Allopathic Materia
Medica Consist of Virulent Poisons?
The statements made in the preceding pages are a severe indictment of regular medical science, but they point out the difference in the basic principles of the "Old School" of healing and those of the Nature Cure philosophy.
The fundamental Law of Cure quoted in this chapter explains why allopathic medical science is in error, not in a few things only, but in most things. The foundation, the orthodox conception of disease being wrong, it follows that everything which is built thereon must be wrong also.
No matter how learned a man may be, if he begins a problem in arithmetic with the proposition 2x2=5, he never will arrive at a correct solution if he continue to figure into all eternity. Neither can allopathy solve the problem of disease and cure as long as its fundamental conception of disease is based on error.
The fundamental law of cure explains also why the great majority of allopathic prescriptions contain virulent poisons in some form or another and why surgical operations are in high favor with the disciples of the regular school.
The answer of allopathy to the question, "Why do you give poisons?" usually is, "Our materia medica contains poisons because drug poison kills and eliminates disease poison." We, however, claim that drug poisons merely serve to paralyze vital force, whereby the deceptive results of allopathic treatment are obtained.
The following will explain this more fully. We have learned that so-called acute diseases are Nature's cleansing and healing efforts. All acute reactions represent increased activity of vital force, resulting in feverish and inflammatory conditions, accompanied by pain, redness, swelling, high temperature, rapid pulse, catarrhal discharges, skin eruptions, boils, ulcers, etc.
Allopathy regards these violent activities of vital force as detrimental and harmful in themselves. Anything which will inhibit the action of vital force will, in allopathic parlance, cure (?) acute diseases. As a matter of fact, nothing more effectively paralyzes vital force and impairs the vital organs than poisonous drugs and the surgeon's knife. These, therefore, must necessarily constitute the favorite means of cure (?) of the regular school of medicine.
This school mistakes effect for cause. It fails to see that the local inflammation arising within the organism is not the disease, but merely marks the locality and the method through which Nature is trying her best to discharge the morbid encumbrances; that the acute reaction is local, but that its causes or feeders are always constitutional and must be treated constitutionally. When, under the influence of rational, natural treatment, the poisonous irritants are eliminated from blood and tissues, the local symptoms take care of themselves; it does not matter whether they manifest as pimple or cancer, as a simple cold or as consumption.
The Law of Dual Effect
Everywhere in Nature rules the great Law of Action and Reaction. All life sways back and forth between giving and receiving, between action and reaction. The very breath of life mysteriously comes and goes in rhythmical flow. So also heaves and falls in ebb and tide the bosom of Mother Earth.
In some of its aspects, this law is called the Law of Compensation, or the Law of Dual Effect. On its action depends the preservation of energy.
The Great Master expressed the ethical application of this law when he said:
"Give, and it shall be given unto you. . . . For with the same measure that ye mete it shall be measured to you again."—Luke 6:38.
In the realms of physical nature, giving and receiving, action and reaction balance each other mechanically and automatically. What we gain in power we lose in speed or volume, and vice versa. This makes it possible for the mechanic, the scientist and the astronomer to predict with mathematical precision for ages in advance the results of certain activities in Nature.
The great Law of Dual Effect forms the foundation of the healing sciences. It is related to and governs every phenomenon of health, disease and cure. When I formulated the fundamental Law of Cure in the words, "Every acute disease is the result of a healing effort of Nature," this was but another expression of the great Law of Action and Reaction. What we commonly call crisis, acute reaction or acute disease is in reality Nature's attempt to establish health.
Applied to the physical activity of the body, the Law of Com-pensation may be expressed as follows: "Every agent affecting the human organism produces two effects: a first, apparent, temporary effect, and a second, lasting effect. The secondary, lasting effect is always contrary to the primary, transient effect."
For instance: The first and temporary effect of cold water applied to the skin consists in sending the blood to the interior; but in order to compensate for the local depletion, Nature responds by sending greater quantities of blood back to the surface, resulting in increased warmth and better surface circulation.
The first effect of a hot bath is to draw the blood to the surface; but the secondary effect sends the blood back to the interior, leaving the surface bloodless and chilled.
Stimulants, as we shall see later on, produce their deceptive effects by burning up the reserve stores of vital energy in the organism. This is inevitably followed by weakness and exhaustion in exact proportion to the previous excitation.
The primary effect of relaxation and sleep is weakness, numbness and death-like stupor; the secondary effect, however, is an increase of vitality.
The Law of Dual Effect governs all drug action. The first, temporary, violent effect of poisonous drugs, when given in physiological doses, is usually due to Nature's efforts to overcome and eliminate these substances. The secondary, lasting effect is due to the retention of the drug poisons in the system and their action on the organism.
In theory and practice, allopathy considers the first effect only and ignores the lasting aftereffects of drugs and surgical operations. It administers remedies whose first effect is contrary to the disease condition. Therefore, in accordance with the Law of Action and Reaction, the secondary, lasting effect of such remedies must be similar to or like the disease condition.
