Natural
Cure - Chapter IV -
The Three Primary Causes of
Disease
We shall now consider the three primary causes of
disease one by one.
Lowered Vitality
There is a well-defined limit to the running of a
watch. When the wound spring has spent its force,
the mechanism stops.
So also the living forms of vegetable, animal and
human life seem to be wound by Nature to run a
certain length of time, in accordance with the laws
governing their growth and development. Even the
healthiest of animals living in the most congenial
surroundings in the freedom of Nature do not much
exceed their allotted span of life, nor do they fall
much below it. As a rule, the longer the period
between birth and maturity, the longer the life of
the animal.
All the different families of mammalia, when living
in freedom, live closely up to the life period
allotted to them by Nature. Man is the only
exception. It is claimed that according to the laws
of longevity his average length of life should be
considerably over one hundred years, while according
to life insurance statistics, the average is at
present [1913] thirty-seven years. This shows an
immense discrepancy between the possible and the
actual longevity of man.
Even this brief span of life means little else than
weakness, physical and mental suffering and
degeneracy for the majority of mankind. Visiting
physicians of the public schools in our large cities
report that
seventy-five percent of all school children show
defective health in some way. Diagnosis from
the Eye proves that the remaining twenty-five
percent are also more or less affected by hereditary
and acquired disease conditions. Christian Science
says, "There is no disease." Nature's records in the
iris of the eye say there is no perfect health.
These established facts of greatly impaired
longevity and universal abnormality of the human
race would of themselves indicate that there is
something radically wrong somewhere in the life
habits of man, and that there is ample reason for
the great health-reform movement which was started
about the middle of the last century by the pioneers
of Nature Cure in Germany, and which has
since swept, under many different forms and guises,
all portions of the civilized world.
When people in general grow better acquainted with
the laws underlying prenatal and postnatal child
culture, natural living and the natural treatment
of diseases, human beings will approach much
more closely the normal in health, strength, beauty
and longevity.
Then will arise a true aristocracy, not of morbid,
venous blue blood, but pulsating with the rich red
blood of health.
However, to reach this ideal of perfect physical,
mental and moral health, succeeding generations will
have to adhere to the natural ways of living and of
treating their ailments. It cannot be attained by
the present generation. The enthusiasts who claim
that they can, by their particular methods, achieve
perfect health and live the full term of human life,
are destined to disappointment. We are so
handicapped by the mistakes of the past that the
best which most of us adults can do is to patch up,
to attain a reasonable measure of health and to
approach somewhat nearer Nature's full allotment of
life.
Wild animals living in freedom retain their full
vigor unimpaired almost to the end of life. Hunters
report that among the great herds of buffalo, elk
and deer, the oldest bucks are the rulers and
maintain their sovereignty over the younger males of
the herd solely by reason of their superior strength
and prowess. Premature old age, among human beings,
as indicated by the early decay of physical and
mental powers, is brought on solely by their
violation of Nature's Laws in almost all the
ordinary habits of life.
Health Positive--Disease
Negative
The freer the inflow of life force into the
organism, the greater the vitality, the more there
is of strength, of positive resisting and
recuperating power.
In the book~ Harmonics of Evolution~ we are told
that at the very foundation of the manifestation of
life lies the principle of polarity, which expresses
itself in the duality and unity of positive and
negative affinity. The swaying to and fro of the
positive and the negative, the desire to balance
incomplete polarity, constitutes the very ebb and
flow of life.
Disease is disturbed polarity. Exaggerated positive
or negative conditions, whether physical, mental,
moral or spiritual, tend to disease on the
respective planes of being. Foods, medicines,
suggestion and all the other different methods of
therapeutic treatment exert on the individual
subjected to them either a positive or a negative
influence. It is, therefore, of the greatest
importance that the physician and every one who
wishes to live and work in harmony with Nature's
Laws should understand this all-important
question of magnetic polarity.
Lowered vitality means lowered, slower and coarser
vibration, and this results in lowered resistance to
the accumulation of morbid matter, poisons, disease
taints, germs and parasites. This is what we
designate ordinarily as the negative condition.
