Unity of Disease and Treatment
There exists a close resemblance between
the mechanism and the functions of a watch and of the human body.
Their well-being is subject to similar underlying laws and principles.
Both a watch and a human body may function abnormally as a result
of accidental injury or unfavorable external conditions, such as
extreme heat or cold, etc. However, in our present study of the
causes of disease we shall not consider accidental injury and hostile
environment, but confine ourselves to causes arising within the
organism itself.
The watch may cease to vibrate in accord
with the harmonics of our planetary universe for several reasons.
It may lose time or stand still because (1) the wound spring has
spent its force, or (2) its parts are not made up of the right constituents,
or (3) foreign matter clogs or corrodes its mechanism.
Similarly, there exist three primary causes
of disease and of premature death of the physical body. These are:
1. Lowered vitality.
2. Abnormal composition of blood and lymph.
3. Accumulation of morbid matter and poisons.
In the ultimate, disease and everything
else that we designate as evil are the result of transgressions
of natural laws in thinking, breathing, eating, dressing,
working, resting, as well as in moral, sexual and social conduct.
In Tables I and II, I have endeavored to
present in concise and comprehensive form the primary and the secondary
causes or manifestations of disease and the corresponding natural
methods of treatment.
TABLE I
THE UNITY OF DISEASE AND TREATMENT
Barring trauma (injury), advancing age and
surroundings uncongenial to human life, all causes of disease may
be classified as given below.
Violations of Nature's Laws in thinking,
breathing, eating, drinking, dressing, working, resting and in moral,
sexual and social conduct result in the following:
Primary and Secondary Causes of Disease
Primary Causes
1. Lowered vitality due to overwork, nightwork,
excesses, overstimulation, poisonous drugs and ill-advised surgical
operations.
2. Abnormal composition of blood and lymph due to the improper selection
and combination of food, and especially the lack of organic mineral
salts and other essential nutritional elements.
3. Accumulation of waste matter, morbid matter and poisons due to
the first two causes, as well as to faulty diet, overeating, the
use of alcoholic and narcotic stimulants, drugs [both street and
prescription], vaccines, accidental poisoning and, last but not
least, to the suppression of acute diseases (Nature's cleansing
and healing efforts) by poisonous drugs and surgical operations.
Secondary Causes
1. Hereditary and constitutional taints of
sycosis, scrofula, psora, syphilis; mercurianism, cinchonism, iodism
and many other forms of chronic poisoning.
Fevers, inflammations, skin eruptions, chronic sinus discharges,
ulcers, abscesses, germs, bacteria, parasites, etc.
Mechanical subluxations, distortions and displacements of bony structures,
muscles and ligaments; weakening and loss of reason, will, and self-control
resulting in negative, sensitive and subjective conditions which
open the way to nervous prostration, control by other personalities
(hypnotic influence, obsession, possession); the different forms
of insanity, epilepsy, petit mal, etc.
Table II
THE UNITY OF DISEASE AND TREATMENT
In correspondence with the three primary
causes of disease, Nature Cure recognizes the following:
Natural Methods of Treatment
1. Return to Nature, or
the establishment of normal habits and surroundings, which necessitates:
a. Extension of consciousness
by popular general and individual education.
b. The constant exercise of reason, will and self-control.
c. A return to natural habits of life in thinking,
breathing, eating, dressing, working, resting and in moral, sexual
and social conduct.
d. Correction of mechanical defects and injuries
by means of massage, chiropractic or osteopathy, surgery and other
mechanical methods of treatment.
2. Economy of Vital Force,
which necessitates:
a. Prevention of waste of
vital force by the stoppage of all leaks.
b. Scientific relaxation, proper rest and sleep.
c. Proper food selection, magnetic treatment, etc.
d. The right mental attitude.
3. Elimination, which necessitates:
a. Scientific selection
and combination of food and drink.
b. Judicious fasting.
c. Hydrotherapy (water cure).
d. Light and air baths, friction.
e. Chiropratic or osteopathy, massage, and other
manipulative treatment.
f. Correct breathing, curative gymnastics.
g. Such medicinal remedies as will build up the
blood on a normal basis and supply the system with the all-important
mineral salts in organic form.
