The Nature And Purpose Of Disease
Lesson 2 - The Nature And Purpose Of Disease
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Inasmuch as we’re having only one lesson specifically on the subject of disease, I bid you to study hard and absorb it well, for nearly all your clientele will suffer disease in one form or another.
In this lesson we will ascertain what disease is, what brings it about, what purposes it serves, and why it ends at all in view of the fact that it is supposed to be an occasion when malevolent microbial entities have gained a destructive foothold in our bodies. We will explore how a body in descendancy(as it is said to be in disease) and microbes in ascendancy reverse these tendencies.
What is Disease?
Disease as a word means very simply not a tease—a person is uncomfortable or suffering difficulties in maintaining energies for the functions he wishes to discharge and in keeping operative those faculties he wishes to exercise.
In physiological terminology, disease means deviation from normal. That means that the body has deviated from regular functions. In a state of disease the body has re-channeled or redirected its energies so that it has less than usual energy for functions normally engaged in.
There are two distinct types of disease. The first type of disease serves a purpose and the second type serves none. Discerning these two types in your clients will be no problem at all. These two types of disease are as follows:
The first type is constructive disease, often called acute disease.
The second type of disease is degenerative. This results from organic impairment in which organs, tissues, bones, or other faculties have undergone destruction, distortion, or irreversible impairment.
Your service to your clients will largely depend on your ability to recognize whether a disease is constructive or degenerative. I repeat: this is not difficult. You will, regardless of these conditions of disease, still proceed by guiding your client into healthful practices, healthful practices being the universal panacea.
If diseases are remediable and reversible as most of them are, it is constructive. When disease can no longer be reversed through body remediable processes, it is degenerative. For instance, an arthritic’s bony deposits can usually be autolyzed and restored to near normal. But when ankylosis has occurred due to destruction of bone and cartilage and subsequent fusing, healthful practices will restore health except for the ankylosis—it is rarely reversible. However, many diseases commonly regarded as degenerative can be corrected by the body, most cases of arthritis being among them.
Purposes of Disease
Disease affects the whole body, not just a part. Disease serves an important body purpose. The body initiates remedial diseases to accomplish a goal. The goal serves the whole body, not just an organ, area, or part. For instance, we can know we have diseased kidneys. But, in actuality, the whole body is diseased. The fact that the symptoms are noticeable only in the kidneys does not mean that the rest of the body is unaffected—it means that the kidneys are the focal point for the eliminative effort, the point at which toxic matters are put out of the body.
Everything that affects any part of the body affects the whole organism. If we have a bad back, the whole body is affected. We are concerned about the welfare of our toes, fingers, ears, legs, eyes, arms—we defend our whole being because our whole body is a single unit. There are no isolated parts about which we are unconcerned, either at the conscious or unconscious level of intelligence. We defend it all at all levels because it is all of us.
We don’t have a disease here or a disease there. It’s suffered all over. An inflamed appendix has been overloaded with toxic materials because the body is overloaded. Body intelligence puts the overload out through all channels of elimination, but despite this the load is so great the appendix is burdened with more than it can handle. This condition is the same in all remedial diseases where a local organ seems to be the only thing affected.
Disease Is Started by the Body
The body itself institutes the crisis known as disease. Life Scientists call this process a “housecleaning” or healing crisis. Such a procedure by the body is instituted when bodily integrity is compromised or threatened by an accumulation of uneliminated toxic materials. The level of vitality and the extent of the overload determine the type of crisis. Given high vitality as in an infant, a very low level of toxicity is tolerated. In infants, colds are frequent. Given low vitality as in most older people in our society, colds are a rarity. Because so few older people maintain vital bodies, the toxic overload drags them down into chronic diseases, degenerative diseases, and unsuspected pathology that leads to unexpected death or a “sudden onset” of cancer.
The body must be in a toxic state before it will institute a crisis. Neither bacteria nor anything else starts and sustains a crisis. Microorganisms are incapable of unified action; in fact they cannot exist where there is no food (soil) for them, and living cells are not soil for bacteria.
Bacteria are helpless against living cells. An “invasion” by bacteria such as we imagine in contagion never takes place. The bacteria that proliferate in a crisis are with us all the time. We harbor uncounted billions of microorganisms in our intestinal tract, on our skin, in our mouth and nose and other body cavities. Thus, the body is the ONLY, actor in the crisis of elimination or cleansing called a disease.
Bacteria and viruses cannot be blamed for disease.
Blaming disease on viruses or bacteria is an easy cop out. It’s not good business to tell a client that they have caused their own miseries, so the medical profession has blamed suffering on everything but the individual’s own failure in the game of living.
Disease Is an Eliminative Process
The body creates a crisis in response to a body need to free itself of toxic matters and repair damages. Consequently, the body withdraws energy from normal body activities and redirects them to the healing crisis.
I could tell you that I am suffering a disease at this moment. I’m not at ease with my larynx as you’ve noticed in my trying to clear my voice. I ate some cabbage for
my evening meal. It was very sharp as it had some mustard oil in it, without doubt. Typically any irritant in the throat, esophagus or windpipe will occasion the flow of mucus which encompasses the irritant for the purpose of ejecting it from the body. In my case now, the body has started a mucus flow to clear the passage of what was regarded as toxic or irritating substance. This is a minor disease or unease. But it is disease and the body reacted to maintain its functional integrity.
The body will reject anything that’s irritating. For example, if dust is put into your nose, the body will secrete mucus to surround and eject the dust irritant. Or you may sneeze. In both cases, the body is acting defensively. Thus, all remedial disease is body- defensive action.
Bacteria do not invade organisms for they are always within the organism. Even after we’ve lost our intestinal flora after fasting, bacteria are still there. Bacteria can in many cases do what bears and many other animals do—hibernate or become dormant. Pasteur was not the father of bacteriology as many people think. Antoine Béchamp was the father of this science. Béchamp was a scientist in the true sense of the word. He took what he called microzyma from the chalk cliffs of France. He found that, upon furnishing water, warmth and other nutrients, the microzyma proliferated. These microorganisms had been entombed for ten million years in a state of dormancy. So bacteria have certain qualities for survival that most are not aware of.
The celebrated Dr. Lewis Thomas who heads the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute said, “pity not the man who has caught bacteria; pity the bacteria that was caught by the man.” This is to say that humans furnish a very rough environment for bacteria. The body keeps them restricted within certain bounds. The body controls bacteria at all times. The body is master of its domain.
Bacteria do not control the body as medical people have led us to believe.
Following are two paragraphs from a “bible” on Natural Hygiene, Dr. Shelton’s first major work, Human Life: Its Philosophy and Laws.
“For ages the study of disease has progressed. One by one the various systems and system complexes that are presented by the diseased human body have been studied with painstaking care in both living and dead bodies. The study of pathology has reached a degree of perfection unknown to most of the collateral sciences that form what is called the science of medicine. Knowledge of pathology increased by leaps and bounds after the invention of the microscope, until today pathology is one of the most important studies for the medical student. Physiology, anatomy, histology and biology are all made subservient to pathology.
“The study of disease has fascinated the student for ages. Health has received scant attention. Strange as it may appear, health has been considered of so little importance as to be unworthy of investigation. No schools ever existed for teaching the conditions of health. Medical schools existed to train the student in a knowledge of disease and cures. Even today no school exists that has as its purpose the teach- ing of the conditions and requirements of health. The conditions of a healthy life are but little understood by the various healing professions and still less so by the general public. Health is not in the professional line of the physician.”
The medical world is preoccupied with treating disease with drugs that are currently in fashion. Their seeking out of bacteria and “viruses” as culprits in disease reminds me of a little joke we heard back after the Second World War. It goes like this.
During the Second World War a German civilian worked in a concentration camp. One evening he pushed a wheelbarrow to the exit gate for inspection by a guard. The wheelbarrow was loaded with rags. The guard, very conscientious about his job and the security of the camp and its assets, methodically went through the rags but found nothing. So he waved the worker through the gate.