Common, everyday experience should teach us that this is so, for laxatives and cathartics always tend to produce chronic constipation.
The secondary effect of stimulants and tonics of any kind is increased weakness, and their continued use often results in complete exhaustion and paralysis of mental and physical powers.
Headache powders, pain killers, opiates, sedatives and hypnotics may paralyze brain and nerves into temporary insensibility; but, if due to constitutional causes, the pain, nervousness and insomnia will always return with redoubled force. If taken habitually, these agents invariably tend to create heart disease and paralysis, and ultimately develop the patient into a dope fiend.
Cold and catarrh cures (?), such as quinine, coal-tar products, etc., suppress Nature's efforts to eliminate waste and morbid matter through the mucous linings of the respiratory tract, and drive the disease matter back into the lungs, thus breeding pneumonia, chronic catarrhs, asthma and consumption.
Mercury, iodine and all other alteratives, by suppression of external elimination, create internal chronic diseases of the most dreadful types, such as locomotor ataxy, paresis, etc.
So the recital might be continued all through orthodox materia medica. Each drug breeds new disease symptoms which are in their turn cured (?) by other poisons, until the insane asylum or merciful death rings down the curtain on the tragedy of a ruined life.
The teaching and practice of homeopathy, as explained in Chapter Twenty-Six, is fully in harmony with the Law of Action and Reaction. Acting upon the basic principle of homeopathy: ~Similia similibus curantur,~ or like cures like, it administers remedies whose first, temporary effect is similar to the disease conditions. In accordance with the Law of Dual Effect, then, the secondary effect of these remedies must be contrary to the disease conditions, that is, curative.
Suppression Versus Elimination
My claim that the conventional treatment of acute diseases is suppressive and not curative will probably be denied by my medical colleagues. They will maintain that their methods also are calculated to eliminate morbid matter and disease germs from the system.
But what are the facts in actual practice? Is it not true that preparations of mercury, lead, zinc and other powerful poisons are constantly used to suppress skin eruptions, boils, abscesses, etc., instead of allowing Nature to rid the system through these skin diseases of scrofulous, venereal and psoric taints?
Some time ago Dr. Wiley, the former Government Chemist, published the ingredients of a number of popular remedies for colds, coughs and catarrh. Every one of them contained some powerful opiate or astringent. These poisonous drugs relieve the cough and the catarrhal conditions by paralyzing the eliminative activity of the membranous linings of the nasal passages, the bronchi and lungs, the digestive and genitourinary organs; but in doing so, they throw back into the system the morbid matter which Nature is trying to get rid of, and add drug poisons to disease poisons.
Equally harmful is suppression by means of the surgeon's knife. It may be a quicker and apparently more effective process to remove the inflamed appendix or the diseased tonsils than to cure them by building up the blood and inducing elimination of systemic poisons by natural methods. But operative treatment is not eliminative. It does not remove from the system the original cause of the inflammation or deterioration of tissues and organs, but it does remove the outlet which Nature had established for the escape of morbid materials.
These morbid encumbrances, forcibly retained in the body, weaken and destroy other parts and organs, or affect the general health of the patient.
My own observations during nearly fifteen years of practical experience, confirmed by many other conscientious observers among Nature Cure practitioners as well as physicians of other schools and of allopathy itself, prove positively that the average length of life after a major operation, performed on important, vital parts and organs, is less than ten years, and that after such an operation the general health of the patient is in the great majority of cases not as good as before.
In the following paragraphs are mentioned some very common instances of suppression and some of their usual chronic aftereffects (sequelae).
Diarrhea is suppressed with laudanum and other opiates, which paralyze the peristaltic action of the bowels and, if repeated, soon produce chronic constipation. Gonorrheal discharges and syphilitic ulcers are checked and suppressed by local injections, cauterization and by prescriptions containing mercury, iodine and other poisonous alternatives which effectually prevent Nature's efforts to eliminate the venereal poisons from the system.
Gonorrheal discharges and syphilitic ulcers are checked and supressed by local injections, cauterizatin, and by prescriptions containing mercury, iodine, and other poisonous alternatives which effectually prevent Nature's efforts to elminate the venereal poisons from the system.
All feverish diseases are more or less interfered with or suppressed by antiseptics, antipyretics, serums and antitoxins. The best books on ~Materia Medica~ and the professors in the colleges teach that these remedies lower the fever because they are "protoplasmic poisons"; because they paralyze the red and white blood corpuscles, benumb heart action and respiration, and depress all vital functions.
Nervousness, sleeplessness and pain are suppressed by sedatives, opiates and hypnotics. Every one of the drugs used for such purposes is a powerful poison which paralyzes brain and nerve action, in that way interfering with Nature's healing efforts and frequently preventing the consummation of beneficial healing crises.
Epileptic attacks and other forms of convulsions are suppressed, but never cured, by bromides which benumb and paralyze the brain and nerve centers. All that these sedatives accomplish is to produce in the course of time idiocy and the different forms of paralysis and premature senility.