In the following chapters I shall endeavor
to show that all the different forms, phases and phenomena of disease
arising within the human organism, provided they are not caused
by accident or external conditions unfavorable to the existence
of human life, can be attributed to one or more of three primary
causes (as outlined in Tables I and II). When we succeed in proving
that all disease originates from a few simple causes, it will not
seem so strange and improbable that all disease can be cured by
a few simple, natural methods of living and of treatment. If Nature
Cure can accomplish this, it establishes its right to be classed
with the exact sciences.
The Three Primary Causes of Disease
We shall now consider the three primary
causes of disease one by one.
Lowered Vitality
There is a well-defined limit to the running
of a watch. When the wound spring has spent its force, the mechanism
stops.
So also the living forms of vegetable, animal
and human life seem to be wound by Nature to run a certain length
of time, in accordance with the laws governing their growth and
development. Even the healthiest of animals living in the most congenial
surroundings in the freedom of Nature do not much exceed their allotted
span of life, nor do they fall much below it. As a rule, the longer
the period between birth and maturity, the longer the life of the
animal.
All the different families of mammalia,
when living in freedom, live closely up to the life period allotted
to them by Nature. Man is the only exception. It is claimed that
according to the laws of longevity his average length of life should
be considerably over one hundred years, while according to life
insurance statistics, the average is at present [1913] thirty-seven
years.This shows an immense discrepancy between the possible and
the actual longevity of man.
Even this brief span of life means little
else than weakness, physical and mental suffering and degeneracy
for the majority of mankind. Visiting physicians of the public schools
in our large cities report that seventy-five percent of all school
children show defective health in some way. Diagnosis from the Eye
proves that the remaining twenty-five percent are also more or less
affected by hereditary and acquired disease conditions. Christian
Science says, "There is no disease." Nature's records
in the iris of the eye say there is no perfect health.
These established facts of greatly impaired
longevity and universal abnormality of the human race would of themselves
indicate that there is something radically wrong somewhere in the
life habits of man, and that there is ample reason for the great
health-reform movement which was started about the middle of the
last century by the pioneers of Nature Cure in Germany, and which
has since swept, under many different forms and guises, all portions
of the civilized world.
When people in general grow better acquainted
with the laws underlying prenatal and postnatal child culture, natural
living and the natural treatment of diseases, human beings will
approach much more closely the normal in health, strength, beauty
and longevity. Then will arise a true aristocracy, not of morbid,
venous blue blood, but pulsating with the rich red blood of health.
However, to reach this ideal of perfect
physical, mental and moral health, succeeding generations will have
to adhere to the natural ways of living and of treating their ailments.
It cannot be attained by the present generation. The enthusiasts
who claim that they can, by their particular methods, achieve perfect
health and live the full term of human life, are destined to disappointment.
We are so handicapped by the mistakes of the past that the best
which most of us adults can do is to patch up, to attain a reasonable
measure of health and to approach somewhat nearer Nature's full
allotment of life.
Wild animals living in freedom retain their
full vigor unimpaired almost to the end of life. Hunters report
that among the great herds of buffalo, elk and deer, the oldest
bucks are the rulers and maintain their sovereignty over the younger
males of the herd solely by reason of their superior strength and
prowess. Premature old age, among human beings, as indicated by
the early decay of physical and mental powers, is brought on solely
by their violation of Nature's Laws in almost all the ordinary habits
of life.
Health Positive--Disease Negative
The freer the inflow of life force into
the organism, the greater the vitality, the more there is of strength,
of positive resisting and recuperating power.
In the book Harmonics of Evolution we are
told that at the very foundation of the manifestation of life lies
the principle of polarity, which expresses itself in the duality
and unity of positive and negative affinity. The swaying to and
fro of the positive and the negative, the desire to balance incomplete
polarity, constitutes the very ebb and flow of life.
Disease is disturbed polarity. Exaggerated
positive or negative conditions, whether physical, mental, moral
or spiritual, tend to disease on the respective planes of being.
Foods, medicines, suggestion and all the other different methods
of therapeutic treatment exert on the individual subjected to them
either a positive or a negative influence. It is, therefore, of
the greatest importance that the physician and every one who wishes
to live and work in harmony with Nature's Laws should understand
this all-important question of magnetic polarity.
Lowered vitality means lowered, slower and
coarser vibration, and this results in lowered resistance to the
accumulation of morbid matter, poisons, disease taints, germs and
parasites. This is what we designate ordinarily as the negative
condition.