The very next day the worker came through with a wheelbarrow of newspapers. The guard repeated the previous careful examination. The following day came a wheelbarrow of leaves. Again the same thorough inspection.
The day following this the worker came to the guard pushing a heavy load of dirt. The guard was not going to be fooled. He made the worker dump the dirt and spread it out, then laboriously reload it on the wheelbarrow.
The next workday came another load of newspapers. The guard was very suspicious that the worker was sneaking something out. So, in addition to other procedures, he tapped the handles and other places for concealed material that the worker might be stealing. But nothing was found.
This went on almost every workday for a year. On occasion the guard systematically searched the wheelbarrows but never found anything of value being removed from the camp.
By and by the war was over. A while later the former guard met the former construction worker on the street.
He went up to the worker and stopped him abruptly with this smiling demand:
“Hans, you have to tell me something. I’m no dummy. You were stealing something from the camp. I could never find it. Now that it doesn’t matter, why not let me in on it?”
Hans replied, “Why, dummkopf, you saw it with your own eyes. I was stealing wheelbarrows.”
Such blindness characterizes the medical profession. The purpose of disease is so evident that the medics can’t see it. They are looking for something that doesn’t exist, and they have no idea, after countless millions of man hours of chasing microbes and similar dead ends, that viruses as living entities do not exist.
So they have gone into the phenomenon of disease elaborately and have chronicled over twenty thousand different diseases. They name them after the area that is most affected. Sometimes they have multiple names because of the number of organs or organ systems or tissues which art affected.
Toxemia Is The Universal Cause Of Disease
Actually, there is only one disease, no matter how it manifests itself. And the disease, which we call constructive disease, is occasioned by the body itself and is known as a crisis of toxemia or healing.
The Seven Stages of Disease
There are several stages of disease. The underlying cause of disease in all stages is toxemia. Although toxemia may arise from many sources, it basically exists because of insufficient nerve energy to sufficiently eliminate exogenous poisons and body wastes. Toxemia is not broad enough a term to cover the whole poisoning process for it means poison in the blood. Actually toxicosis exists. Tissues, cells and interstitial spaces are also toxin-laden. In short, the whole body is toxic.
Diseases present many different aspects because they evolve with the progressing deterioration of the organism that suffers them. Disease has seven distinct stages. These stages correspond to the distinct differences of each stage of evolution.
Enervation
The first stage is not even recognized by physicians as a disease. Life Scientists call it enervation. Most people call it nervous exhaustion. Enervation is a state in which the body is either not generating sufficient nerve energy for the tasks the body must perform, or the tasks the body must perform may be greater than the normal nerve energy supply can cope with. In any event, the body becomes impaired, and an impaired body generates less nerve energy if the conditions of overwork or under-generation persist. Most people know when they are nervously exhausted.
Enervation can be caused by depletion of nerve energy in any of hundreds of ways. Sleep regenerates nerve energy. Obviously, insufficient sleep will not supply us with our needs. It will not fully recharge our batteries. We need sleep to regenerate nerve energy for the brain and nervous system.
Nerve energy is a form of electricity measurable in millivolts. Sleep laboratories have successfully substituted electricity in place of the body’s own. When this is accomplished it is called electrosleep. It takes only two hours out of twenty-four to fully restore nerve energy in this manner.
Demonstrating that nerve energy is electrical is easy. If you mashed your finger, a message would immediately go to the brain and back would come a command to remove the finger from that which applied the pressure. Moreover, the brain would command the entire balance of the body to cooperate in the extraction of the finger from the offending pressure. Only electricity is capable of such speedy transmission. No chemical process or circulatory process is capable of this dispatch. It occurs only through a network of nerves with conductive abilities, and electricity is the only form of energy it can conduct. If you take a weak voltage and hook up to it while holding someone else’s hand, the other person gets a shock immediately when you touch the live electrical source. I don’t think anyone can doubt that we do generate electricity, and that is the form of energy we use to conduct our physical and mental activities. Sensations are transformed into electrical stimuli and forwarded to the brain. The brain interprets these and sends out commands based upon the interpretation. Thus, if you put your finger to a hot object, the finger is commanded in a flash to withdraw from it.
The foregoing is to demonstrate that the body is primarily an organism that works on the amount of electricity it generates and which it has in its reserves. If this supply is depleted or otherwise insufficient to cope with the needs of the body, then body functions become impaired, including the processes of elimination of both endogenous metabolic wastes and exogenous poisons introduced into the body. This impairment begets further impairment including diminishing the body’s ability to restore depleted nerve energy. The body starts going downhill. The next stage of this decline is called toxemia.
Toxemia or Toxicosis
When toxic substances from whatever source saturate the blood and tissues, the lymph system and interstitial fluids, then the conditions of toxemia and toxicosis exist.
As functioning organisms, we generate a tremendous amount of toxic by-products. We generate enough carbon dioxide to kill us within a few minutes. If our lungs failed to function, carbon dioxide buildup and lack of oxygenation would overwhelm us quite quickly. We can accommodate only so much carbon dioxide. And this is but one of many waste products. There are trillions of cells in the human body. Tens of billions of these
expire every day. They are replaced by new cells. The old cells are broken down by lysosomes, enzymes that reside in a little organelle within the cell itself. Upon cell death, these enzymes break the cell down into many smaller components for elimination. These components are cell debris. Some of these components such as iron, protein, and amino acids are recycled by the body. Some 95% of the body’s iron needs and 70% of its protein needs are met by recycling. Certain other of the body’s needs are met by recycling as well. This will give you some idea as to the immense providence and wisdom of the body in meeting its needs. Other components of the decomposed cell are the RNA and DNA. These are toxic while in the system. If they accumulate as they do in most humans in today’s society, a condition of intoxication (toxemia and toxicosis) exists. These are what medical people call viruses, and they mistakenly attribute to this dead debris the powers of life and malevolence.
Tissue and blood saturation with toxic materials can be caused by both internally generated wastes and pollutants taken in from the outside which the body has not been able to eject from the vital domain. Intoxication occurs when we overload the body with toxic materials from the outside, or we fail to observe our capacities, and overwork, get insufficient sleep, or are subjected to great stress, or when any number of other factors deplete the body of nerve energy or prevent its sufficient regeneration. For instance, stresses, emotional shocks, or traumatic experiences can drain our bodies of nerve energy very quickly. It’s just like shorting out the battery of a car.
At some level of intoxication we begin to experience the next stage of disease which is called irritation.
Irritation
Irritation results from toxic materials being sensed by our nerve network. Most of us pay this stage little mind, and certainly physicians do not pay it heed. When we feel itchy, queasy, jumpy, uneasy, or when we have bothersome but not painful areas, irritation exists. Tickling of the nose is a form of irritation. Collections of mucus along the mucus membranes irritate, although irritation is not painful. It is a gentle prod that moves us to seek comfort, to establish freedom from it. For instance, the urge to urinate or defecate is a form of irritation due to accumulation of wastes greater than the body feels comfortable with. However, the urge is not painful unless it is ignored until it creates too much pressure in its area. Near painful irritation forces us to deal with the problem.
When a person drinks too much alcohol we say that he or she is intoxicated. That’s a good example of exogenous intoxication. While all alcohol intake is damaging to the organism, the body can speedily eliminate a small amount before much damage has occurred. Increase the intake, and the elimination is proportionately less and the damage proportionately greater. The first drink of alcohol occasions only irritation which we al- so call stimulation. But any toxic material, be it salt, caffeine, or condiments will irritate or stimulate. This is a condition wherein the body sets in force its defensive mechanisms and accelerates its internal activities. This might well be likened to an alarm aboard ship where all hands are summoned. A frenzy of activity results in a bout with enemy forces. Unfortunately, this often makes us feel good or hyper or even euphoric. It is distressing to see a euphoric condition arise out of a situation that is damaging to the organism.