However, is he not considered the best doctor who can most promptly produce these and many similar deceptive results through artificial inhibition or stimulation by means of the most virulent poisons found on earth?
Dandruff and falling hair are caused by the elimination of systemic poisons through the scalp. The thing to do, therefore, is not to suppress this elimination and thereby cause the accumulation of poisons in the brain, but to stop the manufacture of poison in the body and to promote its removal through the natural channels.
Dandruff cures and hair tonics contain glycerine, poisonous antiseptics and stimulants which are absorbed by scalp and brain, causing dizziness, headaches, loss of memory, neurasthenia, deaf-ness, weakness of sight, etc.
Head lice and similar parasites peculiar to other parts of the body live on scrofulous and psoriotic taints. When these are consumed, the lice depart as they came, no one knows whence or whither.
This is confirmed by the fact that these noxious pests do not remain with all people who have been exposed to them, but only with those whose internal or external filth conditions furnish the parasites with the means of subsistence.
In a number of instances we have seen "healing crises" take the form of lice. At that time the patients were living in the most clean surroundings, taking different forms of water treatment every day and infection was practically impossible.
These people invariably recalled that they had been infested with parasites at some previous time, and that strong antiseptics, mercurial salves, or other means of suppression had been applied.
We prescribe for the removal of lice only cold water and the comb.Even antiseptic soaps should be avoided.
The Results of Suppression of Children's Diseases
Sycotic eruptions on the heads and bodies of infants, also called milk scurf, if suppressed by salves, cream, unsalted butter or merely by warm bathing, are often followed by chorea (St. Vitus' dance), epilepsy, a scrofulous constitution and in later life by tuberculosis.
Measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, spinal meningitis and other febrile diseases of childhood, if properly treated by natural methods, are curative or at least corrective in their effects on the system, and represent well-defined, orderly natural processes for the elimination of inherited or acquired disease taints, drug poisons, etc. But if arrested or suppressed before they have run their natural course, before Nature has had time to reestablish normal conditions, then the abnormal condition becomes fixed and permanent (chronic).
In addition to this, the poisons and serums employed to arrest the disease process very often affect vital parts and organs permanently, causing the gradual deterioration of cells and tissues, and paving the way for tuberculosis, chronic affection of the kidneys, cancer, etc., in later years.
These self-evident facts, which can be verified by any unprejudiced observer, account for the "mysterious sequelae" of drug-and serum-treated acute diseases, which never occur where natural methods of healing have been correctly employed. Some of these chronic aftereffects are deafness, blindness, heart and kidney diseases, nervous affections, idiocy, infantile paralysis, etc.
These are merely a few ordinary examples of the results of suppression. They could be multiplied a hundred fold, yet medical science assures us that the causes of cancer and other malignant diseases are unknown.
Good Nature Cure Doctrine from an Allopathic Authority
The following utterances of the late Dr. Nicholas Senin strongly confirm our claims as to the nature and cure of disease. Coming from the lips of a celebrated surgeon and physician, these statements should carry some weight with those who, being unable to reason for themselves, worship at the feet of "authority." The quotations referred to are taken from the report of an interview granted by the doctor to Chicago newspaper representatives on his return from his trip around the world.
[Chicago American, August 5th, 1906.]
Over-Feeding and Over-Dressing Given as Causes of Cancer
"Dr. Nicholas Senn brought back from Africa, from whence he returned to Chicago yesterday, confirmations of his belief that cancer is a 'civilized' disease.
"Dr. Senn spent from $2,000 to $3,000 worth of time—at the cash value per hour of his time on his first day at home for four months, telling a half dozen newspaper men more than all the world, except himself and a score of specialists like him, know about the fearful disease. He summed up his own learning in the statement that the disease is still incurable except by the knife in its incipient stages and that the best preventive is clean, plain living.
"His investigations of the natives of Africa served to strengthen his conviction that cancer is a product of civilization, 'like apoplexy and scores of other exotic ailments,' Dr. Senn said. He could not find or hear of a case of cancer among the 'Hamites,' as he termed them. And from the fact that he found the disease, to be an unknown one to the Esquimaux of Greenland, he is assured that climate has nothing whatever to do with it. Climate did not cause it, and climate will not cure it."
Cancer Caused by Over-Living
"'The nearer the human race approaches the animals in habits and particularly in the matter of diet and dress, the freer it is from cancer,' he said. 'Cancer comes from over-feeding and over-living.
"'Drinking, gourmandizing, unnatural habits of women, like lacing, all those things help to plant the seeds of cancer in the child.
"'And as we have not learned to cure it the best thing to do is to prevent it when we can. If children were brought up in simplicity by natural mothers; then, if care should be taken to prevent hypernutrition, there would be much less danger from cancer. Cancer itself is an over-fed thing—tissue that never matures, for if I could mature the cells I could cure the disease. The thing for people to do who fear they may have inherited it, is to live simply—there are many cases among people with a tendency to obesity to one among those of a scanty habit of living—and particularly to remove all sources of irritation, like bad teeth, tobacco, and clothes that chafe.'"
