9.
Pathology of the Fetus
10.
Inflammation
11.
Septicemia
12.
Tumors
13.
Synergies
B. Pathogeny
C.
Pathological Physiology
D.
Pathological Anatomy
E.
Symptomatology
F.
Nosology
II. Diagnosis
III. Prognosis
IV. Therapeutics
9. Pathology of the Fetus
As stated before, nature has put her eternal ban on the hereditary transmission of degeneracy.
Let us reiterate that there is no disease per se. What we call disease is an unideal state of health. What we recognize as health is a greater or less degree of approximation to an ideal state of comfort of mind and body. Few have perfect health; few realize their ideal standard; many are disappointed, and go through life singing, "Beyond this vale of tears." Those who think that man can escape all discomfort fail to understand the necessary educational influences of pain and discomfort.
Of course, the state known as health is a slight deviation from perfect health, functionally. But when functioning has been diverted from approximate health long enough to cause organized change of the character we call disease, this is degeneration, and is not transmissible.
Children are born with organs approximately perfect; or, as a result of accidents or injuries, they are monstrosities--deviations from normal physical development--and are frequently disposed of at the instant of birth because of their unfitness for independent existence; for example, headless children, or children born minus other vital organs.
The state of health which we call disease is not transmissible. Sterility stands between the unfit and propagation, No doubt children are born into environments unfit for proper development, but the vileness is all on this side of conception.
Diseases and deformities, up to monstrosities, are the results of traumatic influences. Disease-producing influences, such as toxin poisoning, may destroy life after it is started; but, at the time of conception, nature's health standard must have been satisfied, or it could never get by the censors who pass on proper conceptions. All sorts of detrimental influences may reach and influence fetal development; but life is started right--for certainly no organic disease in parents can be transmitted.
Drug-prescribing physicians have harmed unborn infants by medicating their mothers. Any influence that harms the mother must harm the fetus more or less. An overfed and incumbered mother will have an incumbered child.
It is said that mercury accumulates in the placenta. Why should it not find the fetus through the blood? The placenta is a filler which stands between the child and the ordinary blood derangements of the mother; but drugs, and especially mercury, arsenic, and iodid of potash, have a way of insinuating their toxic presence beyond the placental guard, there to deface the holiest of holies, and send it into the world a blot upon creation--a false witness against the purity of conception.
That the fetus and mother are united in bonds which allow a reciprocal exchange of physical and chemical influences, there is no question. For illustration: If a mother's uterus be opened, exposing a fetus, and a fatal dose of strychnin be injected into the fetus, fatal convulsions will be produced in the mother, while the child escapes; and, if sufficiently developed, the child may be extracted from the mother and saved--showing that it can stand a larger dose than the mother.
This statement is quoted from Sabory. It is not reasonable to suppose that a fetus can stand a larger dose of drugs than the mother; but the fact that the mother may be killed through the child, while the child is saved, is proof that every protection possible is thrown about the fetus. In this case the drug is taken up and sent to the placenta, and from the placenta to the mother's lungs and heart, before it can be returned through the general circulation to be distributed throughout the fetal body. The heart, and the circulation of blood through it, are far different in fetal life from what they are after the child takes an independent life. The blood, with its toxins, is slow to reach the vital organs of the fetus. Indeed, the unborn child is safeguarded on every hand.
For the privilege of taking oxygen directly into our lungs we pay with a greater susceptibility to the poison influences of toxins.
When a fetus dies from poisoning through the mother by strychnine, it may be killed by the severe muscular contractions peculiar to convulsions caused by the drug; yet this is not very probable, so long as it is protected from contractions by a fluid cushion--the aniniotic fluid.
It is said that numerous observations establish that the bacillus of Eberth may pass through the placenta, but does not produce any lesion in the fetus, any alteration of Peyer's patches, nor any splenic hypertrophy, but causes a true septicemia. This is splendid proof of my contention that typhoid fever is the product of malpractice, and that all specific poisons--diseases with a specific poisoning--rest on one and the same basis--namely, septicemia--the septic base being chemically changed to suit the environment. A puerperal, typhoid, or traumatic septicemia, as well as a luetic infection, are all forms of sepsis, but featured by the environments under which they develop. Chaos reigns when specific individuality is given to all the different manifestations of putrefaction--septic poisoning. Our present system of treatment is made inefficient by a fallacious conception of causation.
Infection and contagion received a hard blow when it was discovered that, in the case of twins, one may be born with smallpox and the other not; and that the child is often behind the mother in point of time in the development of diseases.
Vaccinated mothers, living in an epidemic, may fail to develop the disease smallpox, and yet will give birth to children covered with pustules. This indicates that the mother's body is contaminated with the epidemic influence, or the infection could not be transmitted to the child. This also goes to show that, in all epidemic influences, those who do, not develop the tangible symptoms may be affected subjectively, having the disease in a subjective form, and how childish are all efforts at quarantine and immunization other than increasing resistance by raising the health standard.
So-called hereditary syphilis and tuberculosis are large subjects, the literature of which runs into tomes; but until the writers on these diseases shall know as much as high school boys, will know in a few years from now of the evils of bad habits in eating, clothing, and care of the mind and body generally, I shall not apologize to them for denouncing as rubbish their whole compilation on disease in general ,and syphilis in particular.
So long as wrong eating, wrong thinking, wrong care of the body--the use of tea, coffee, tobacco, and alcoholics-so long as the mind and body of our patients can be steeped in lasciviousness and sensuality, and all these disease-producing habits count for nothing with expert clinicians when they are weighing cause and effect to determine a correct diagnosis, why should I, or any other rational-minded physician, give any serious consideration to their conclusions as set forth in textbooks? Why are not their conclusions based on premises which have been robbed of their vital potency?