If the causes of enervation/intoxication/irritation remain in force and the body can’t cope with it the body initiates a responsive crisis called inflammation.
Inflammation
This is usually the stage in which physicians recognize pathology. It is the stage where sufferers are keenly aware of a problem, for it involves pain. As well, it involves bodily redirection of vital energies. The intestinal tract is closed down. Energy that
would normally be available for activity there is pre-empted and redirected to the massive effort to cope with a severe condition of intoxication. Lest the integrity of the organism be dealt a mortal blow or crippled, the body musters its all to the emergency.
In inflammation, the toxicants have usually been concentrated in an organ or area for a massive expulsive effort. The area becomes inflamed due to the constant irritation of the toxic materials. When inflammation exists we are said to have an “itis,” appendicitis, tonsilitis, hepatitis, or nephritis for example. Note that the “itises” just cited are all due to overburdening of four different organs of purification and elimination.
The names of “itises” are usually after the organ or tissue area that is inflamed. Thus if we have a cold we have rhinitis. If we have inflammation of the sinus cavities we have sinusitis. If we have inflammation of bronchial tissue we have either bronchitis or asthma. And so it goes. We have these peculiar pathologies because in each case the body elected to eliminate the extraordinary toxic load through the organ affected. For instance, asthma exists because the body has selected the bronchi as an outlet for toxic materials. The condition is chronic because the toxic condition is unceasing. While the sufferer continues to intoxicate himself or herself, the body continues to eliminate the overload through the bronchi or alveolar tissue.
Inflammation or fever is a body crisis response to a life-threatening situation. The body and the body alone creates the fever. It is an evidence or symptom of increased and intense body activities directed at cleansing and repair. The extraordinary energies em- ployed for a fever are at the expense of energies normally involved in digestion, work or play, thinking and seeing, etc. Fever is a healing activity. The idea of suppressing it is equivalent to hitting a drowning man over the head so he’ll cease his struggles. For instance, if rhinitis or influenza sufferers are drugged it amounts to hitting the body’s healer over the head. Thus, the eliminative effort is suppressed, and the toxicity increases until other organs, usually the lungs, become saturated—not only with the toxicity but the drugs administered as well. When body vitality reasserts itself a condition known as pneumonia is likely to result.
Inflammation is the fourth stage of disease and is the body’s most intense effort to cleanse and restore itself. The next stage of disease is destructive and degenerative. It will result if the causes of general body intoxication are continued.
Ulceration
Ulceration means that a staggering amount of cells and tissue structures are, being destroyed. Physiological systems are wiped out due to the body’s inability to live in an unceasing toxic media. Where tissue is destroyed there remains a void. An example is a canker sore of the mouth. Lesions or ulcers can occur in other areas of the body also. These conditions are often intensely painful, for there are exposed nerves.
While the body may use an ulcer as an outlet for extraordinary toxic buildup thereby relieving itself, it will heal the ulcer if causes are discontinued, or if the toxicity level is significantly lowered. This process of repairing the damage is like patching up pants with holes in them. This patching up process is called induration.
Induration
Induration is a hardening of tissue or the filling in of tissue vacancy with hard tissue. Scarring is a form of induration. But in this stage of disease, there is direction and purpose in hardening. The space is filled, and the toxic materials that threaten bodily integrity are encapsulated in a sac of hardened tissue. The ulcer and the toxic materials are sealed off by the hardening of the tissue around them. This is a way of quarantining the toxic materials, often called tumor formation. It is this condition that is diagnosed as cancer nineteen times out of twenty when, in fact, no cancer exists.
Induration is the last stage during which the body exerts intelligent control. Should the pathogenic practices which brought matters to this stage be continued, cells and tis- sue systems go wild. They survive as best they can on their own. Cells become parasitic—living off the nutrients they can obtain from the lymph fluid but contributing noth- ing to the body economy. They have become disorganized. Their genetic encoding has been altered by the poisons. Thus, they are not capable of intelligent normal organized action within the context of a vital economy. When cells go wild in this manner, the condition is called cancer.
Cancer
The endpoint of the evolution of disease is cancer. It is the last stage of disease and is usually fatal, especially if the causes that brought it about are continued. Cessation of causes and indulgence of healthful practices may arrest it, for they can so revitalize the body that they may even destroy the cancer cells. It’s all relative. Cancer cells live in a hostile environment but still divide and flourish as long as nutrients are available to them. Cancer cells may be regarded as cells that have become independent and have reverted to the status of uncontrolled primitive cells—cells that live entirely on their own as do protozoa.
These stages of disease are quite distinct in their characters, yet the lines are more or less arbitrarily drawn. This often happens in attempts at categorization where one form evolves into another. The dividing lines have no clear-cut delineation.
People sometimes ask when cancer begins. Hygienists or Life Scientists say that it begins with the first cold or rash of childhood. The first crisis a baby endures begins the pathological chain that leads to cancer. This evolutionary chain begins then because the phenomenon of life is one constant violation of the laws of life from beginning to end.
Viruses And Bacteria—Their Role In Disease
After reviewing the seven stages of disease it should be obvious that bacteria and so-called viruses do not cause diseases. Viruses do cause diseases if you call toxic waste materials of decomposed body cells viruses. Decomposed cell debris is precisely what virologists and physicians are calling viruses. They regard viruses as living entities when, in fact, medics have not in all history observed any quality of life they ascribe to viruses. What is called virus is always dead. It’s never been observed to be alive. It doesn’t have the first prerequisites of life, that is, metabolic and control mechanisms. Even bacteria have that. I repeat that what is called viruses are nothing more than components of decomposed cells.
Some people insist that syphilis is caused by bacteria, more specifically spirochetes. Though the term spirochetes has given way to viruses called Herpes these days—that’s today’s fashion—it was easy to demonstrate that spirochetes were never responsible in the first place. When you ask a bacteriologist which comes first, the soil or the bacteria, he will answer that the soil must exist first for bacteria to thrive, for bacteria are presented a deadly environment by living cells. So, bacteria never exist in a proliferating state where there is no food or soil for their propagation. They multiply when there is feast, and they die off when there is famine or adverse environment, hence, bacteria no more create their food supply than flies cause garbage. The garbage must preexist the flies and, on the same order, the garbage or soil on which bacteria thrive in our bodies must preexist their presence and propagation. In other words, they do not cause the condition—they are there because of the condition.
When the body has a highly toxic condition such as inflammation, it will absorb bacteria from the intestinal cavity and transport them to the point where deadly materials have been concentrated. The bacteria then symbiotically assist in breaking up these toxic materials for elimination. Of course, the excreta of bacteria are toxic, too.
Ignorant physicians regard these bacteria not as our symbiotic partners in the process of combating disease, but as the cause of the disease. Koch destroyed Pasteur’s original theories by his four postulates. The first two state that if a disease is caused by a certain type of bacterium, then that form of bacteria must always be present when the disease exists. The other says that the disease must always be occasioned by the presence or introduction of the bacteria said to be responsible. Although these cardinal principles are self-evident, so many exceptions existed as to disprove totally the germ theory of disease-causation. Koch laid down his postulates in 1892; the medical profession never has given them credence. To this day the profession clings to the disproven germ theory except that germs in the form of bacteria are taking a back seat to an even more elusive entity called a virus.
Bacteria exist in a multitude of strains, forms, and metabolic capabilities. Bacteria are versatile and in many cases change forms and lifestyles in keeping with the character of the soil available to them. Round bacteria can become rod shaped and vice versa.
It used to be said that pneumococcus caused pneumonia. But it was noted that this type of bacteria was absent in nearly half the cases. Moreover, administering the bacteria to healthy organisms never occasioned pneumonia. The plain fact that bacteria are in the human body as they are everywhere else is not recognized by the medical profession. Bacteria are symbiotic partners of all creatures in nature. In order to come to exist in nature in the first place, humans had to establish a state of symbiosis with all natural forces.