Studies African Race
"Besides his hobby, as he calls it, Dr. Senn studied the African generally in his voyage along the East Coast of that continent.
"'It was a fine trip,' he said, 'with so many things to learn. Ethnologically I am certain Africans are of common stock. The negro is a negro wherever you find him. From Kaffir to Bushman and pygmy they are all Hamites.
"'They are mostly a fine people physically, lean and tall, except the dwarfs. There is little tendency toward obesity; they have no apoplexy, no distended veins as we have in civilization. Hence their freedom from cancer. They live naturally, and are vegetarians mostly, while the Northern Esquimaux are meat-eaters, but both races eat naturally to sustain life, hence their immunity from that disease. It is where eating is made an art that cancer is most prevalent.
"'They are free from many other diseases that pester us also. Tuberculosis is hardly known, and only along the coast, where it has been taken by the whites. The real curse of the coast country is malaria. It is bad all up and down the East shore. I kept away from it myself by taking five grains of quinine and the juice of a lemon once a day on an empty stomach. That is a good remedy for malaria, for in all my running around I have never had it."
(Editor's Note.—Dr. Senn died January 2, 1908. The papers stated after his death, that the doctor had never been well since the return from his long voyage, that his heart and nervous system had been seriously affected by the altitudes of the Andes and of other mountains. We wonder whether the "high altitudes" or the "five grains of quinine daily" were to blame for the celebrated physician's heart disease and death.)
Suppression, the Cause of Chronic Diseases
Dr. Senn was right. If men and women lived more naturally, the majority of diseases would disappear.
The primary cause of disease is violation of Nature's Laws. "Civilization" has largely stood for artificiality of life and for unnatural habits. A higher civilization, yet to come, will combine the most exquisite culture of heart and mind with true simplicity and naturalness of living. Excessive meat eating, strong spices and condiments, alcohol, coffee, tea, overwork, night work, fear, worry, sensuality, corsets, high heels, foul air, improper breathing, lack of exercise, loveless marriages, race suicide, all of these and many other evils of hypercivlization have contributed their share in creating the universal degeneracy of civilized nations commented upon by Dr. Senn.
When the unnatural habits of life alluded to have lowered the vitality and favored the accumulation of waste matter and poisons to such an extent that the sluggish bowels, kidneys, skin and the other organs of elimination are unable to keep a clean house, Nature has to resort to other, more radical means of purification or we should choke in our own impurities. These forcible housecleanings of Nature are colds, catarrh, skin eruptions, diarrheas, boils, ulcers, abnormal perspiration, hemorrhages and many other forms of inflammatory febrile diseases.
Sulphur and mercury may drive back the skin eruptions, antipyretics and antiseptics may suppress fever and catarrh. The patient and the doctor may congratulate themselves on a speedy cure; but what is the true state of affairs? Nature has been thwarted in her work of healing and cleansing. She had to give up the fight against disease matter in order to combat the more potent poisons of mercury, quinine, iodine, strychnine, etc. The disease matter is still in the system, plus the drug poison.
Proof positive of the retention of drug poisons in the organism is furnished by the Diagnosis from the Eye. This will be explained more fully in another chapter.
When vitality has been sufficiently restored, Nature may make another attempt at purification, this time, possibly, in another direction; but again her well-meant efforts are defeated. This process of suppression is repeated over and over again until blood and tissues become so loaded with waste material and poisons that the healing forces of the organism can no longer react against them by acute diseases. Then results the chronic condition, which in the vocabulary of the "Old School" of medicine is only another name for incurable disease.
The more skilled the allopathic school becomes in the suppression and prevention of acute diseases by drugs, knife, x-rays, serums, vaccination virus, etc., the greater will be the increase of chronic dyspepsia, nervous prostration, insanity, locomotor ataxy, paresis, cancer, secondary and tertiary syphilis, tuberculosis and many other so-called incurable diseases. Thus, the standard medical practice is self-supporting; the treatment of acute conditions assuring a lifelong supply of chronic conditions for the doctor to treat.
Suppression of acute diseases, by drugs and knife, is the all-important factor in the creation of malignant diseases which Dr. Senn had overlooked in his discourse on the causes of distructive ailments. If he had steudied his experiences in foreign lands in the light of these explanations he would have found that these scourges of mankind exist only in those parts of earth where the drug store flourishes.
These statements may seem exaggerated; but allow me to cite a few typical cases of suppression and their effects upon the system from our daily practice.
Paresis, locomotor ataxy and paralysis agitans are not, as is usually assumed, due to secondary and tertiary syphilis, but to the mercury administered for the cure of luetic and other diseases. In less than six months' time we cure the so-called specific diseases by our natural methods, provided they are not suppressed and complicated by mercury, iodine or other poisonous drugs. We never interfere with the original lesion, but allow Nature to discharge the poisons through the channels established for this purpose.
Under this rational treatment, discharge and ulcer act as fontanels to the system. Not only the specific poison, but much of hereditary and acquired disease matter also are eliminated in the process; and after such a cure, blood and tissues of the patient are purer than they were before infection.
