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.
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