In the second place, if bacteria invaded organisms and laid them low as they’re supposed to do—if the body could be laid low while in a state of health—then the impetus or momentum the bacteria had built up would become more pronounced and over- whelming as the organism receded in disease. It would be a one-way trip the same as vultures picking the bones of a cadaver. If bacteria and viruses cause disease, once they have overwhelmed the body and actually debilitated it, how does the much weakened body regain ascendancy? If you were to inquire into this deeply and pursue it to its logical conclusions, you’d find that, once a body has lost the battle while in a state of health, it’s going to lose the war after being disabled.
Disease Complicated by By-Products of Symbiotic Bacteria
At their strongest, bacteria complicate disease because the byproducts of bacterial fermentation or putrefaction are deadly poison. In fermentation the by-products are lac- tic acid, acetic acid or vinegar, and alcohol. Putrefaction involves nitrogenous foods or proteins. The by-products of rotting protein are ammonias, indoles, skatoles, purines, etc. They are toxic within organisms, although the body can normally eliminate these poisons. In fact, our feces and urine are loaded with the by-products of protein decomposition, both from our body decomposition and bacterial decomposition.
You’ve heard of the ideal of living in a germ-free environment. That is an impossibility, of course. Trillions of bacteria are in and on our bodies at all times. If we were free of these minute organisms, we’d soon die. They perform many essential services for us which will be discussed in a later lesson. Suffice it to say that we live symbiotically with bacteria.
Bacteria are wrongfully blamed for our own indiscretions. It’s the rare medic who doesn’t find a scapegoat for his client and remove responsibility for problems from the shoulders of the sufferer.
Medical logic is not very logical. According to medical thinking, bacteria or viruses invade our bodies and destroy our cells. It would seem that our body defenses permit this by their intimations. It would seem that once these invading entities have a head start they would not stop destroying the rest of the cells of the organism, especially as the first strike has crippled the organism and lessened its ability to defend itself. By medical logic, the bacteria are there in greater numbers, for they proliferate astronomically when they’ve found a feast situation. How can the body reverse this situation and recover?
The medics believe that they administer drugs that kill off the bacteria so that the body can have a chance to recover. Also, they have people believing that medicines are healing agents or that they assist in healing.
When you start asking deep penetrating questions into the causes of disease, the medical theories fall of their own weight. They cannot be sustained in the face of selfevident truths. So we have to find the rational basis for disease causation.
Disease has a sole unitary cause. It is instituted and conducted by the body itself. It is the only organized entity capable of coordinating the various processes of disease. Disease is occasioned when toxic materials that we have generated within or taken in from without are uneliminated due to the body’s inability to cope with them. These debilitate and devitalize the organism until, at a point where it can no longer tolerate the growing toxic load at its mean level of vitality, the body institutes a crisis, redirecting its body energies to the enemy within.
Let’s go back to pneumonia. Physicians worry that when a person has a cold or the flu, it will become pneumonia. It occurs so many times among their patients that they make “heroic” efforts to prevent this. They administer drugs galore. Yet, pneumonia occurs so frequently despite the drugging that doctors feel powerless in the face of pneumonia, one of the primary causes of death in our society. The question arises: what causes pneumonia then? Does pneumococcus survive the drug onslaught and cause pneumonia anyway?
If colds are, as we teach, a cleansing process, how does a body that is in crisis get yet worse? If the body is eliminating toxic materials profusely through the respiratory tract as in colds and flu, then how do the lungs also become contaminated?
All cases of colds and flu recover very quickly if the sufferer goes to bed in an airy room with lots of natural daylight. Almost total rest is called for. Total abstention from food but plenty of pure water is needed. Under these conditions debility ceases in from one to three days. But, if the sufferer refuses to rest and continues to eat the same bad food that contributed heavily to the crisis in the first place, the eliminative effort may be less than the continued toxic buildup, in which case pneumonia may be a concomitant. But, if the sufferer goes to a medic and gets drugged in addition, the body turns its attention to eliminating the drugs. It may cease the cold or flu altogether in face of the greater enemy. The continued toxic buildup spreads to the lungs. The drugs and toxic materials may concentrate so strongly in the lungs as to cause death or to set the stage for cancer. Many autopsies reveal people who have had pneumonia or who have smoked or lived in highly polluted air have tumors, indurated sacs of lung tissue which encapsulate toxic substances in the lungs. Many cases of long fasts have been conducted in which pneumonia had been suffered many years before. The drugs that had been given had been noted to make their exit from the lungs during the course of the fast as the body autolyzed the tumors and expelled their contents.
Yet, despite the obvious causes of pneumonia, medical professionals are still saying that pneumococcus causes pneumonia when, in fact, more than 25% of pneumonia cases never have pneumococcus. Now that medics are getting more and more away from the germ theory of disease causation they’re invoking viruses as the culprits. This is true on- ly if by viruses we mean uneliminated metabolic wastes. But when you start probing into what viruses are and how they cause disease, you might call this the “evil spirit” theory of disease, for the medics imbue viruses with all the qualities of malevolent spirits.
Such blindness characterizes the medical profession. The purpose of disease is so evident that medics can’t see it. Just as with the guard in the concentration camp, they are looking for something that doesn’t exist and they overlook that which they see so plainly all the time.
Medical researchers have chronicled over 20,000 different diseases. They name al- most every variation. They have multiple names because of the number of organs or
tissue systems that exhibit symptoms. All of this is only one disease. And the disease, which we call constructive disease, is occasioned by the body itself and is known as toxemia or toxicosis.
Natural Hygiene Or Life Science Care Of The Ailing
The Work of Doctors Tilden, Carrington and Shelton
Just as there is one universal cause of disease there is one universal panacea! In mythology Asclepius had two daughters. Both were goddesses. One was the goddess of health and she was called Hygeia. The other daughter was Panacea. She was the goddess of healing. The name itself, in Greek, means all-healing or universal healing.
While these goddesses are mythological, they do represent valid concepts. Panacea can be achieved by a return to natural practices. Fasting is the quickest way to invoke the universal panacea. Just as the universal disease is a toxic-laden body, the universal panacea is establishing the most ideal conditions under which the body can cleanse itself of the toxicity and repair the damages suffered. Fasting is the answer. It works in all cases of constructive disease, that is, disease where organic damage of an irremediable nature has not occurred.
Some great luminaries have long since rediscovered the Grecian panacea. Dr. Jennings first employed it until Dr. John Tilden elaborated on it in his scholarly book, Toxemia Explained. Dr. Hereward Carrington wrote a few very illuminating volumes about Natural Hygiene. But Dr. Shelton probed deeper and farther afield than did all those be- fore him. He built upon the shoulders of all who went before him and added a touch of his own genius. In our text section some observations of Dr. Carrington are presented. Here is a quote from Dr. Herbert M. Shelton about the nature of disease:
The Hygienic Definition of Disease
“The Hygienic system teaches that disease is a remedial effort, a struggle of the vital powers to purify the system and recover the normal state. This effort should be aided, directed, and regulated if need be, but never suppressed. What is this mysterious thing called disease? It is simply an effort to remove obstructing material which we call toxic materials from the organic domain and to repair damages. Disease is a process of purification and repair. It is remedial action. It. is a power struggle to overcome obstruction and to keep the channels of circulation free.”
Actually disease is really more than this if we view it in all aspects. Dr. Carrington has simplified Dr. Shelton’s presentation somewhat. He says the following:
“Disease is an attempt of the body to free its cells and circulatory system of clogging and toxic materials. It is a desperate body rallying its remaining resources to the task of purgation and restoration.”
