Impaired Health : Its Cause and Cure Volume 2

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.

Is there any excuse for all the sickness, and for the supposed scientific technique that is formulated for doctors and nurses to carry out in such heathenish, grandiose manner as we see it in grandly conducted hospitals and sanitariums as well as in private life? None whatever. This is an instance of reversion of the natural order--where the doctors, nurses, and institutions are the cause, and the patients and patrons of the institutions are the effect. Little do the public and those who run these supposed-to-be necessary institutions know that each and every such plant is a college for educating the people into the sick habit. Every graduate of one of these institutions goes out an advocate and teacher of the fallacy.

These statements will fall, for the most part, on stony understandings, and will fail to take root immediately and grow; but they are as true as the eternal verities, and will some day be common knowledge. Meantime the horrors of the sick-chamber and surgical rack will continue.

As a refutation of the necessity for all the so-called remedies carried into the sick-room--surgery, drugs, prescriptions, vaccination, serum injections; faith, suggestion, and mind cures; the laying on of hands, and every other device known and used as remedial--I offer my simple methods; namely, that of taking nothing into the sick-room, and of doing nothing that can be likened to the modern conception of healing. My methods are devoid of any suggestion of mysticism or supernaturalism, and are not above the understanding of the most commonplace mind, unless its simplicity appears uncanny to distorted understandings.

I go into the sick-room without a so-called remedy, and, what is best of all, without the need of one. There is no faith cure offered; there is no hocuspocus, legerdemain, nor play on the superstition or credulity of the patient. There is nothing resorted to which may give the impression that unusual or supernatural power is to be used.

After getting the history of the case, I explain how the patient happened to get sick, how his life differs from nature's requirements, and how he may get well. No drugs, no manipulations--nothing but keep still and don't build disease by foolish acts of mind or body!

When cause is known, the remedy will be self-suggested to the most commonplace mind. This being as fundamental as truth always is, it has been my endeavor, in writing this book, to lead the reader's mind into such an understanding of the human body that the cause of sickness will be understood and the cure become a natural sequence. It has been my endeavor to show that matter, in its transformation into being, is attended throughout life by two handmaids; namely, unorganized ferment--enzyme-and organized ferment--the bacterium or microbe.

Both of these ferments are necessary. One, the enzyme, presides over the physiological processes, and the other, the bacteria, presides over the pathological processes. Both work together. For instance, in an inflammation or a wound, the building or reparative material is brought to the diseased process by the circulation, and fitted for being molded into cells, and the cells into tissue, by enzymes; the waste products are liquefied and fitted for discharge by the bacteria. With a suspension of either of these processes, reparation cannot be made. Digestion, assimilation--nutrition--must be attended by the two ferments. A variation of either disturbs and perverts health, and this is what we call disease.

Disease is health thrown out of an ideal state by the thousand-and-one environmental (exogenous) and internal (endogenous) influences.