I charge the leading teachers of the profession of today with gross carelessness in making a diagnosis. They all know and acknowledge the evils of bad habits; but, in making a diagnosis, the effects of a vicious life are ignored entirely, and blood secretions, excretions, and pathological specimens are sent to bacteriologists, on whose findings a diagnosis is made and a cut-and-dried--specific--treatment is prescribed. The X-ray is used, and on its shadows is based a diagnosis, without a thought, or any consideration whatever, being given to the influence of the daily habits of the patient on causing the effects which the X-ray traces.
I have said that the pursuit of present-day diagnoses and treatment is a "fool's paradise." If it is not, why isn't it?
A life of lasciviousness and sensuality leads directly to degenerating diseases, such as tabes dorsalis; yet the leaders of the profession see nothing, think nothing, believe nothing, write nothing, and teach nothing, except that the disease is caused by syphilis and must be treated for syphilis, notwithstanding this treatment is a failure and they know it will fail. In the face of this, they would have laws passed to force their specific or anti-syphilitic treatment, and no other, at the pain of imprisonment for the culprit who would dare repudiate their dainnable pessimism.
The treatment standardized by the inhabitants of this fool's paradise (medical) will necessarily make their cures (?) correspond with their pessimistic prognosis. Perhaps it would be better to say that the treatment is logical--in keeping with the erroneous etiology,
From a modem medical view-point, there is but one toxin that counts in analyzing syphilis, and that is the toxin of syphilis. The modem medical gentleman may dive down into the worst human muck, but if he cannot find syphilitic infection, or the least excuse for suspecting it, he will issue a clean bill-of-health, to be put in escrow for ninety-nine years. If at the end of that time a Wassermann test, used every year, has shown negative, a certificate declaring the victim pure will be delivered to him "to have and to hold" for the remainder of his natural lifetime.
A syphilitic suspect is held under surveillance, and tested often enough and long enough to develop in him a syphilophobia, after which he will stand without being tied to any syphilomaniac.
To the uninitiated what I say may appear to be exaggeration, or perhaps entirely false; but the truth is that I cannot exaggerate on the fallacious teachings of modern medical science on syphilis--they are so false that they are beyond belief. The reason why medical fallacy has evolved to such dimensions on the subject of syphilis is because it is backed by law and the small voice of truth is frowned down.
'The majority of doctors who subscribe to the fallacy have no opinions, but they stand up and are counted for any ridiculous theories advanced by the "scientific" heads. In this way the stupid, unthinking majority governs; and when ignorance rules, insane delusion often sets the pace. 'The most dangerous delusions are those that are accepted by the lay minds as scientific.
When parents live in such a manner as to keep themselves enervated to the point of having imperfect metabolism--the point of having secretions and excretions more or less inhibited; when their personal habits are sensual, and the state of the alimentary canal is that of acetous fermentation in the stomach, and putrefactive fermentation in the bowels, their physical state is that of chronic toxin poisoning.
Acetous fermentation in the stomach and upper part of the small intestine has an inhibiting effect on the dehydrating process that takes place in the walls of the stomach, duodenum or small intestine, and liver. In the lower small intestine and the large intestine putrefaction takes place, and the toxins absorbed from this depraved condition is a constant source of poisoning. The lymphatic system arrests the absorbed toxins, and neutralizes them to a certain extent; but the body's immunization eventually becomes so overworked that glandular inflammations become the rule rather than the exception. This is the state that in time evolves the tubercular diathesis, which is described elsewhere under the head of "Diatheses." And, in thinking of diathesis, it should not be forgotten that more is meant than an average susceptibility; indeed, it means a fated certainty that tuberculosis will develop if the same habits of body and mind are practiced by the offspring that were practiced by the parents in developing acid fermentation in the stomach and putrefactive fermentation in the bowels. Without this inherited tendency to develop tuberculosis, no amount of association with people sick of pulmonary tuberculosis will cause its development.
When a subject showing so much degeneration of the vital processes is unfortunate in becoming acutely infected by any type of septic poisoning, ranging from venereal infection, through the infectious fevers, to infected injuries and surgical operations, his system will prove a favorable culture-medium for the spread of the poisoning. The infectious fevers will develop the worst types. Venereal infections will act very severely, glandular inflammations will spread rapidly, and the system will show little resistance. Treatment will be slow in bringing about a change for the better. Anti-syphilitic medication, without correcting errors in eating, must fail.
Infectious fevers show a great mortality among such subjects. These are the subjects with whom modern syphilitic treatment plays such havoc. The most degenerated of this type are sterile; those who can pass nature's censorship and propagate are curable, and there is no transmission except an acute susceptibility to take on tuberculosis or syphilis, when the habits which lead to degeneracy are formed. A proper environment would lead away from such tendencies; but this influence seldom exists so long as children remain with parents, and parents remain ignorant of the health laws, and continue to practice vitiating habits. Children born. of such parents not only have a tendency to take on parental habits, but they are educated into them.
Postnatal influences cause degeneracies that are often ascribed to prenatal influences and inheritance.
The degenerating habits of the average parents during the gestation period, or during that period when a family is being raised, are quite enough to build a tuberculous or syphilitic diathesis. Excess in eating and excess in venery develop such a state of toxin poisoning that children are born more or less incumbered with flesh, and with such a sensitive state that they have little resistance. They soon develop toxemia; their lymphatic system takes on adenitis and lymphatic inflammations very easily. These are the children who develop borderland symptoms of scrofula, tuberculosis, and syphilis--they can satisfy the physician who is a syphilomaniac with all the thrills of a great discoverer.