We have many illustrious forebears in the elaboration and creation of what we call Natural Hygiene or Life Science. Most notable among our forebears have been some truly great women. While women were spurned in the medical profession, the Hygienic movement was truly an enlightened and unfettered one. It welcomed women with open arms and, if we leave the renegade M.D.’s aside, their numbers almost equal those of male Hygienic professionals.
How many of you have heard of Louisa May Alcott? Yes, all of you have. But how many of you know that she was a Hygienist? That her father was a Hygienist? That her brother William Alcott was a professional Hygienist and was also a brilliant writer?
I’m sure you’ve all heard of Florence Nightingale, who gave new dignity and direction to the profession of nursing. She was a Hygienist.
How many of you have heard of Ellen White? She was a Hygienist who founded the religion we know today as the Seventh Day Adventists.
There are many unsung heroines among women who were Hygienic professionals. Mary Gove, Susan Nichols, Linda Burfield Hazzard and others were a credit to both the profession of Hygiene and to womanhood.
Perhaps the most famous Hygienist of the fair sex was Florence Nightingale. Her daring on the battle fields of eastern Europe still draws our admiration for the courage of her convictions. The British were fighting the Russians and more soldiers were dying behind the battle lines than on them. The physicians and their treatments were killing off the wounded and ailing faster than the Russians.
When Florence Nightingale arrived on the battle scene she really took charge despite the physicians. What she did was a very simple thing: she went to the rooms of the wounded and ailing and opened the windows for fresh air. She would not permit drugs. She gave the patients water which was against medical policy at the time. She rejected heavy feeding and, in fact, for many, any feeding at all. Being confined to a battlefield hospital had been a death sentence before. Now almost all the wounded and sick became well speedily. It is all history and Florence Nightingale became famous because of her tremendous success employing the mere rudiments of Hygienic methods. This is all the more phenomenal when you consider that Ms. Nightingale lived in a medical age and in a man’s world. She defied the medics and won. She was truly a pioneer Hygienist. The world, despite its poverty on the health scene, is still richer for her having been amongst our forebears.
The Character Of Disease
In order to understand disease, we must understand health. Health is the enjoyment of full faculties and functioning power. Disease is not the opposite of health but an expression of healthy vitality while under the burden of toxicosis. Disease is a body instituted and conducted crisis for the purpose of purifying and repairing itself.
Disease is caused by indulging in practices or being subjected to materials and influences not normal to the human organism: that to which we are not adapted will cause disease.
It is a misconception that we have to fight disease. It will not occur unless it is caused. A huge catalog of materials and influences which are abnormal to the body could be given, but it’s not that complicated. We need only to maintain the simple needs of life which build and sustain health. We should consume only pure water as thirst demands and wholesome raw ripe fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds as genuine hunger dictates. We are frugivores, and it is to a diet of fruits as nature delivers them that we are biologically adapted.
Further, we are adapted to pure air, sunshine, rest and sleep, pleasant environment, emotionally balanced companions. In short we are adapted to a harmonious world. We are so constituted that health results when all our physical, mental, emotional, intellectual, and aesthetic needs are met. Thus diseases other than degenerative ones may be said to be body crises for the purpose of restoring health.
The cause, purpose, and nature of disease have now been delineated. Certain questions will be explained below.
Diseases Are Not Contagious
STUDENT: Is it true that diseases are not contagious in any sense?
INSTRUCTOR: That is correct. Diseases are not contagious in any sense simply be- cause they are body instituted. We cannot transfer our toxic load to someone else. That should be self-evident. A Hygienist can go into a sickroom and not suffer a bit for it. Obviously most physicians and nurses and other people go to the sickrooms, even those housing the most so-called contagious diseases. They never contract the disease or suffer even though on occasion medics claim they do. You cannot transfer your toxic materials to another person unless you have it drawn out of you and injected into the person. The medics do, indeed, do that in transfusions. But the contagion here is medically induced rather than occurring within the realm of natural possibilities.
It is said that colds, flu, leprosy, and a number of other things are contagious. As we learn more, diseases become less and less contagious. Asthma, cancer, psoriasis, meningitis, poliomyelitis and a long list of other diseases have come off the contagious list. Measles, chicken pox, and other affections are still on the list of diseases said to be contagious. The only thing contagious about these diseases is medical ignorance. That is the most contagious of all.
How Plagues and Epidemics Develop
The reason that there seems to be “epidemics” is that the true contagion is an epidemic of similar bad habits. We all eat pretty much the same junk, are subjected to the same seasons, the same type of housing and, in many other ways, indulge the same health-sapping practices. It’s no wonder that many of us suffer the same diseases. Like causes beget like effects. Of course this is modified in the human situation by the diathesis of each individual.
Thus we see that, within the context of a given family or group, people have more or less the same bad habits and suffer the same diseases.
This business about incubation periods of germs and viruses is strictly medical mythology. We’ll get into the depths of that and study it methodically in later lessons.
To what are plagues and epidemics attributed? Today’s epidemics are for the most part invented and publicized in America by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a federal service that does yeoman service for the medical profession. When the drug companies want to sell lots of flu vaccine, measles vaccine, etc. they get CDC to release the scare propaganda that stampedes the public into the physicians’ offices for shots. To entertain the thought that vaccines injected into people makes them immune is an absurdity not worthy of serious consideration—it is a species of voodooism.
Epidemics today result, I reassure you, from mass indulgence of the same bad habits and subjection to the same pathogenic living conditions. It’s no accident that almost 90% of the affections labeled generally as colds and influenza occur within a seven-month period of the year.
The reason epidemics occur in winter and not in summer should be obvious. If any- thing, microbial life is more active in summer just as we are and their functions are depressed in winter. But lo and behold, microbial forms of life are said to be more active and to cause epidemics. That’s nonsense of course. In the winter we eat less whole- some food—we eat more junk. We do not exercise as much. We stay indoors and breathe foul air. In the summer we get more sunshine, more exercise, more fresh air, fresh ripe fruits—in short we live more healthfully in summer and less healthfully in winter. Conditions cause us to so live as to generate our diseases. General conditions cause general
ill health. It is not contagion of germs but contagion of pathogenic conditions that create what are termed plagues or epidemics.
Drugs are Dangerous to Both Bacteria and Human Cells
Hygienists or Life Scientists deplore the medical practice of feeding the ailing and drugging them too. When ill, the continuance of feeding alone is enough to thwart the healing forces within. But the addition of drugs so destroys vital powers that the body must often redirect its purification efforts to freeing itself from the more virulent poisons administered. Thus it is seen that medical professionals are death-dealing rather than being life-enhancing.
Yes, drugs kill bacteria. But they’re just as deadly to all forms of metabolic life. That which deranges and destroys the metabolic functions of bacteria usually does likewise to the cells of all forms of life. Even physicians will tell you that drugs have no effect on viruses. Of course they don’t have any effect on what they call viruses because that is dead cell debris that can’t be made any deader.
In conclusion I assure you that disease is not something to fear. That’s like being scared of your own body. If you fear anything fear your disposition to indulge in unwholesome foods and unwholesome living conditions.
Questions & Answers
Are indigestion and acidosis diseases or just passing little crises?
These are diseases even though usually of short duration. Anything that puts us at unease is disease. While there is no such thing as acidosis because we’d die long before our body fluids reached the acid stage, there is such a thing as hypo-alkalinity. A reduction in alkalinity from a pH of 7.40 to as little as 7.35 is enough to bring on coma and another five to ten points lower may cause death.
Indigestion and what is called acidosis are usually caused by eating foods in incompatible digestive combinations and in eating a predominantly acid-forming diet. These are the primary causes of these complaints.
You said that diseases are not contagious. If so how do you explain away venereal disease? That’s proven to be contagious.
I’ve responded to this in a way before but I’ll go over these grounds again. Conventional thinking has it that gonococcus and spirochetes are transferred from one person to another during the sexual act. The “infected” person will then develop either gonorrhea or syphilis. Even the medical profession is deserting this long held belief today in favor of the herpes virus as causing what is called venereal disease.
