"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 acc.u.mulation 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 a.s.suring 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 a.s.sumed, 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 mult.i.tude 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 d.a.m.ned. 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, succ.u.mbed 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, a.r.s.enic, 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 ill.u.s.trate:
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.
Chapter VIII
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 a.s.sisted 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 acc.u.mulation 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 ant.i.toxins, which neutralize the bacterial poisons and kill the microorganisms of disease.
With the Evil, Nature Provides the Cure