The foregoing statement has nothing to do with the moral aspects involved in acquiring venereal diseases. In this connection we are dealing solely with the rational or irrational treatment of the infection after it has been contracted. We do not wish to intimate that it is advisable to cure the body by killing the soul.
Nevertheless, we must deal with the facts in Nature as we find them. Furthermore, a great many persons, especially women and children, acquire these diseases innocently. Are we not justified in relieving their minds of needless fear and in showing them the way to prevent the dreadful sufferings of the secondary and tertiary stages brought on by suppressive drug treatment by means of mercury, the iodides, "606," etc.?
These poisonous drugs suppress the initial lesion and diffuse the disease poison through the system. Nature takes up the work of elimination by means of skin eruptions and ulcers in various parts of the body, but these also are promptly suppressed with mercurial ointments and other alternatives. This process of suppression is continued for months and years, until the organism is so thoroughly saturated with alterative poisons that vital force can no longer react by acute reactions against the original syphilitic poisons. This state of vital paralysis is then called a cure.
The medical professor, however, knows better. He instructs the students from the lecture platform: "When, after two or three years of mercurial treatment, syphilitic symptoms cease to appear, you may permit the patient to marry—but never guarantee a cure."
Why not? Because the professor is aware that the offspring of such a union are born with hereditary symptoms well known to every physician, and because the patient thus cured (?) may turn up in the doctor's office at any time thereafter with a hole in his palate, ulcers on his body, caries of the bones or with other secondary and tertiary symptoms.
Mercury has an especial affinity for the bony structures. It will work its way through the vertebrae of the spine and the bones of the skull into the nerve matter of the brain and spinal cord, causing inflammation, excruciating headaches, nervous symptoms, girdle pains, etc. These stages of acute inflammation are followed in a few years by sclerosis (hardening) of nerve matter and blood vessels, resulting in paresis, locomotor ataxy or paralysis agitans.
Neither is it necessary to contract specific diseases in order to fall a victim to these dreadful conditions: mercury, iodine and other destructive alternatives are given in a hundred different forms for a multitude of other ailments.
A few years ago we had under our care a patient in the last stages of locomotor ataxy, who for years had been suffering the tortures of the damned. There had never been a taint of specific disease in her system, but four different times in her life she had been salivated by calomel (a common laxative containing mercury). This dreadful poison was given to her in large doses for the cure of liver trouble and constipation. She was only fourteen years old when, on account of this, she first suffered from acute mercurial poisoning.
Another patient who, after fifteen years of slow and torturous dying by inches, succumbed to the same disease, absorbed the mercurial poison in his boyhood days while attending a boarding school. He was twice salivated by mercurial ointments applied to cure the itch (scabies), a disease which was epidemic at times among the boys. He likewise never had a syphilitic disease.
A young man, insane at the age of thirty, absorbed the infernal poison when four years of age. He had at the time a psoric skin eruption, but the family physician suspected syphilitic infection from the nurse girl and kept the child under mercury for six months. How do we know that the diagnosis of syphilis was false? Because the iris of the eye revealed "psora" as the cause of the suspicious eruption which reappeared several times later in life, and because the servant girl was afterwards absolutely exonerated by competent physicians.
Proofs by the Diagnosis from the Eye
We have treated many hundreds of cases of so-called chronic neuralgia, neuritis, rheumatism, neurasthenia, epilepsy and idiocy, due to the pernicious effects of quinine, iodine, arsenic, strychnine, coal-tar products and other virulent poisons taken under the guise of medicine.
How do we know that this is so?
Because the Diagnosis from the Eye plainly reveals the presence of these poisons in the system. Because the drug signs in the eye are accompanied by the symptoms of these poisons in the system. Because the record in the eye is confirmed by the history of the patient. Because, under natural living and treatment, diseases long ago suppressed by drugs or knife reappear as healing crises. Because, in these healing crises, drugs indicated by the signs in the iris of the eye are frequently eliminated under their own peculiar symptoms. Because, to the extent that a drug is eliminated from the system by a healing crisis, its sign will disappear from the iris of the eye.
To illustrate:
The Diagnosis from the Eye reveals heavy quinine poisoning in the region of the brain. This enables us to say to the patient, without questioning him, that he suffers from severe frontal headaches and ringing in the ears, that he is very irritahle, and so on through the various symptoms of quinine poisoning. The history of the patient reveals the fact that he has taken large amounts of quinine for colds, la grippe or malaria. Under our methods of natural living and treatment, the patient improves; the organism becomes more vigorous, and the organs of elimination act more freely; the latent poisons are stirred up in their hiding places; healing crises make their appearance. The processes of elimination thus inaugurated develop various symptoms of acute poisoning. The eliminating crises are accompanied by headaches, ringing in the ears, nasal catarrh, bone pains, neuritis, strong taste of quinine in the mouth, etc. Every healing crisis, if naturally treated, diminishes the signs of disease and drug poisons in the eye.