First, syphilis is a figment of the medical imagination. Most of what is de- scribed as syphilis in the books of yesteryear were effects of mercury and sulfa drugs which the profession administered so liberally. What is described as gonorrhea is no more serious than the canker sores of the mouth. Both are eliminative steps by the body. The ulceration and suppuration represent the fifth stage of the evolution of disease. The so-called contagious factors, bacteria, are there because of the disease, not the cause of it. In fact something like 20% of those who suffer venereal diseases have neither gonococcus nor spirochetes. Saying that a pimple, ulcer or pustule in the sexual area is caused by either bacteria or viruses is like say- ing boils are caused by the same when it is generally agreed that boils are a result of filth in the body. Both are the same processes but occur in different areas of the body. Besides it must be recognized that the autolysis of tissue and the creation of inflammations and boils are body actions, not bacterial or viral actions.
It is not true that venereal diseases are contagious. The U.S. Navy conducted experiments wherein it was shown that so-called infected persons could not infect healthy persons. When I was with a vice squad in Japan we had cases of so-called infected prostitutes who had been with dozens of GI’s, none of whom contracted the disease. On the other hand there are many who have infections in the sexual area who have not been in contact with anyone, especially in small children who do sometimes have infections in the sexual area.
The concept of contagion is unproven despite appearances. It is a medical scare word that stampedes customers into the offices of medical practitioners. It’s much like insurance companies who like to see fires and pay off for that makes it all the easier to sell insurance.
It seems rather impudent of you to say millions of scientists, doctors, researchers and teachers of medical science are all wrong. Isn’t it just possible that you’re wrong about disease being body action instead of bacterial or viral action? Isn’t it just possible that the medical people who’ve been around so long are really right?
Old myths die hard, don’t they? The older and more revered the myth, the harder it is to dispel. Your question would have done well nearly five hundred years ago when Copernicus presented his heliocentric theory of the solar system. It’s just difficult to believe that everyone can be wrong. But I insist that the whole profession operates on a wrong premise. The fact that fasting will enable an organism to heal quickly in injury or illness and drugging will defer or prevent healing altogether is some indication of the error of the medical school of thought. The very word medicine is a misnomer. The word means healing agent or substance. There is not such an agent or substance. Healing is always the sole prerogative of the affected organism. There’s not enough intelligence and know how in the collective knowledge of the world to effect the knitting of a bone within an organism. Healing is, I repeat, entirely a body process.
The impudence lies not with me but with those who deny the obvious and plainly evident truth. Age does not make beliefs true, and truth never changes with age. The belief that the world was flat was accepted by millions over nearly two thousand years but that did not flatten the world. Likewise if the masses of our people do not accept obvious truths, truths that account for everything in health and disease and are demonstrable when put to the test, then it is those who deny the obvious that are impudent. Should I repeat an old refrain: “I’d rather be right with a persecuted few than wrong with many.”
I know about the swine flu hoax but is the measles vaccination really a hoax too? If children are exposed to the measles they get it; but if they have been vaccinated they don’t get it, right?
It is general knowledge that the swine flu vaccination was a hoax. It is only a question of time before people will learn of the tetanus hoax, the rabies hoax, the whooping cough hoax, the measles hoax and other medical hoaxes.
If children are exposed to others who have the measles they don’t “catch” it. It is not something that is contagious. What is “contagious” are the food habits, that cause it (any unhealthful living habits, wrong food combinations, stress, etc.). But children usually do not have measles if their system is too drugged and devitalized. And that’s what happens when they’re vaccinated. They cannot conduct the simple eliminative crisis called measles. If they cannot have measles they’ll sooner or lat- er have something worse—like cancer! Measles is a body instituted and conducted
crisis to get rid of toxic accumulations. Vaccine interference destroys the vitality necessary to have measles.
Measles is helpful, not hurtful. The body creates the measles and keeps the process in force until body cleansing has been completed. Contrary to medical myth, the body will not harm itself by conducting this or any other crisis. This is more than can be said for the vaccines, which are poisonous in themselves.
The harm said to be derived from measles is actually from the “heroic” drugging and treatment administered by the medical profession. Measles and other acute diseases are helpful body functions; the body is grappling with an overload of toxic materials. Vaccinations and drugging add to these toxic materials. They are never a “preventive” or an antidote. They can make matters worse but they have no intelligence or ability to help under any circumstances.
If vaccinations don’t give us immunity, how about the antibodies vaccinated organisms produce? Don’t antibodies really defend against a virus as in the case of measles?
This reminds me of a joke that goes like this: An Air Force Colonel who commanded a fighter wing was inspecting his pilots one Saturday morning. He stopped by a Captain and Lieutenant who piloted and co-piloted a plane. He asked the Captain: “What would you do, Captain, if your plane caught on fire and you couldn’t open the overhead canopy?” The Captain replied: “Sir, I’d eject through the canopy.” The Colonel rejoined with “You idiot, you’d be squashed to death in the process.” Then he turned to the Lieutenant and asked him what he’d do. The Lieutenant meekly said, “Sir, I’d go through the hole the Captain made.”
Of such substance is this question. The truth is that the body does not create new defensive faculties in responses to a poison. Rather it has its defensive faculties destroyed. Putting a question that way is like saying that the body creates antibodies to defend against tar and nicotine in cigarette smoking because the body can tolerate ever greater quantities without the same ill effects as with the first cigarette of life. The body can’t tolerate smoke any better after a thousand smokes than after one. The body no longer defends against the pathogenic poisons of cigarette smoke simply because its defenses have been destroyed, not built up.
Medical researchers will tell you that “antibodies” are merely presumed and not something actually demonstrable in the laboratory as a new body faculty. They are presumed because, when vaccines are administered, most recipients no longer get the disease. This is because the body’s defensive faculties are destroyed, not enhanced. The body’s ability to conduct the simple cleansing crisis known as measles is so debilitated by the vaccinal poison that it retains what would normally be expelled. It’s no accident that cancer is now the number one killer of our children. When simple cleansing cannot occur, the body all the more quickly evolves to the next and succeeding stages of disease.
Antibodies are, I repeat, a medical myth, a figment of the medical imagination.
Well, you’ve just admitted that vaccines lower the incidence of measles. Isn’t that a good thing since measles can cause brain damage?
How can I get this across that measles are not a bane but a boon. If the body is filthy inside, a cleansing is a good thing. Measles are a cleansing process. The body conducts the crisis called measles and it is doing so to help itself, not hurt itself. The body never injures itself except where injury is necessary as the lesser of two evils. Brain damage does not occur from a cleansing crisis. Rather, it is the drugs that are administered in such a crisis that are responsible for the damage. Physicians dam-
age many people with their drugs and conveniently place all blame on the body’s noble reparative efforts rather than take responsibility.
How can you prove that a sickness is caused by toxicity rather than germs? Do you base your statement on laboratory proof or on empirical observations?
If germs were the cause of disease there would be no remission. If they had the power to successfully attack living tissue and proliferate enough to lay a person low as is commonly supposed, then the results would be like the effects of rotten apples amidst good ones—they’d all soon be bad. Humans simply would not survive the ordeal and there would be no human race.
Should we fast people who were laid low with a germ-caused disease the fasting would not kill off the germs. Just as a rotten apple can spoil the good ones so, too, the germ proliferation would continue whether we are eating or fasting. Actually people who fast recover health rapidly whereas, if they continue to eat and take drugs, they recover slowly if at all.
Actually there have been fasts conducted under laboratory conditions in many hospitals and university medical centers with controls. It has been proven beyond doubt that the body cleanses itself under the condition of fasting and heals two or three times speedier when fasting than in alimentation and/or drug therapy. Medical experimentation with fasting has been conducted at the University of Illinois in Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. You won’t have to delve much into the literature on fasting to come up with the results observed. All medical research has proven the truth of the toxemia causation of disease regardless of the misinterpretations of the researchers. Researchers usually interpret their data to suit those who are paying for the experimentation, usually drug companies or drug beneficiaries. If the experiments are too contrary to the ends sought they are usually buried quietly. Both laboratory evidence and empirical observations substantiate that disease is a body reaction to intoxication rather than germs.