Toxin poisoning from excessive eating, enervation from excessive venery and a lascivious mind, and poisoning from stimulants and improper clothing, housing, etc., build a state of body where no, symptoms are lacking for those who are ready to suspect tuberculosis, syphilis, or any degenerate state.
Errors in locating cause are the most tragic features of modern diagnosis. One of the most stupendous blunders of the day in medical science is in giving specificity to disease and ignoring the basic causes which make specific causes operative.
It is easy to graft specificity on a constitutional derangement, such as described above; but without some such cause the body proves a withering desert to the seeds of disease that fall upon it. To be specific and explicit: A child may be born with the tuberculous diathesis, yet it need not, because of that diathesis, develop and die of tuberculosis. Diathesis means susceptibility and inclination to take a given disease. Sterility prevents disease per se from being born.
Parents with vicious habits may deliver an incumbered child across the quarantine line drawn by nature, but nature's health officers are too loyal to evolution to allow the smuggling of infections into life. Degenerative processes must be manufactured on this side of conception.
Children born of parents who are too young are often degenerates. The cause, however, is psychological rather than physical. The first child is often a degenerate, as are only boys in large families of girls, and only girls in large families of boys. But the degeneracy is postnatal and psychical.
Physical degeneracy starts oftener from a psychological influence than from physical influences. However, both often start together, and walk hand in hand to the destruction of health and even life.
A babe is born. It is fed every two or three hours, night and day. It is disturbed in its sleep--in its brainand body-building--by being put on exhibition to every friend who knows so little as to call in person on the puerperal mother, instead of sending a small note of one line conveying good wishes, and one flower (not a bouquet). Good wishes by telephone, or a personal card or note, with one flower, is all the personal attention any mother should receive from a friend, except her own family, for three months after the birth of the child.
Disturbing babies to look at them, kiss them, and shake them up to see how lovely their eyes are, and what exquisite little feet and hands they have, is nothing more than a delicious bit of hysteria and humbuggery practiced much too often for the good of the puerperal mothers and the babies; for right here is where the building of pathology of infants and heredity is begun.
The foundation of nervous irritability and indigestion starts at once, marked by constipation, white curds in stools, colic, and night and day crying.
Benevolent Assimilation--a Conservative Force
There is a tendency for pronounced types of any diathesis to grow weaker and weaker until unfit to reproduce; then they die out.
As stated often before, disease is not transmissible, but enervation is, Enervation means lost power of resistance, and when resistance is low, the influences which lower it find the high-bred diathetic easy prey, so to speak.
In breeding lap-dogs, the lower their nerve energy and the less, their resistance, the more popular they are among dog fanciers. The nearer death from fatty degeneration the stock at the stock shows is, the more it is admired and the greater is the premium.
One day years ago I was crossing Boston Commons. Moving along in front of me, at a snail's pace, was a woman far gone with fatty degeneration. When I was within ten steps of heir, she turned and said in a lackadaisical voice: "Darling, do you want mamma to wait for you?" I looked in the direction of her eyes, and saw an exophthalmic dog, whose weight certainly contrasted with that of its "mother," for she probably weighed two hundred, and her offspring could not have exceeded six to nine ounces.
The dog's breeding had left it with scarcely enough nerve energy to stand on its legs. It had eyes, but it saw not, and it had life, but it lived not. It was a case of nervous diathesis. It was bred almost out of existence.
Children may be born of parents who come from parents with strong, well-marked diatheses--with low resistance to influences which pervert nutrition--and if the diathesis favors tuberculosis, that disease will develop; if the diathesis is that of gout, the children will develop rheumatism and other gouty affections.
Children of tubercular diathesis, when bred down until they are very enervated, have but little resistance, and when they are abused in a way to pervert nutrition, they develop some form of tuberculosis. All they need to start the morbid process is to be vaccinated with cowpox, which is a bovine type of syphilis. Just what the difference is, the highest medical authorities do not know; the only apparent difference being that one develops in the human being and the other develops in the cow.
In a pronounced type of scrofulous diathesis, vaccination is all that is needed to set up a tuberculous or syphilitic morbid process that will be pushed on by wrong life to destruction of health and life while the victim is quite young.
Vaccination may start a morbid glandular derangement that will favor the development of all the catarrhal diseases peculiar to child-life.
Of course, infections from toxin absorption in the intestine are common to children of diathetic type.
Children from a long line of ancestry favoring the development of the scrofulous, tuberculous, or syphilitic diathesis are weaklings, with flabby muscles, who develop adenoids and enlarged tonsils early. They develop skin diseases of an impetigo variety, and their lymphatic glands are very prone to take on inflammatory enlargements.
There are many fatal diseases developing in these children before and at puberty because their resistance is low and they are subjected to the same disease-producing habits as those from whom they inherit their type of health.
According to Darwin, this is the way the unfit are made to disappear.
A dyscrasia or diathesis is the sum of erroneous living practiced through generations. Diseases peculiar to a diathesis are not long in developing when the strain is pure and inbred; but where a beautiful tuberculous girl, with long, silky eyelashes and well-rounded body and limbs, compels an Apollo of the sanguine, vital temperament to fall in love with her, the tuberculous strain is diluted and the half-tuberculous children are given power to live; whereas, if the girl had attracted a young man, like herself, of tuberculous diathesis, the children of such a union would be born to die early.
Influence of Chronic Intoxications
Chronic food poisoning from the habit of overeating causes enervation. This state favors the development of any disease to which the one suffering from enervation is prenatally inclined. Anything that enervates those with a diathetic inclination will drive them into developing whatever disease their diathesis inclines them to develop.