Inflammation
From what has already been said on this subject, it will have become apparent that inflammatory and feverish diseases are just as natural, orderly and lawful as anything else in Nature, that, therefore, after they have once started, they must not be checked or suppressed by poisonous drugs and surgical operations.
Inflammatory processes can be kept within safe limits, and they must be assisted in their constructive tendencies by the natural methods of treatment. To check and suppress acute diseases before they have run their natural course means to suppress Nature's purifying and healing efforts, to court fatal complications and to change the acute, constructive reactions into chronic disease conditions.
Those who have followed the preceding chapters will remember that their general trend has been to prove one of the fundamental principles of Nature Cure philosophy, namely the Unity of Disease and Cure.
We claim that all acute diseases are uniform in their causes, their purpose, and if conditions are favorable, uniform also in their progressive development.
In former chapters I endeavored to prove and to elucidate the unity of acute diseases in regard to their causes and their purpose, the latter not being destructive, but constructive and beneficial. I demonstrated that the microorganisms of disease are not the unmitigated nuisance and evil which they are commonly regarded, but that, like everything else in Nature, they, too, serve a useful purpose. I showed that it depends upon ourselves whether their activity is harmful and destructive, or beneficial: upon our manner of living and of treating acute reactions.
Let us now trace the unity of acute diseases in regard to their general course by a brief examination of the processes of inflammation and their progressive development through five well-defined stages. We shall base our studies on the most advanced works on pathology and bacteriology.
The Story of Inflammation
To me the story of inflammation has been one of the most wonderful revelations of the complex activities of the human organism. More than anything else it confirms to me the fundamental principles of Nature Cure, the fact that Nature is a good healer, not a poor one.
Before inflammation can arise, there must exist an exciting cause in the form of some obstruction or of some agent inimical to health and life. Such excitants of inflammation may be dead cells, blood clots, fragments of bone and other effete matter produced in the system itself or they may be foreign bodies such as particles of dust, soot, stone, iron or other metals, slivers of wood, etc.; again, they may be microorganisms or parasites.
When one or more of these exciting agents of inflammation are present in the tissues of the body in sufficient strength to call forth the reaction and opposition of the healing forces, the microscope will always reveal the following phenomena, slightly varying under different conditions:
The blood rushes to the area of irritation. Owing to this increased blood pressure, the minute arteries and veins in the immediate neighborhood of the excitant dilate and increase in size. The distension of the blood vessels stretches and thereby weakens their walls. Through these the white blood corpuscles squeeze their mobile bodies and work their way through the intervening tissues toward the affected area.
In some mysterious way they seem to sense the exact location of the danger point and hurry toward it in large numbers like soldiers summoned to meet an invading army. This faculty of the white blood corpuscles to apprehend the presence and exact location of the enemy has been ascribed to chemical attraction and is called ~chemotaxis.~
The army of defense is made up of the white blood corpuscles or leukocytes and of connective tissue cells which separate themselves from the neighboring tissues. All these wandering cells possess the faculty of absorbing and digesting microbes. They contain certain proteolytic or protein-splitting ferments, by means of which they decompose and digest poisons and hostile microorganisms. On account of their activity as germ destroyers, these cells have been called germ killers or ~phagocytes~. In their movements and actions these valiant little warriors act very much like intelligent beings, animated by the qualities of patience, perseverance, courage, foresight and self-sacrifice.
The phagocytes absorb morbid matter, poisons or microorganisms by enveloping them with their own bodies. It is a hand-to-hand fight, and many of the brave little soldiers are destroyed by the poisons and bacteria which they attack and swallow. What we call pus is made up of the bodies of live and dead phagocytes, disease taints and germs, blood serum, broken-down tissues and cells, in short, the debris of the battlefield.
We can now understand how the processes just described produce the well-known cardinal symptoms of inflammation and fever; the redness, heat and swelling due to increased blood pressure, congestion and the accumulation of exudates; the pain due to irritation and to pressure on the nerves. We can also realize how impaired nutrition and the obstruction and destruction in the affected parts and organs will interfere with and inhibit functional activity.
The organism has still other ways and means of defending itself. At the time of bacterial infection, certain germ-killing substances are developed in the blood serum. Science has named these defensive proteins ~alexins.~ It has also been found that the phagocyte and tissue cells in the neighborhood of the area of irritation produce antipoisons or natural antitoxins, which neutralize the bacterial poisons and kill the microorganisms of disease.
With the Evil, Nature Provides the Cure
Furthermore, the growth and development of bacteria and parasites is inhibited and finally arrested by their own waste products. We have an example of this in the yeast germ, which thrives and multiplies in the presence of sugar in solution. Living on and digesting the sugar, it decomposes the sugar molecules into alcohol and carbonic acid. As the alcohol increases during the process of fermentation, it gradually arrests the development and activity of the yeast cells.
Similar phenomena accompany the activity of disease germs and parasites. They produce certain waste products which gradually inhibit their own growth and increase. The vaccines, serums and antitoxins of medical science are prepared from these bacterial excrements and from extracts made of the bodies of bacteria.