How can we convince our clientele that they are responsible for their diseases and that it is not just a bit of bad luck that has befallen them?
Fortunately, you don’t have to lay the load of responsibility on your clients’ shoulders. Your clients will at first be “cure-minded” and want a way out of the dilemma. You can point out the positive way back to health without getting into culpability. You can have them fill out an extensive questionnaire which we’ve developed and the answers to which are advance weighted so that you can suggest changes in the customer’s living regime. You can make the process one of adventure and exploration by holding forth the benefits to be obtained by doing this and this and not doing that and that anymore.
Dr. Jennings had people fasting under a deception. He gave them bread and sugar pills, what we’d call placebos, and instructed the taking of water with them four or five times daily. With that he advised bed rest, fresh air, etc. He cautioned against taking anything with the pills other than water, otherwise they would not work. The results his clients realized were nothing short of miraculous. His patients were recovering 100% while his medical colleagues who were into heroic drugging lost patients in epidemic numbers.
You can impute health magic to certain foods or limited diets, even a distilled water diet. But you can assure a healthful outcome only within certain parameters. Hence the client will likely go along with you in the matter of his welfare just as he or she goes along with every charlatan in the medical or other fields of the so-called healing arts.
I reiterate that you can make a game of this, i.e., make it an interesting adventure rather than an onerous chore. The education and whyfor can follow the results. People are interested in results and you are there to show them how. People believe in the magic of nutrition and we’re going to teach it to you as it real- ly is. We’ll teach it to you so that you can guide your clients back to health most speedily, not only in matters of diet but diet within the context of a thoroughgoing health regimen. You can always give instructions that are completely appropriate and straightforward that will enable the client to quickly regain health. Yet you can do it in such a manner as to make it exciting enterprise. You’ll cultivate this confident manner of knowing just what is called for by sympathetic and empathic consideration of your client’s problems as related to you through questionnaire and verbal complaint.
I find no fault with the toxemia explanation of disease but it seems too utterly simple to be for real. Do you think our clients will go for this?
I must repeat that your clients aren’t interested in theories or explanations. They’re looking for results, a magic carpet from a state of disease to a state of health. Just wave the magic wand of nutritional salvation before them within the context of a thoroughgoing health regime and they’ll usually follow it religiously. Your expertise will awe them and once word of mouth has gotten around about the miraculous results your guidance makes possible, clients will flock to you.
Article #1: A True Perspective Of Health And Disease by Dr. Herbert M.
Shelton
We live in a day of sensational discoveries and “miracle medicines.” Remarkable new cures and near-panaceas are frequently announced. Snake venom, artificial fever, frozen sleep, the sulfonamides, penicillin, streptothricin, blood plasma, powerful X-rays and ever more comes before us almost daily—these compete with sports, movies, politics, crime and other publicity for free newspaper space. So much is claimed for this parade of “miracle cures” and so many new discoveries are made relatively that the public is kept constantly keyed up with open-mouthed and wild-eyed expectancy. Perfect health via the medical promises seems always just around the corner.
At long last, “science” is staging a powerful and winning Blitz-Krieg against our ancient and most implacable foe—disease. With remarkable and sensational discoveries crowding so closely one upon the heels of another, the time is surely not far distant when universal health will prevail and disease will have disappeared from the human scene.
Not only is ours an age of remarkable “cures,” it is also a time of equally remarkable preventatives. We now have so much “successful” vaccines and serums that there is no longer any need for anyone ever to suffer from many of the “diseases” that were previously so common. New serums are frequently discovered. We may look forward hope- fully to the time when all “disease” will be conquered.
Surgery, too, has made rapid strides. It has grown much more daring. Today it invades physiological precepts which only a few years ago it would not have touched. With the newer advances in surgery added to the new “cures” and the new serums and vaccines, we have an almost ideal combination for the “conquest of disease.” What these three groups of anti-disease weapons lack in power and effectiveness is completely compensated for by the many glandular products (hormones), and by vitamin and mineral combinations that are claimed to do so much for the sick. Surely, there is no reason to doubt that the Golden Age has arrived.
The intelligent and informed reader, however, will notice one very important defect in all these methods of “cure” and “prevention.” He or she will quickly detect a deficiency for which no amount of shouting can compensate. It is this:
None of these methods of “cure” or “prevention” are designed to affect or even touch the basic causes of disease.
Drugs may suspend vital activity such that symptoms disappear but they do not re- move cause. They may kill germs but they also kill off patients. They do not clear up the systemic condition that permits bacteria to thrive and grow in parts of the body where they are not normal. “Frozen sleep” may temporarily check the growth of a tumor or cancer, but it does not and cannot remove the causes of cancer. Powerful X-rays may destroy a cancerous growth but they also destroy healthy tissue and cause further cancer while leaving intact the causes of disease. It cannot be emphasized too much that:
If a modality does not remove causes, it does not “cure”.
Serums and vaccines are admittedly capable of doing much harm, but they do not remove the causes of disease. Therefore, they do not enable us to “avoid” diseases, even those for which they are administered. We need to know that:
If they do not enable us to avoid the causes of disease, they cannot prevent disease.
Surgeons may pull a tooth, extract the tonsils, cut out the gall-bladder, excise the appendix, sever and remove the ovaries and seminal vesicles, drain the sinuses, etc. but they do not thereby remove the causes of disease. Mopping up the water from a leaky faucet does not remove the causes of the leak. Removing effects of cause likewise does not remove the cause. It is time for us to understand the following:
If surgery does not remove the causes of disease, it cannot “cure” the disease. There is no “cure” short of removal of causes.
Cutting out an organ, suppressing a symptom with a drug (medicine), destroying a growth, removing a stone—these processes touch effects only. They fail to restore health for three very vital reasons:
- They do not remove the causes of ill health.
- They are not the factors out of which good health is built.
- They produce positive injury to the body.
We must look to constructive natural agencies, forces, and methods for “prevention” of disease and recovery of health. We must cease relying on destructive, unnatural or anti-natural measures, forces, agents and processes. Agents such as drugs that produce disease in the well cannot possibly produce health in the sick. Disease-producing agents and measures are not health-preserving. The popular methods of “prevention” and “cure” neither prevent nor restore health. Witness the ever-growing army of sick and suffering in spite of the ever-increasing size of our army of physicians, nurses and hospitals, and the ever-growing list of “cures” and “miracle drugs.” To be healthy, do not indulge the causes of disease. Only madness can lead us to at- tempt to be free of disease by submitting to means which cause yet more disease. To “cure” disease, remove the causes of disease. It is the worst kind of folly to attempt to cure disease by ignoring its causes and employing modalities which are in themselves causes of disease. To build health, employ the causes of health. It is absurd to attempt to build health by employing means and measures that are known to impair and wreck health. For over forty years this writer has helped the sick and suffering back to health and has taught them how to remain well. I have employed a system called NATURAL HYGIENE. For over forty years my health school has been host to over 40,000 people. Dr. Shelton’s Health School has been employing the health-building system of NATURAL HYGIENE with only successful results. At the Health School we have received a great preponderance of people who have suffered for years and “have tried everything” without avail. Our success in building good health in the great majority of these sufferers has been remarkable.
At the Health School we have no “cure” at all. We recognize that only nature (normal forces and processes of life) restores health. We accord to nature the conditions and the opportunity to restore health. We recognize that in nature and nature only exists the power of healing. The forces and powers of nature constitute the true panacea. Ours is a plan of living and a program of education that restores our guests to harmonious living with nature. If this plan of care seems too simple, too easy or not heroic enough, just think this over:
If this plan were ineffectual we would not have succeeded where all others had failed.