Let us see whether we can explain this more fully by
a homely but practical illustration: A great many of
my readers have probably seen in operation in the
summer amusement parks the "human roulette." This
contrivance consists of a large wheel,
board-covered, somewhat raised in the center, and
sloping towards the circumference. The wheel rotates
horizontally, evenly with the floor or ground. The
merrymakers pay their nickels for the privilege of
throwing themselves flat down on the wheel and
attempting to cling to it while it rotates with
increasing swiftness. While the wheel moves slowly,
it is easy enough to cling to it; but the faster it
revolves, the more strongly the centrifugal force
tends to throw off the human flies who try to stick
to it.
The increasing repelling power of the accelerated
motion of the wheel may serve as an illustration of
that which we call vigorous vibration, good
vitality, natural
immunity or recuperative power. This is the
positive condition.
The more intense the action of the life force, the
more rapid and vigorous are the vibratory activities
of the atoms and molecules in the cells, and of the
cells in the organs and tissues of the body.
The more rapid and vigorous this vibratory activity,
the more powerful is the repulsion and expulsion of
morbid matter, poisons and germs of disease which
try to encumber or destroy the organism.
Health and Disease Resident in
the Cell
We must not forget that health or disease, in the
final analysis, is resident in the cell. Though a
minute, microscopic organism, the cell is an
independent living being, which is born, grows,
eats, drinks, throws off waste matter, multiplies,
ages and dies, just like man, the large cell. If the
individual cell is well, man, the complex cell, is
well also, and vice versa. From this it is apparent
that in all our considerations of the processes of
health, disease and cure, we have to deal primarily
with the individual cell.
The vibratory activity of the cell may be lowered
through the decline of vitality brought about in a
natural way by advancing age, or in an artificial
way through wrong habits of living, wrong thinking
and feeling, overwork, unnatural stimulation and
excesses of various kinds.
On the other hand, the inflow of vital force into
the cells may be obstructed and their vibratory
activity lowered by the accumulation of waste and
morbid matter in the tissues, blood vessels and
nerve channels of the body. Such clogging will
interfere with the inflow of life force and with the
free and harmonious vibration of the cells and
organs of the body as surely as dust in a watch will
interfere with the normal action and vibration of
its wheels and balances.
From this it is evident that negative conditions may
be brought about not only by hyperrefinement of the
physical organism, but also by clogging it with
waste and morbid matter which interfere with the
inflow and distribution of the vital force. It also
becomes apparent that in such cases the Nature
Cure methods of eliminative treatment, such as
pure food diet, hydrotherapy, massage, chiropractic,
osteopathy, etc., are valuable means of removing
these obstructions and promoting the inflow and free
circulation of the positive electric and magnetic
life currents
Abnormal Composition of
Blood and Lymph
As one of the primary causes of disease, we cited
abnormal composition of blood and lymph. The human
organism is made up of a certain number of elements
in well-defined proportions. Chemistry has
discovered, so far, about seventeen of these
elements in appreciable quantities and has
ascertained their functions in the economy of the
body. These seventeen elements must be present in
the right proportions in order to insure normal
texture, structure and functioning of the component
parts and organs of the body.
The cells and organs receive their nourishment from
the blood and lymph currents. Therefore, these must
contain all the elements needed by the organism in
the right proportions, and this, of course, depends
upon the character and the combination of the food
supply.
Every disease arising in the human organism from
internal causes is accompanied by a deficiency in
blood and tissues of certain important mineral
elements [organic salts]. Undoubtedly, the majority
of these diseases are caused by an unbalanced diet,
or by food and drink poisoning. Wrong food
combinations, on the one hand, create an
overabundance of waste and morbid matter in the
system and, on the other hand, fail to supply the
positive mineral elements or organic salts on which
depends the elimination of waste and systemic
poisons from the body.
The great problem of natural dietetics and of
natural medical treatment
is, therefore, how to restore and maintain the
positivity of the blood and of the organism as a
whole through providing in food, drink and medicine
an abundant supply of the positive mineral salts in
organic form.