Let us see whether we can explain this more
fully by a homely but practical illustration: A great many of my
readers have probably seen in operation in the summer amusement
parks the "human roulette." This contrivance consists
of a large wheel, board-covered, somewhat raised in the center,
and sloping towards the circumference. The wheel rotates horizontally,
evenly with the floor or ground. The merrymakers pay their nickels
for the privilege of throwing themselves flat down on the wheel
and attempting to cling to it while it rotates with increasing swiftness.
While the wheel moves slowly, it is easy enough to cling to it;
but the faster it revolves, the more strongly the centrifugal force
tends to throw off the human flies who try to stick to it.
The increasing repelling power of the accelerated
motion of the wheel may serve as an illustration of that which we
call vigorous vibration, good vitality, natural immunity or recuperative
power. This is the positive condition.
The more intense the action of the life
force, the more rapid and vigorous are the vibratory activities
of the atoms and molecules in the cells, and of the cells in the
organs and tissues of the body. The more rapid and vigorous this
vibratory activity, the more powerful is the repulsion and expulsion
of morbid matter, poisons and germs of disease which try to encumber
or destroy the organism.
Health and Disease Resident in the Cell
We must not forget that health or disease,
in the final analysis, is resident in the cell. Though a minute,
microscopic organism, the cell is an independent living being, which
is born, grows, eats, drinks, throws off waste matter, multiplies,
ages and dies, just like man, the large cell. If the individual
cell is well, man, the complex cell, is well also, and vice versa.
From this it is apparent that in all our considerations of the processes
of health, disease and cure, we have to deal primarily with the
individual cell.
The vibratory activity of the cell may be
lowered through the decline of vitality brought about in a natural
way by advancing age, or in an artificial way through wrong habits
of living, wrong thinking and feeling, overwork, unnatural stimulation
and excesses of various kinds.
On the other hand, the inflow of vital force
into the cells may be obstructed and their vibratory activity lowered
by the accumulation of waste and morbid matter in the tissues, blood
vessels and nerve channels of the body. Such clogging will interfere
with the inflow of life force and with the free and harmonious vibration
of the cells and organs of the body as surely as dust in a watch
will interfere with the normal action and vibration of its wheels
and balances.
From this it is evident that negative conditions
may be brought about not only by hyperrefinement of the physical
organism, but also by clogging it with waste and morbid matter which
interfere with the inflow and distribution of the vital force. It
also becomes apparent that in such cases the Nature Cure methods
of eliminative treatment, such as pure food diet, hydrotherapy,
massage, chiropractic, osteopathy, etc., are valuable means of removing
these obstructions and promoting the inflow and free circulation
of the positive electric and magnetic life currents
Abnormal Composition of Blood and Lymph
As one of the primary causes of disease,
we cited abnormal composition of blood and lymph. The human organism
is made up of a certain number of elements in well-defined proportions.
Chem-istry has discovered, so far, about seventeen of these elements
in appreciable quantities and has ascertained their functions in
the economy of the body. These seventeen elements must be present
in the right proportions in order to insure normal texture, structure
and functioning of the component parts and organs of the body.
The cells and organs receive their nourishment
from the blood and lymph currents. Therefore, these must contain
all the elements needed by the organism in the right proportions,
and this, of course, depends upon the character and the combination
of the food supply.
Every disease arising in the human organism
from internal causes is accompanied by a deficiency
in blood and tissues of certain important mineral elements [organic
salts]. Undoubtedly, the majority of these diseases are caused by
an unbalanced diet, or by food and drink poisoning. Wrong food combinations,
on the one hand, create an overabundance of waste and morbid matter
in the system and, on the other hand, fail to supply the positive
mineral elements or organic salts on which depends the elimination
of waste and systemic poisons from the body.
The great problem of natural dietetics and
of natural medical treatment is, therefore, how to restore and maintain
the positivity of the blood and of the organism as a whole through
providing in food, drink and medicine an abundant supply of the
positive mineral salts in organic form.
Accumulation of Morbid Matter and Poisons
This is the third of the primary causes
of disease. We have learned how lowered vitality and the abnormal
composition of thevital fluids favor the retention of systemic poisons
in the body. If, in addition to this, food and drink contain too
much of the waste-producing carbohydrates, hydrocarbons and proteins,
and not enough of the eliminating positive mineral salts then waste
and morbid materials are bound to accumulate in the system and this
results in the clogging of the tissues with acid precipitates and
earthy deposits.