I implore you to intelligently consider the preceding statements. Lay aside your previous conditioning and prepossessions. Do some real honest-to-goodness thinking. Then, when you thoroughly understand NATURAL HYGIENE, give it a fair and honest test. Heed the ancient admonition: “Prove (test) all things, hold fast that which is good (true).”
An old adage has it that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof.” The proof of the truth of the principles presented in NATURAL HYGIENE and of the value of the practices built thereon is in making use of it. “The wise will understand.”
Article #2: The Nature Of Disease: Its Cause And Purpose by Dr. Hereward Carrington
Primitive peoples, as we know, believe disease represents the entry into the patient’s body of some evil spirit or entity—which was caused to enter it by some malevolent voodoo man or witch doctor. The unfortunate victim remains so afflicted until he rights a wrong, appeases the witch doctor, or secures the services of another whose “magic” is more powerful than that of the original spell-caster. When once this “evil spirit” has been removed, he is well and strong again; if he fails in this, he dies!
Strange as it may seem, a modified form of this same belief underlies public thinking and constitutes a basic belief of many physicians. True, we no longer believe that an “evil spirit” has entered into the body of a sick person, but it survives in the form of thinking that disease is an “entity” of some sort which is caught and which can be driven out or expelled by suitable medicines— something in a bottle! When this entity has been expelled, the patient is “cured.” Such is the popular conception...
Disease: A Phase of the Healing Process
As opposed to this, the Hygienist believes that so-called “diseases” represent merely the bodily states or conditions, nearly always self-caused which are manifested in a se- ries of symptoms, but which are in themselves the very processes of “cure.” As Dr. Emmet Densmore stated, in his book How Nature Cures:
The hygienic system teaches that disease is a remedial effort, a struggle of the vital powers to purify the system and recover the normal state. This effort should be aided, directed and regulated, if need be, but never suppressed... What is this mysterious thing called disease? Simply an effort to remove obstructing material from
the organic domain, and to repair damages. Disease is a process of purification. It is a remedial action. It is a vital struggle to overcome obstructions and to keep the channels of circulation free...
Precisely the same idea was expressed by Miss Florence Nightingale, in her Notes on Nursing, when she said:
Shall we begin by taking it as a general principle that all disease, at some period or other of its course, is more or less a reparative process, not necessarily accompanied by suffering; an effort of nature to remedy a process of poisoning or decay, which has taken place weeks, months, sometimes years beforehand, unnoticed—the termination of the disease being then determined?
So-called disease is, therefore, in the vast majority of cases, merely a curative effort on the part of Nature; it is the process of cure itself—manifested in a set of symptoms. Attempting to “cure” a disease, in the ordinary sense of the word, leads us to a ridiculous paradox: viz., an attempt to “cure” a “curing” process! The disease IS the “cure.” The outward manifestations, the symptoms we notice, represent merely the outward and visible signs of this curative process in action. Any attempt to deal with or smother these symptoms merely retards the process of cure to that extent. Instead of treating symptoms, we should aim at the disease itself—or rather at the causes of the so-called disease. These are really the dangerous factors involved, and those which have brought about the abnormal conditions noted. Once we have removed these causes, the disease (so-called) disappears, and the symptoms vanish. The patient is then restored to health.
Viewed in this light, everything becomes simple! Toxins and waste material of all kinds accumulate in the body, over a period of weeks, months or years—finally reach- ing the point when they must be expelled or deterioration sets in. This violent expulsive effort on the part of nature produces a series of characteristic symptoms. The body at- tempts in every way possible to expel these poisonous substances— through the bowels, the kidneys, the skin, the lungs, etc.—with the result that these organs are overtaxed and break down under the load. Clogging and toxemia then set in more seriously than ever, and the patient is really ill. Obviously, the only way to relieve this condition is to stop adding to the waste material the body must eliminate, and assist it in every way possible to dispose of what is already there. Once the body is given a chance to “catch up,” so to say, and cleanse itself to some extent, the violence of the internal upheaval will subside, and as this becomes more normal, the external symptoms will lessen and the patient is then said to be “convalescent.” If this process continues, he ultimately becomes “cured.”
I have used all these terms in a loose sense, because hygienists believe that the socalled “disease” is itself the process of “cure”—as we have seen. What we really mean is that certain causes have been removed, and as they are removed the effects disappear... What are these causes, and how are they removed?
The human body is creating certain poisons within itself by the very process of living. If these poisons were not constantly being excreted we should die. Normally, they are disposed of through the various eliminating organs—the bowels, kidneys, skin, etc. If this balance is maintained, the person remains well. If, however, the poisons accumulate more rapidly than they can be disposed of, abnormal conditions develop. These conditions are the so-called “diseases.”
Now, it should be obvious that the speediest way to regain health, when this condition develops, is to stimulate the eliminating organs, and at the same time introduce no new poisons into the system. The former is accomplished by means of exercise, bathing, water-drinking, etc. But it is highly important to prevent the entrance into the body of material which might further clog and block it. The material is our food, and obviously so; for, aside from air and water, this is the only material we ever introduce into our bodies, under normal conditions.
The necessity of fasting in times of stress thus becomes evident. Food supplies us with essential nutriment, it is true; but if the body is in no condition properly to utilize this food, it merely decomposes, creates poisons and is pushed through the body without really benefiting it. The thing to do, therefore, is to withhold food, so long as this abnormal state lasts, thereby giving the eliminating organs a chance to dispose of the surplus material already on hand, and at the same time rest the internal organs, permitting them to accumulate a certain store of vital energy, which would otherwise be expended in the handling and disposal of this extra mass of food-material. The system thus becomes cleansed and purified. It is the simplest and most effective means known to us—and is the course prescribed by nature when she deprives us, at such times, of our normal appetite.
All Diseases Toxemic In Origin
Practically all diseases thus have a common basis and a common origin. There is a unity and oneness of disease, based on a common denominator. This, in a word, is toxemia. The differing diseases, so-called, are but the various means by which nature tries to expel this poisonous material; and the symptoms noted are the outward and visible signs of such curative action. Naturally developed inherent healing powers alone “cure”—whether it be a cut finger, a broken bone or a so-called “disease.” All that the physician can do is to assist Nature in this remedial effort. Anything which tends to reduce symptoms merely prolongs the effort to that extent. Give Nature a chance, and she will heal in every case. A “cure” will invariably follow—whenever such “cure” is at all possible.
Most drugs so destroy vitality that body efforts as evidenced by symptoms are stopped. Pain is a warning signal—calling attention to a certain local area which is in dire distress. But this condition is merely a localized manifestation of a general condition. As Dr. Samuel Dickson remarked: “Properly speaking, there never was a purely local disease.” Rectify the general body condition, and the local manifestation will disappear. No matter what they may be or where located, they will vanish when the body as a whole is normal.
Drugs do not act upon the body; they are acted upon by the body. The action we perceive is the reaction of the body against the drug. It is the effort on the part of Nature to expel the poison introduced into the living organism... Much the same is true of stimulants. These seem to impart “strength” to the body; but as we know, this is a false strength, denoting merely the waste of the vital energies. If you dig your spur into a tired horse, it will run faster to the corner; but no one thinks that the spur has supplied the horse with fresh energy. It has simply caused the poor animal to expend its reserve energies more quickly. It is the same with stimulants. The false feeling of strength which they impart is fictitious. The same is true of many drugs; and the same is true of food, which also acts as a stimulant, giving us a false feeling of strength when a meal is eaten! It is because of this fact that many people feel “weak” when food is withheld.
The simple, basic idea back of the hygienic system is that practically all “diseases,” so-called, are but the varied manifestations of a single underlying cause; and that, when this cause is removed, the symptoms automatically vanish. This cause is toxemia: waste materials and foreign poisons in the body.
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