Children born of parents enervated from chronic intoxications often start life with a great show of brilliancy; they are bright--indeed, precocious. But they soon come to an end, settling into disease or intellectual mediocrity. The cause for this may be one of many influences. The children are born and start life under domestic influences--a style of living--that have ended in alimentary, alcoholic, or other forms of inebriety in their parents; and the most natural thing for the children to do is to follow the parents in dietetic errors, and then, as they grow older, they adopt the coffee and tea habits, and perhaps later the tobacco and alcohol habits.
Excess in any one line paves the way for excess in other lines. Intoxication-be it from the absorption of toxins in the bowels from overeating, nicotine in the mouth, or alcohol in the stomach--develops enervation; and the more enervated a subject becomes, the more craving he has for more and greater varieties of stimulants, until the nervous system and nutrition are impotent. During the early stages, when the nervous system has strong reactive power, the mind is unusually bright--children show precocity; but the evil day of enervation, followed with prostration, must and does come. Then dullness follows brightness; will is lost; eccentricities come to the surface. The real artist may continue to produce in a way to please those who are not critical, but certainly not to please the artist himself, if he were normal.
Debauchery is not confined to physical stimulants. Ecstasy is mental debauchery. All cases of extraordinary precocity are types of mental diathesis brought on from idea--drunkenness. The emotions are fed with a consuming eagerness to drink at the fountain of all knowledge; the idea and desire become consuming; an ecstatic state is developed; and as a result we see the boy Christ "sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions." On being asked by his simple-minded parents to explain why he was away from home, his answer was:
"Why look ye for me? Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business?" He was not understood, because the moral mind cannot look through the veil of ecstasy.
Only a short time ago the world of education was astonished by a boy of eleven years of age lecturing to the Harvard professors on the fourth dimension. This is a type of ecstasy--mental inebriety. The enervation that must follow may show the will and all the positive elements of his character impotent; or the reaction may be so great as to sweep this precocious youth out of life.
These cases of premature--or, rather, extraordinary--mental developments were prepared for precociousness before birth. The parents developed a mental diathesis, and as soon as these youths were subjected to mental stimulation they developed mental inebriety.
Children, when once launched on the road of intoxication traveled by parents, will speed up and go much more rapidly and come to an end much sooner.
All habits--mental or physical, moral, immoral, or unmoral--are just so many varieties of intoxications; and, when indulged in without restraint, enervation, and the consequent perverted nutrition, follow. The children resulting are stamped with a diathesis which makes it easy for them to develop in the habits of parents.
As disease has no individuality per se, but is, first, last, and all the time, simply a state of health, all efforts in the line of healing worth anything are those that remove habits which lower the standard of health.
Moderation in all things builds a self-controlling diathesis that enables children to control themselves. Poise is as transmissible as any other habit.
Convulsions follow in the wake of parental drunkenness. Infantile paralysis is the effect of wrong nursing, and endemic or epidemic influences, on a child that is stamped with neurosis as a diathesis.
Unless we can fully comprehend the truth that normal children cannot be made sick; that such diseases as infantile paralysis take hold only of children who have been prepared by parental excess--perhaps excessive venery before and during the pregnant period, plus table excesses, and maybe alcoholics--we need not hope to build an immunization that will do away with epidemics. The part played by vaccination in breaking down resistance should never be forgotten.
Epilepsy is a neurosis built by parents and transmitted to children. Alcoholism is supposed to be the chief among all intoxications that build the neurosis in children which leads to epilepsy. In all probability, excessive venery stands at the top of all causes.
Saturnism (Lead Poisoning).--When the mother is poisoned, she usually aborts. When the father is poisoned, C. Paul found that out of one hundred and forty pregnancies more than eighty were abortions. Among the children born alive, one-third died the first year and one-third more before the third year. Those children who live to maturity are liable to have all kinds of nervous diseases.
One thing is always observed, namely: when degeneration is established from the use of any stimulants, sterility prevents propagation.
Hereditary Syphilis.--That symptoms produced by toxic poisoning caused by ordinary sensuality in those of scrofulous diathesis are often ascribed to hereditary syphilis cannot be successfully disputed. This I have demonstrated so often in my practice that the truth is common-place. For example: The abortion habit is curable by correcting vicious dietetic habits and venereal excesses. Pemphigus, when located on the soles of the feet, is declared to be absolutely characteristic; but the truth is that such skin diseases are developed prenatally and after conception, and are due to perverted nutrition brought on the mother from the sensual indulgences too common in, if not characteristic of, pregnant women.
The average woman's nutrition is perverted before conception, because of the universal habit of overeating and overindulgence in licensed sensuality. Add to this state the sensual indulgences above referred to, and countenanced by good society and everybody's religion, and we have the ground-work for all the diseases to which the human offspring is heir. Modify this picture of perverted nutrition by poverty, squalor, and the corresponding psychology; then add the complicating influences exercised on these types by fear, hopelessness, dispair, and a disorganizing medication, as practiced by the representatives of modem medical science, and no imagination, it matters not how vivid, can picture a pathological inferno with more types of loathsomeness than evolves from the states here described--all, too, without anything more "specific" being added.
Where the above pathology is pushed to organic degeneration, sterility prevents its propagation; but there are enough functional diseases manifesting in the fetus, built by licentiousness in parents since conception, to satisfy the imaginings and perverted reasoning of our most pronounced types of syphilomaniacs.
Perhaps those who read my argument will say: "Why shall we accept one man's opinion against the opinion of the whole profession?" What can the whole profession know about a subject that it has not investigated? If the whole profession has, refused to watch the progress of perverted nutrition, as it develops under the sway of sensuality, and has not refrained from the use of medication, how is it to know what uncomplicated pathology is?