Accumulation of Morbid
Matter and Poisons
This is the third of the primary causes of disease.
We have learned how lowered vitality and the
abnormal composition of thevital fluids favor the
retention of systemic poisons in the body. If, in
addition to this, food and drink contain too much of
the waste-producing carbohydrates, hydrocarbons and
proteins, and not enough of the eliminating positive
mineral salts then waste and morbid materials are
bound to accumulate in the system and this results
in the clogging of the tissues with acid
precipitates and earthy deposits.
Such accumulation of waste and morbid matter in
blood and tissues creates the great majority of all
diseases arising within the human organism. This
will be explained fully in the following chapters
which deal with the causation of acute and chronic
disease.
More harmful and dangerous, and more difficult to
eliminate than the different kinds of systemic
poisons, that is, those which have originated within
the body, are the drug poisons, especially when they
are administered in the inorganic mineral form.
Health is dependent upon an abundant supply of life
force, upon the unobstructed, normal circulation of
the vital fluids and upon perfect oxygenation and
combustion. Anything that interferes with these
essentials causes disease; anything that promotes
them establishes health. Nothing so interferes with
the inflow of the life force, with free and normal
circulation of blood and lymph and with the
oxygenation and combustion of food materials and
systemic waste as the accumulation of morbid matter
and poisons in the tissues of the body.
This I have endeavored to explain more fully in
connection with lowered vitality. Let us now see how
disease and health are affected by mental and
emotional conditions.
Mental and Emotional Influences
Our mental and emotional conditions exert a most
powerful influence upon the inflow and distribution
of vital force. The author of The Great Work [~The
Great Work: The Constructive Principle of Nature in
Individual Life, ~by John Emmett Richardson
{1853-1935}, Indio-American Book Company, Chicago,
IL. 1907.] has described most graphically in the
chapter on Self-Control how fear, worry,
anxiety
and all kindred emotions create in the system
conditions similar to those of freezing; how these
destructive vibrations congeal the tissues, clog the
channels of life and paralyze the vital functions.
He shows how the emotional conditions of impatience,
irritability, anger, etc., have a heating, corroding
effect upon the tissues of the body.
In like manner, all other destructive emotional
vibrations ob-struct the inflow and normal
distribution of the life forces in and through the
organism, while on the other hand the constructive
emotions of faith, hope, cheerfulness, happiness and
love exert a relaxing, harmonizing influence upon
the tissues, blood vessels and nerve channels of the
body, thus opening wide the floodgates of the life
forces, and raising the discords of weakness,
disease and discontent to the harmonics of buoyant
health and happiness.
Let us see just how mind controls matter and how it
affects the changing conditions of the physical
body. Life manifests through vibration. It acts on
the mass by acting through its minutest par-ticles.
Changes in the physical body are wrought by
vibratory changes in atoms, molecules and cells.
Health is satisfied polarity, that is, the balancing
of the positive and negative elements in harmonious
vibration. Anything that interferes with the free,
vigor-ous and harmonious vibration of the minute
parts and particles composing the human organism
tends to disturb polarity and natural affinity, thus
causing discord or disease.
When we fully realize these facts we shall not stand
so much in awe of our physical bodies. In the past
we have been thinking of the body as a solid and
imponderable mass difficult to control and to
change. This conception left us in a condition of
utter helplessness and hopelessness in the presence
of weakness and disease.
We now think of the body as composed of minute
corpuscles rotating around one another within the
atom at relatively immense distances. We know that
in similar manner the atoms vibrate in the molecule,
the molecules in the cell, the cells in the organ
and the organs in the body; the whole capable of
being changed by a change in the vibrations of its
particles.
Thus the erstwhile solid physical mass appears
plastic and fluidic, readily swayed and changed by
the vibratory harmonies or discords of thoughts and
emotions as well as by foods, medicines and
therapeutic treatment.
Under the old conception the mind fell readily under
the control of the body and became the abject slave
of its physical conditions, swayed by fear and
apprehension under every sensation of physical
weakness, discomfort or pain. The servants lorded it
with a high hand over the master of the house, and
the result was chaos.
|
