Impaired Health : Its Cause and Cure (Set of 2 Volumes)

All diseases may be likened to a string of beads, the string representing the true disease--toxemia--and the so-called diseases, which should be called affections, being represented by the beads. Break the cord, and the beads are lost--correct the toxin, and affections subside. I have found no better definition for disease than the following: Disease is the morbid process considered in its entire evolution from its initial cause to its final consequence; affection is a morbid process considered in its actual manifestations, apart from its cause.

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My object is to aid those who care to have a rational understanding--those who would have more than a slave's or a child's conception--of cause and effect as applied to disease and cure; not only on matters of health, but to aid a little in gaining an inspiration point for an understanding of nature which must be the road to Good--to an understanding of God!

It is painful to see people, who appear to have reasoning power, babbling and reaching for prescriptions and formulas, as a spoiled child reaches for the moon, and who are as disappointed in not getting the cure-alls as the child is when not served to the moon. It is not mind-stupefying formulas that man needs; he needs knowledge of fundamental principles--then he can make his own formulas. The world has been overrun by all kinds of cures and curers--charmers, exorcists, enchanters, diviners, conjurers, manipulators of fetiches, magicians, and medicine-men. And how far advanced is modern medical science today? Have we not doctors of thaumaturgy--sleight-of-hand--doing wonderful things in transforming "fallen mankind" into immunized beings who are no longer subject to the laws of nature, by vaccination, inoculation, and serum injections; are not our drug stores full of magical remedies; and have we not days set apart for invoking divine guidance? Are we not heathens in our thinking? Are we not barbarians in our actions? Are we not Antichrist in practice?

The child-mind cannot understand why it cannot be told in a few words just how to get well and stay well; how to be saved from its sins, and continue saved in spite of its sinning; for it cannot conceive other than that disease and sin must be entities which can be overpowered by an antidote and forever done away with. The people are not so much to blame for such childish beliefs, when we see a great and supposed-to-be wise profession teaching specific causes, specific immunities and cures-when we see a commercialized surgical profession cutting out effects without; knowledge or even thought of cause, and having the honors of knighthood conferred on them by a public that is more benighted, if that be possible.

Neither profession nor people appear to have the slightest conception that they might, with a small mental effort, secure a few fundamental principles that would lead them out of the wilderness of haphazard and make them safely their own physicians. First of all, however, they must learn that the really good physician prevents disease; that he cannot cure anything. Because of a lack of this knowledge, sickness has become more natural, or more to be expected, than health. Sickness is looked upon by the people, the state, the nation, as inevitable; and precautions, immunizations, and preventions are in keeping with these false ideas. The reverse is true. If we live for health, and seek health instead of disease, we find it. Post-mortems, vivisections, and laboratory investigations are all in the line of looking for disease-and we have found disease galore. If we look for health, it can be found.

Special tracts are affected by local injuries. An injury to any part of the body is liable to set up for the time being an enervated state of the nervous system supplying that particular part. Waste products fail to be eliminated, but are deposited, causing irritation. We have whole systems of healing based upon this derangement of the nervous system.

Where the nerves pass out of the spine they are liable to become cramped or impinged because of slight deposits, luxations, or displacements. When this is true, the osteopath and chiropractor are almost invariably successful in giving relief and cure. Where the condition is due entirely to a slight misplacement, the readjusting and righting of the anatomy must necessarily bring a cure; but where nerves are passing out through small foramina or openings between bones or other points, deposits are liable to take place when there is such a state of the blood as toxemia, plethora, scurvy, or gout existing. In these constitutional states there is a certain amount of deposit taking place in different parts of the body, and if a certain part of the anatomy is exposed to irritations--if muscular energy is expended over a certain locality, causing a freer flow of blood to the part than is normal--deposits will take place.

If these deposits take place in small bony openings, where nerves and arteries pass out, the nerves will be impinged upon, then cause pain--neuralgia or rheumatism--and, when continued, arteritis and endocarditis. To overcome nerve impingement, there must be absorption. Manipulation and exercise will often bring temporary relief by causing absorption of the present deposits; but so long as the constitutional derangement remains, there will be a redeposit, and all tender points throughout the organism--all points where discomfort is once developed on account of this state of the blood--will reappear. There can be no permanent cure until the habits of life are corrected to such an extent that the organism will no longer keep up its manufacture of toxins and pathological deposit.

It is obvious that manipulations of all kinds will be beneficial. Electricity, vibratory treatment, massage, and certainly osteopathy and chiropractic adjustments, will be followed with positive relief. But such relief will often make the patient and doctor believe that a cure, has followed, when, if what I say is true, it is absurd to believe that a cure can be brought about in this way. In addition to the so-called cure, the righting of the system, by correcting disease-producing habits, will remove the cause; and then a cure may be had that can be depended upon.

In injuries of all kinds there is a tendency for a deposit to take place, because nature rushes there with surplus material to make repairs. But after there has been a restoration to the normal of the parts destroyed, and surplus material is, left--for instance, in the healing of bones--after the bone has been thoroughly united there is a great quantity of debris, not unlike joints made by plumbers; and these extra deposits must be absorbed in the course of time, especially the soft structures. A bony deposit that has taken place will to a certain extent be absorbed, but there will always remain an extra amount, which is for bracing purposes. In injuries, however, where there is no need of this surplus material, and where the surplus material impinges on a nerve structure, either a painful state will remain at that point, or the irritation will be reflexed to other parts of the body. This will be the invariable experience, and will require a treatment which will overcome this condition.

Manipulation will cause absorption; but if there is a slight irritation at the locality, which will bring a surplus amount of blood, there will be redeposits and a return of the discomfort. In all subjects where there is a scrofulous or gouty diathesis, and where there is a general toxemic state of the blood, the redeposits will continue until the toxemia is overcome and the system is readjusted to the original or normal state. It should be kept in mind, in treating the sick, that whatever is necessary to be done to bring them back to the normal should be done; and it should be obvious to all intelligent people that where there are irregular habits or bad habits--where the life is not up to the normal--in any respect, these perversions must be righted. There can be no hope of a readjustment and a bringing back to a normal state without correcting the errors of life.