If the profession has refused to watch the progress of disease under fasting, or light dieting, and no medication, how is it to know what I know after years of such "watchful waiting?"
No man's opinion is worth anything on a subject about which he knows nothing, and to multiply such an opinion by a hundred, a thousand, or a million like opinions does not change the worthlessness of the first opinion. A fallacy multiplied by a hundred million minds does not make a truth. To force Galileo to abjure the Copernican theory ninety years after it had been published by Copernicus did not make the world flat.
Hereditary syphilis is a bugbear, the offspring of original sin, the fall of man, and like relics of the child-mind.
Hereditary syphilis is a disease made this side of conception, and is not transmissible. The child that is born with symptoms of disease is infected after conception.
It is a fact that we have the scrofulous diathesis, which means that the people coming under this head are more inclined to develop tubercular diseases, syphilis, and the thousand-and-one small diseases and symptoms that come under the head of scrofula, tuberculosis, and syphilis, than they are to develop symptoms of gouty diathesis.
It is worth while to try to comprehend that evolution had the preponderance of power, that the cosmic urge is on the side of development, and that there is a point beyond which degeneracy cannot go-and that point is conception. This is so true that no analytical mind can be in doubt when the great and profound truths of history are known and well digested.
Syphilis is a filth disease--a disease of clothes and sensuality. Man is slow in learning how to wear clothes--his morality transcends his estheticism. From a health point of view, a filthy man is much safer nude than clothed.
Syphilis is a disease reaching back far beyond the birth of the idea of specific treatment. Long before modem medical science, with its dogmatic, fatalistic teachings regarding "universal taint" and hereditary syphilis, King David confessed to his God: "There is no soundness in my flesh . . . no rest in my bones, because of my sin ... My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness . . . My loins are filled with a loathsome disease, and there is no soundness in my flesh . . . the light of mine eyes . . . is gone from me. My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore; and my kinsmen stand afar off."
This confession was by David for his people. The symptoms were those of syphilis. If the Jewish people were so diseased as to be shunned in that early day, before mercury, potash, "606," Wassermann tests, plays on the order of "Damaged Goods," and all the other insanities and inanities were discovered, what prevented the race from being wiped out? If circumcision was all the treatment, except fasting, it would be well for the wiseacres of the medical profession of today to tell us why the disease needs more attention today. Every other disease known to antiquity has grown lighter, if it has not become extinct, in the march of civilization.
The literature that has grown up on the subject of syphilis and its mystical habits is weird, and so eminently scientific that nothing can possibly evolve out of science to equal it, unless it would be a cure for the dreadful disease. But this is obviously impossible; hence the glorious achievement of the scientifico-syphilo-maniacs is likely to stand unparalleled in all medical history.
If I should undertake to refute all the freakish pathological phenomena attributed to syphilis, I should be occupied for the remainder of my days, and then leave the subject unfinished.
The following I give as a sample of myriads of analogies: "The microbe may remain inactive in some corner of the organism, and become active several years later, on the occasion of a traumatism or any other cause." This can be duplicated in those who are autotoxemic, and who are jotted out of "status quo" by an unusual shock.
We might tolerate the profession's syphilomania if it were not so pessimistic and fatalistic. But from years of experience we know that nature can throw off every disease that has not become organic; all that is necessary in the line of treatment is to remove every influence that is obstructive to the body's functioning. We know that the body is busy throwing out toxins, and if there is an accumulation--if elimination is not equal to accumulation--all that is necessary is rest (physiological rest), and nature quickly returns to the normal. There is no stimulation to elimination that equals physiological, physical, and mental rest.
That drugs will bring about elimination is true; but they bring a disappointing relief, for they excite to action and leave the organs more enervated. As a consequence, a relapse follows--or an apparent relapse; for, as a matter of fact, such relief is disease-building.
Hereditary tuberculosis and hereditary syphilis are analogous when found in a syphilitic or scrofulous diathesis--in a scrofulous subject coming from a father and mother of tubercular diathesis; but when one parent is scrofulous and the other gouty, the heredity is a modified scrofula or syphilis.
There is no hereditary tuberculosis. As stated before, diathesis means a tendency to develop given symptoms of diseases. Disease per se cannot cross the line drawn by sterility. To make an exact statement, diathesis means that health will deviate in a definite manner.
A child with the tuberculous diathesis well established may develop utero-tuberculous derangements.
Pronounced unmixed types of diathesis are hard to find. The tuberculous and gouty stand out more plainly and are recognized by the unskilled. A pronounced diathesis predetermines the type of diseases to which the subject is heir. The advantage of knowing to what class a child belongs, is that mistakes in climate, food, clothing, and occupation may not be made.
The tubercular diathesis should live out-of-doors, and be fed fruits and vegetables--very little animal food. The gouty diathesis develops gout, eczema, neuralgias, neurasthenia, etc. Animal food, with fruit and raw vegetables, should be the diet.
Both diatheses need grain during the developing period.
Arthritism, or gouty diathesis, presents the following characteristics: gout, eczema, nervous derangements, such as neuralgia, hemicrania, hypochondria, neurasthenia, gas, diabetes, gravel, stone in the liver, kidneys, and bladder. When the father has gout, the son has asthma, and the daughter develops arthritis deformans. A child of this diathesis has headache at puberty, and may develop asthma or rheumatism; at about middle life, gout develops, and he dies of apoplexy.
It is said that gifted people--geniuses--are of a gouty diathesis, and are very inclined to develop single faculties to their own destruction.