In the serum and antitoxin treatment, therefore, the allopathic school is imitating Nature's procedure in checking the growth of microorganisms, but with this difference: Nature does not suppress the growth and multiplication of disease germs until the morbid matter on which they subsist has been decomposed and consumed, and until the inflammatory processes have run their course through the five stages of inflammation; while serums and antitoxins given in powerful doses at the different stages of any disease may check and suppress germ activity and the processes of inflammation before the latter have run their natural course and before the morbid matter has been eliminated.
The Five Stages of Inflammation
What has been said in former chapters confirms my claim that all acute diseases are uniform in their causes and in their purpose. From the foregoing description of inflammation it will have become clear that they are also uniform in their pathological development. The uniformity of acute inflammatory processes becomes still more apparent when we follow them through their five succeeding stages, that is: Incubation, Aggravation, Destruction, Abatement and Reconstruction, as illustrated in the following diagram:
I. Incubation. The first section of the diagram corresponds to the period of Incubation, the time between the exposure to an infectious disease and its development. This period may last from a few minutes to a few days, weeks, months or even years.
During this stage morbid matter, poisons, microorganisms and other excitants of inflammation gather and concentrate in certain parts and organs of the body. When they have accumulated to such an extent as to interfere with the normal functions or to endanger the health and life of the organism, the life forces begin to react to the obstruction or threatening danger by means of the inflammatory processes before described.
II. Aggravation. During the period of Aggravation the battle between the phagocytes and Nature's antitoxins on the one hand, and the poisons and microorganisms of disease on the other hand, gradually progresses, accompanied by a corresponding increase of fever and inflammation, until it reaches its climax, marked by the greatest intensity of feverish symptoms.
III. Destruction. This battle between the forces of disease and the healing forces is accompanied by the disintegration of tissues due to the accumulation of exudates, to pus formation, the development of abscesses, boils, fistulas, open sores, etc., and to other morbid changes. It involves the destruction of phagocytes, bacteria, blood vessels, and tissues just as a battle between contending human armies results in loss of life and property.
The stage of Destruction ends in crisis, which may be either fatal or beneficial. If the healing forces of the organism are in the ascendancy, and if they are supported by right treatment which tends to build up the blood, increase the vitality and promote elimination, then the poisons and the microorganisms of disease will gradually be overcome, absorbed or eliminated and, by degrees, the tissues will be cleared of the debris of the battlefield.
IV. Abatement. The absorption and elimination of exudates, pus, etc., take place during the period of abatement. It is accompanied by a gradual lowering of temperature, pulse rate and the other symptoms of fever and inflammation.
V. Resolution or Reconstruction. When the period of Abate-ment has run its course and the affected areas have been cleared of the morbid accumulations and obstructions, then, during the fifth stage of inflammation, the work of rebuilding the injured parts and organs begins. More or less destruction has taken place in the cells and tissues, the blood vessels and organs of the areas involved. These must now be reconstructed, and this last stage of the inflammatory process is, therefore, in a way the most important. On the perfect regeneration of the injured parts depends the final effect of the acute disease upon the organism.
If the inflammation has been allowed to run its course through the different stages of acute activity and the final stage of Reconstruction, then every acute disease, whatever its name and description may be, will prove beneficial to the organism because morbid matter, foreign bodies, poisons and microorganisms have been eliminated from the system; abnormal and diseased tissues have been broken down and built up again to a purer and more normal condition.
As it were, the acute disease has acted upon the organism like a thunderstorm on the sultry, vitiated summer air. It has cleared the system of impurities and destructive influences, and re-established wholesome, normal conditions. Therefore acute diseases, when treated in harmony with Nature's intent, always prove beneficial.
If, however, through neglect or wrong treatment, the inflammatory processes are not allowed to run their natural course, if they are checked or suppressed by poisonous drugs, the ice bag or surgical operations, or if the disease conditions in the system are so far in the ascendancy that the healing forces cannot react properly, then the constructive forces may lose the battle and the disease may take a fatal ending or develop into chronic ailments.
Suppression During the First
Two Stages of Inflammation
It may be suggested that suppression during the stages of Incubation and Aggravation need not have fatal consequences if followed by natural living and eliminative treatment. To this I would reply: "Such procedure always involves the danger of concentrating the disease poisons in vital parts and organs, thus laying the foundation for chronic destructive diseases."
Furthermore, it is not at all necessary to suppress inflammatory processes by poisonous drugs and other unnatural means, because we can easily and surely control them and keep them from becoming dangerous by our natural means of treatment.
I shall now endeavor to prove and to illustrate the foregoing theoretical expositions by following the development of various diseases through the five stages of inflammation. I shall first take up the commonest of all forms of disease, the cold.
Catching a Cold
According to popular opinion, the catching of colds is responsible for the greater portion of human ailments. Almost daily I hear from patients who come for consultation: All my troubles date back to a cold I took at such and such a time, etc. Then I have to explain that colds are not taken suddenly and from without but that they come from within, that their period of Incubation may have extended over months or years, that a clean, healthy body possessed of good vitality cannot take cold under the ordinary thermal conditions congenial to human life, no matter how sudden the change in temperature.