Such accumulation of waste and morbid matter
in blood and tissues creates the great majority of all diseases
arising within the human organism. This will be explained fully
in the following chapters which deal with the causation of acute
and chronic disease.
More harmful and dangerous, and more difficult
to eliminate than the different kinds of systemic poisons, that
is, those which have originated within the body, are the drug poisons,
especially when they are administered in the inorganic mineral form.
Health is dependent upon an abundant supply of life force, upon
the unobstructed, normal circulation of the vital fluids and upon
perfect oxygenation and combustion. Anything that interferes with
these essentials causes disease; anything that promotes them establishes
health. Nothing so interferes with the inflow of the life force,
with free and normal circulation of blood and lymph and with the
oxygenation and combustion of food materials and systemic waste
as the accumulation of morbid matter and poisons in the tissues
of the body.
This I have endeavored to explain more fully
in connection with lowered vitality. Let us now see how disease
and health are affected by mental and emotional conditions.
Mental and Emotional Influences
Our mental and emotional conditions exert
a most powerful influence upon the inflow and distribution of vital
force. The author of The Great Work [The Great Work: The Constructive
Principle of Nature in Individual Life, by John Emmett Richardson
{1853-1935}, Indio-American Book Company, Chicago, IL. 1907.] has
described most graphically in the chapter on Self-Control how fear,
worry, anxiety and all kindred emotions create in the system conditions
similar to those of freezing; how these destructive vibrations congeal
the tissues, clog the channels of life and paralyze the vital functions.
He shows how the emotional conditions of impatience, irritability,
anger, etc., have a heating, corroding effect upon the tissues of
the body.
In like manner, all other destructive emotional
vibrations ob-struct the inflow and normal distribution of the life
forces in and through the organism, while on the other hand the
constructive emotions of faith, hope, cheerfulness, happiness and
love exert a relaxing, harmonizing influence upon the tissues, blood
vessels and nerve channels of the body, thus opening wide the floodgates
of the life forces, and raising the discords of weakness, disease
and discontent to the harmonics of buoyant health and happiness.
Let us see just how mind controls matter
and how it affects the changing conditions of the physical body.
Life manifests through vibration. It acts on the mass by acting
through its minutest par-ticles. Changes in the physical body are
wrought by vibratory changes in atoms, molecules and cells. Health
is satisfied polarity, that is, the balancing of the positive and
negative elements in harmonious vibration. Anything that interferes
with the free, vigor-ous and harmonious vibration of the minute
parts and particles composing the human organism tends to disturb
polarity and natural affinity, thus causing discord or disease.
When we fully realize these facts we shall
not stand so much in awe of our physical bodies. In the past we
have been thinking of the body as a solid and imponderable mass
difficult to control and to change. This conception left us in a
condition of utter helplessness and hopelessness in the presence
of weakness and disease.
We now think of the body as composed of
minute corpuscles rotating around one another within the atom at
relatively immense distances. We know that in similar manner the
atoms vibrate in the molecule, the molecules in the cell, the cells
in the organ and the organs in the body; the whole capable of being
changed by a change in the vibrations of its particles.
Thus the erstwhile solid physical mass appears
plastic and fluidic, readily swayed and changed by the vibratory
harmonies or discords of thoughts and emotions as well as by foods,
medicines and therapeutic treatment.
Under the old conception the mind fell readily
under the control of the body and became the abject slave of its
physical conditions, swayed by fear and apprehension under every
sensation of physical weakness, discomfort or pain. The servants
lorded it with a high hand over the master of the house, and the
result was chaos. Under the new conception, control is placed where
it belongs. It is assumed by the real master of the house, the Soul-Man,
and the servants, the physical members of the body, remain obedient
to his bidding.
This is the new man, the ideal progeny of
a new and higher philosophy. Understanding the structure of the
body, the laws of its being and the operation of the life elements
within it, the superman retains perfect poise and confidence under
the most trying circumstances. Animated by an abounding faith in
the supremacy of the healing forces within him and sustained by
the power of his sovereign will, he governs his body as perfectly
as the artist controls his violin and attunes its vibrations to
Nature's harmonies of health and happiness.