The scrofulous diathesis starts with catarrh; nose, throat, and ear diseases; tubercular joint and bone diseases; catarrhal inflammations of all mucous membranes; glandular diseases.
Congenital malformations are said to start from infections. No doubt the nervous systems of the mothers have much to do with fetal development.
Fetal development is a large and interesting subject, but not necessary to this book. The readers who are interested should go to their public libraries, where they will find textbooks on the subject.
Physiological heredity is the innate power of the cell to reproduce a successor.
Ribot declares it to be a biological law that enables living beings to repeat themselves in their offspring.
There are two laws, however: first, the law of conservation--retaining ancestral type; and, second, that of evolution.
Conservation is the greater. Indeed, when we see with what tenacity humanity clings to all beliefs and customs, we sometimes wish that nature would relax her vigilance. But when we see how necessary it is for great resistance to be present all the time to prevent disease--degeneration--from crossing the lines drawn by heredity or transmission, we are made to rejoice that degeneration cannot be transmitted.
There is a temptation to write on the subject of reproduction and other features of heredity, but space will not permit. Darwin, Ribot, Haeckel, Weissmann, and many others will furnish the reader material out of which he may formulate his own belief.
Definition.--A burning. Any local influence that disturbs cell nutrition may be said to lower its standard of life or health, and this state we call disease. The phenomena are hyperemia, pain, heat, swelling, redness, and disordered function--impaired nutrition.
When the influence is traumatic (a wound or injury), there are two reactions which follow--namely, local and general. The local reaction causes a change in the nutrition of the cells injured and in their neighbor-cells. The general or systemic reaction causes a general nutritive change in keeping with the severity of the local injury. An injury may be so small that the general reaction is nil; yet, if the reparative process is interfered with because of inhibition of elimination and drainage, the systemic reaction may be so great as to cause death.
The simplest wound is a cut. When left to nature, the wound gapes. The wise mind will interpret nature's speechless signs about as follows: Nature is always conservative, and if there were danger in a wound standing open, it would be natural for the mechanism to close it, the same as the blood vessels close to stop bleeding. The blood vessels contract and retract, causing the flow of blood to be very light; then, on account of the slight flow of blood, a clot forms in the mouth of the cut vessel, which seals it most effectually. Where the blood vessels are torn or twisted apart they do not bleed. In certain diseased states the blood will not clot, and bleeding continues. It may be objected that wounds to blood vessels do sometimes bleed the injured to death. Yes, that is true. Every conservative provision of nature can be, and sometimes is, overcome, but that does not alter the fact that nature places a special guard over each one of the body's vital functions, the normal action of each and every one being necessary to total full health of the body, and that each guard must be vanquished before the function over which it presides can be deranged or checked.
If microbes were dangerous to open wounds, they would not be in the atmosphere, in us and about us. If it were not for the reciprocal relationship existing between the microbes (organized ferment) and the enzymes (unorganized ferment), cell development could not take place, and tissue growth and reparation of injuries could not be brought about.
If the microbes could not get into a wound, either at the front or at the rear--either from the outside of the body through the medium of the atmosphere into the wound, or through the lungs into the blood, and, by virtue of the circulation of the blood, into the wound--healing could not take place. Organized ferments are as necessary to life as unorganized ferments. We know that cooked food, boiled water, and canned fruits are not so wholesome as foods not cooked. The false notion is sometimes advanced that uncooked vegetables are disease-producing. This is true only when the uncooked vegetables are diseased.
To kill the vitamin or enzymes in fruit, vegetables, or meat, by cooking, destroys the reciprocal balance between enzymes and microbes, resulting in decomposition. If, however, the cooked products are placed in vacuum, they will remain without change.
The Lister dressing places wounds in a state free from the access of germs; hence there is no danger from interfering with nature's plan of open drainage. But if the dressing is imperfect, allowing the germs to enter, and does not allow free drainage, the balance between germs and enzymes--between organized ferments and unorganized ferments--is lost, and the result is decomposition with infection, which ends repair, and sloughing of the parts takes place. If the sloughing establishes drainage, a reciprocity--a balancing of activities--between microbes and enzymes is once more established, and healing proceeds; but if sloughing does not take place and drainage fails to be established, organized ferments (microbes) gain the mastery over the unorganized ferments (enzymes), decomposition and disorganization of the blood take place, with the generation of sepsis which paralyzes the nerve centers, causing death in a very short time. If feeding is pushed "to keep up the strength and supply waste," the enzymes are used up, reparation of the wound--healing--does not take place, and the reparative material breaks down into pus.
The activity of the circulation in and about an injury takes place as one of the reactive phenomena following the shock of an injury, and causes swelling, pain, redness, and heat. This is a normal inflammation, necessary to reparation. To secure healing material, a surplus of blood must be taken to an injured part; and so much is taken that the environment of an injury is filled to overflowing-for nature is prodigal. This is the cause of the swelling, pain, redness, and heat; and the pressure on the nerves causes pain--the pain of inflammation. A surplus of blood means a surplus of heat; but so long as the chemistry of the elements is physiologically maintained, the temperature--inflammation--will not be above the normal visceral temperature, and the healing will then proceed normally. On the other hand, if the nutrition of the wound is perverted by having the waste retained, microbic fermentation takes place, which changes the chemistry, and decomposition supplants composition or healing. Normal inflammation, due to the fermentation caused by enzymes, is supplanted by abnormal inflammation, due to the fermentation caused by microbes. The first phenomenon is health as it appears when the reparative processes are working without a handicap; while the second is health as it appears when the reparative processes are working under a handicap.
Physiology and pathology are not opposing forces. They are two phases of life, and health is the thermometer. Health may register high, and it may register low; but the degrees between the extremes of full physiological health and full pathological death mark the standard of health.