At first glance, this may seem to be contrary to common experience as well as to the theory and practice of medical science. But let us follow the development of a cold from start to finish. This will throw some light on the question as to whether it can be caught, or whether it develops slowly within the organism; also whether this development or incubation may extend over a long period of time.
Taking cold may be caused by chilling of the surface of the body or part of the body. In the chilled portions of the skin the pores close, the blood recedes into the interior, and as a result of this the elimination of poisonous gases and exudates through these portions of the skin is suppressed.
This catching a cold through being exposed to a cold draft, through wet clothing, etc., is not necessarily followed by more serious consequences. If the system is not too much encumbered with morbid matter and if kidneys and intestines are in fairly good working order, these organs will take care of the extra amount of waste and morbid materials in place of the temporarily inactive skin and eliminate them without difficulty. The greater the vitality and the more normal the composition of the blood, the better the system will react in such an emergency and throw off the morbid matter which failed to be eliminated through the skin.
If, however, the organism is already overloaded with waste and morbid materials, if the bowels and the kidneys are already weakened and atrophied through continued overwork and overstimulation, if, in addition to this, the vitality has been lowered through excesses or overexertion and the vital fluids are in an abnormal condition, then the morbid matter thrown into the circulation by the chilling and temporary inactivity of the skin cannot find an outlet through the regular channels of elimination and endeavors to escape by way of the mucous linings of the nasal passages, the throat, bronchi, stomach, bowels and genitourinary organs.
The waste materials and poisonous exudates which are being eliminated through these internal membranes cause irritation and congestion, and thus produce the well-known symptoms of inflammation and catarrhal elimination: sneezing (coryza), cough, expectoration, mucous discharges, diarrhea, leucorrhea [vaginal dis-charge], etc. In other words, these so-called colds are nothing more or less than different forms of vicarious elimination. The membranous linings of the internal organs are doing the work for the inactive, sluggish and atrophied skin, kidneys and intestines. The greater the accumulation of morbid matter in the system, the lower the vitality, and the more abnormal the composition of the blood and lymph, the greater will be the liability to the catching of colds.
What is to be gained by suppressing the different forms of catarrhal elimination with cough and catarrh cures containing opiates, astringents, antiseptics, germkillers and antipyretics? Is it not obvious that such a procedure interferes with Nature's purifying efforts, that it hinders and suppresses the inflammatory processes and the accompanying elimination of morbid matter from the system? Worst of all, that it adds drug poisons to disease poisons?
Such a course can have but one result, namely the changing ofNature's cleansing and healing efforts into chronic disease.
From the foregoing it will have become clear that the cause of a cold lies not so much in the cold draft, or the wet feet, as in the primary causes of all disease: lowered vitality, deterioration of the vital fluids and the accumulation of morbid matter and poisons in the system.
The incubation period of the cold may have extended over many years or over an entire lifetime.
What, then, is the natural cure for colds? There can be but one remedy: increased elimination through the proper channels. This is accomplished by judicious dieting and fasting, and through restoring the natural activity of the skin, kidneys and bowels by means of wet packs, cold sprays and ablutions, sitz baths, massage, chiropractic or osteopathic manipulation, homeopathic remedies, exercise, sun and air baths and all other methods of natural treatment that save vitality, build up the blood on a normal basis and promote elimination without injuring the organism.
Suppression During the Third
Stage of Inflammation
Should the inflammatory processes be suppressed during the stage of Destruction, the results would be still more serious and far-reaching. We have learned that during this stage the affected parts and organs are involved in more or less disintegration. They are filled with morbid exudates, pus, etc., which interfere with and make impossible normal nutrition and functioning. If suppression takes place during this stage, it is obvious that the affected areas will be left permanently in a condition of destruction.
Here is an illustration from practical life: Suppose necessary changes and repairs have to be made in a house. Workmen have torn down the partitions, hangings, wallpaper, etc. At this stage of the proceedings the owner discharges the workmen and the house is left in a condition of chaos. Surely, this would not be rational. It would leave the house unfit for habitation. But such a procedure would correspond exactly to the suppression of inflammatory diseases during the stage of Destruction. This also leaves the affected organs permanently in an abnormal, diseased condition.
That accounts for the mysterious sequelae or chronic after-effects which so often follow drug-treated acute diseases. I have traced numerous cases of chronic affections of the lungs and kidneys, of infantile paralysis and of many other chronic ailments to such suppression. In the following I shall describe a typical case, which came under our care and treatment a few years ago.
Suppression by Means of the Ice Bag
A few years ago several gentlemen of Greek nationality called on me with the request that I visit a friend of theirs who had been lying sick for about two months in one of our great West Side [Chicago] hospitals. On investigation I found that the patient had entered the hospital suffering from a mild case of pneumonia. The doctors of the institution had ordered ice packs. Rubber sheets filled with ice were applied to the chest and other parts of the body. This had been done for several weeks until the fever subsided.