Instead of the microbe per se being pathologic, it is physiologic and necessary to the life and health of the cell, or the great aggregation of cells known as man.
The great importance of drainage is obvious when the above facts are considered, and such facts should enable the analytical mind to know that organized ferments (microbes) have no more to do with inflammation than unorganized ferments (enzymes). The real cause is obstruction to the normal operations of repair. If microbes must be pent up in a wound before they can set up their peculiar fermentation, then the cause of the pent-up condition is the cause of the morbid process.
Irritation and overfeeding cause too much secretion, and too much secretion is disease-producing.
Enzymes are secreted by all the organs and tissues of the body. When they are secreted in less quantities than normal, disease results. It would not be the truth to say that enzymes are disease-producing; yet too little or too much will result in imperfect metabolism.
Food is stimulating and body-building, but when eaten in too great quantities it is disease-building. It would not be the truth, however, to declare that food is disease-producing. Unless microbes can produce a specific disease without unnatural environments to aid, it cannot be truthfully said that they are disease-producing; if they are, then every benign influence may be said to be disease-provoking, because disease follows its perversion. The air is irritating to a fresh wound, but the irritation must be for a good purpose. It is; it checks the discharge of serum, and dries the surface of the wound so that reparation can take place behind the protection. The dry covering acts as a stay or fixation expediency, to secure the quiet necessary for healing. If the sealing-in of the wound is too close, and danger of infection threatens, an itching takes place, which forces rubbing or scratching, and this breaks enough of the covering to allow the escape of pent-up pus and waste matter.
Thus we see that nature is not afraid of air, nor of the dust and microbes which it carries. We see that nature does a splendid job, and her theory and practice are sound as science. The only objection is that her work in healing wounds is severely crude at times, and that it may be improved upon--only, however, in manual dexterity. The surgeon may lend nature his hands, but nature certainly does not need his brains. A good combination is for nature to lend the doctor the wisdom to carry out what she would do if she had hands.
Not long ago I read the extraordinary advice of stitching a wound together without the preliminary of cleansing, and without any attention to drainage except massaging the edges of the wound. All I have to say about such a procedure is that the Lord is on the side of that surgeon, and permits him to exploit the laws of nature in a most grotesque fashion.
A safe plan for surgeons who are not "anointed of the Lord" is carefully to drain all wounds that are sewed up, and, if quick healing is desired, to keep the parts as quiet as possible; indeed, keep fingers away from the wound, and especially those of the patient. If these precautions are not observed, the surgeon may find, after it is too late, that he may say with Pope:
Pretty in amber to observe the forms
Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms.
The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare;
But wonder how the devil they all got there!
It is just possible that the great physician who penned the surgical heresy referred to was posing and, for the sake of being thought original, suffered his logic to run counter to natural law and order. And again we are made to agree with David: "Verily, every man at his best state is altogether vanity." Selah!
Hands, with nature's wisdom, will clear the wound. Place a drain in the bottom of it, in such a manner as to secure perfect drainage; then bring the wound together, closing the gap and coaptating the cut surfaces as nearly as possible; then apply a general dressing that will not interfere with drainage, but will lend support and steadiness, so that healing will not be interrupted by unnecessary motion. This is nature's wisdom turned to account.
Healing is interfered with by inflammation, or the causes that lead to inflammation.
We have seen that the first reactions stop bleeding, and cover the wound with serum and fibrin, which protect the surface by giving it rest from continuous irritation from air, dust, and insects.
If the cut surfaces are brought together, the healing must end much sooner than if a bridge of tissue must be built to span the gap.
The Wound and Natures Mechanism
Nutritive material is brought in abundance to a wound, caused by the irritation of the injury. Irritation, pain, redness, and swelling follow injury. At first, irritation causes contraction of blood vessels. This stops hemorrhage. As a result of the contraction--overstimulation--reaction sets in; the overstimulated blood vessels are enervated, and because of the enervation they relax and fill with blood; then exudation takes place. The cell-building elements cover the cut or mutilated surface, and crowd the border so much that there is a heavy discharge through the drain, if the wound has been properly dressed or has been left open. Where drainage is unobstructed, the healing behind the barrage of nutritive material thrown out moves along without a halt. The proportion of enzymes and nutritive material furnished by a healthy, not overfed, wounded individual insures rapid renewal of tissue. If obstruction takes place, microbic fermentation is set up in the pent-up surplus. This is a conservative process; for it thins the discharge, irritates the wound, and causes an extra amount of serum to be exuded. The purpose is to melt down any incrustations and new-made tissue that is obstructing drainage. When this fails, and the microbic fermentation gains the mastery over the enzymic fermentation that is protecting the healing surface, then the enemy--toxin or septic poison--pushes its way into the circulation, and septicemic fever and death follow very quickly.
Inflammation is almost nil when a wound is in a state of health; for it must not be forgotten that wounds, as well as all the phenomena we call disease, are different states of health. The strategic move for preserving the health of the wound, when it becomes obstructed, is little short of a miracle in appearance; yet it is the most natural workingout of cause and effect. We have seen that, unless the obstruction is overcome, the state of health will be lowered until it ends in death. In obstruction to wounds, nature destroys to make alive.
All nutritive changes which we call disease are due to influences which increase, decrease, or pervert cell-life; every symptom called disease is a conservative move; and, when not understood, or suppressed as doctors (not physicians) do, harm follows.
Inflammation is due to the local speeding-up of the nutritive processes caused by injury. The injury may be physical or chemical--a cut, tear, bruise, bum, blister, or a local irritant of any kind. When a wound is healing normally, the heat is about that of the normal viscera--namely, 99° to 100' F. When the temperature exceeds 100°, there is something going wrong--either the drainage is not perfect or the patient is eating too much.
The phenomena of inflammation are pain, heat, redness, and swelling.
Where the increase of heat is not more than one or two degrees above normal--above the temperature under the tongue--all is well with the wound.
The whole question of wound infection hinges on drainage. Any wound that drains well may be smeared with the most virulent septic poison without infection. The infecting agent must be rubbed into the wound so that it will be pushed into, or below, the granular surface. The infecting material must find a lodgment so secure that the flushing--enzymic--serums cannot dissolve and wash it away.
Injuries in canals, tubes, ducts, and air passages will heal normally if drainage is not obstructed; but, when obstructed, the usual conservative methods of nature may further obstruct, and death may result from a rational therapeutic measure mechanically obstructed in its execution.
It is painful to watch members of the medical profession floundering about in a vain endeavor to save a patient from death from septicemia by injecting into the veins or subcutaneously a solution of salt, or a hastily prepared serum, regardless of the fact that the source of the infection has not been discovered; or, if it has, no adequate effort is being put forth to overcome it. What must be the conclusion when such floundering is observed? Obviously, that either the medical gentlemen are acting, or they have not a very accurate knowledge of the principles involved.
If the case is one of septicemia, following abortion, an intra-uterine douche of an hour's duration (hot salt water) is the first thing to do; and it should be repeated every three hours, if the patient continues to live. The douche removes the infecting material, establishes drainage, relieves the nervous system, brings on relaxation, lowers the tension that is interfering with all the life-processes, and, neither last nor least, places the organism in the most favorable state for resumption of secretion and excretion. A hot bath of from thirty to forty minutes' duration will prove a great auxiliary to the douches. Certainly no food should be given; for the work of elimination and neutralizing the poison--antidoting the organized ferments by the unorganized ferments, the germs by the enzymes--must not be hindered by interrupting the enzymic activities of repair with an intake of food, which, under the circumstances, is wholly superfluous and disease-producing.
Why does an injury or a local irritant or irritation cause inflammation at one time and not at another?
It is all a question of natural immunization; and natural immunization has for its elements an alkaline state of the blood, a normal nerve energy, and an optimistic psychology.
The blood, if normal, is alkaline and well charged with enzymes.
When an injury is received, there is first a shock, which causes a constriction of blood vessels. In time there must come a reaction, and the reaction equals the shock--the dilation of the tissues (blood vessels) will be equal to the contraction from shock. This means congestion or crowding of the parts, and, as in the case of a congested thoroughfare, traffic or the function of trade is impaired--too much blood is in the parts, causing an exudation, There can be no rest or standing-still; the exudates must be excreted, thrown out, or reabsorbed. To fit these exudates for absorption, they must be treated with enzymes, in order to fit them to reenter the circulation. If there is enervation and a lack of enzymes, then it will be "up to" bacterial fermentation to prepare the exudate for expulsion from the body. If there is no break in continuity--if there is no open wound--then the bacterially treated exudate must be absorbed into the general circulation, causing infection; or the infection will be corralled by walling in the devitalized territory and lining the inclosure with an impervious pyrogenc membrane. The pus that forms is retained--not allowed to escape into the general circulation; for, if it should, it would cause pyemia. If the body's natural resistance is too low to fortify it in this way--if it cannot localize and immunize the infecting material--then general infection takes place and the victim dies of septicemia.
Anything-any influence that causes irritation--attracts an extra flow of blood to the point of irritation. The engorged blood vessels exude a fluid. This fluid must get out of the body. If it cannot, it must be digested and reenter the circulation; or it must be bacterially liquefied and carried out of the body through the open wound. If there is no point of escape, an abscess must form, as described above, or general systemic infection must take place.
If the point of irritation is the pleura, the exudate may accumulate, and, from lack of bacterial influence, the fluid is neither digested and absorbed, nor decomposed and converted into an abscess of the pleura, nor absorbed, creating septic fever and death; but remains a bland, innoxious fluid in the pleura.
The life of man, from his entrance to his exit in this world, is a process of metabolism. If this process is done well, he has health and well-being; if the process is carried out badly, he has impaired health.
Metabolism is carried on well or badly. When well done, we say that the individual is well--healthy; when badly done, then man is sick. Health and disease are states, not entities.
Inflammations of Mucous Membranes.--The simple forms of inflammation are those caused by the toxins generated by the influence of organized ferments on carbohydrate foods. When no more food is taken than can be utilized by the body--than can be fitted for assimilation by the unorganized ferments (enzymes)--the body in all its parts remains in a state of health called normal. Secretions and excretions are nearly enough balanced to insure health.
If, by mental or physical habits, nerve energy is lowered--if enervation is pronounced--secretion and excretion sink below the normal; this lowers enzymic production and increases the amount of waste products circulating in the fluids of the body. If the usual amount of food is eaten. digestion will not be perfectly carried out. A certain amount will be left over and above this amount that can be digested. This left-over material must undergo microbic fermentation.
If the organism is abused by overeating, overclothing, or living in too hot houses, or when the body is especially enervated, and is then exposed to low temperatures, or passing from hot houses, hot beds, to cold air--winter --temperature--irritation of the mucous membranes of all exposed canals results, until catarrhal inflammations become a constant state of the most exposed of these membranes.
Catarrhal inflammation of mucous membranes may be considered an index of the state of digestion and assimilation. The catarrhal sign means an oversupply of food--in some cases an oversupply of food and improper food. as well as improper combinations.
This catarrhal state is general and is the culture-medium for the development of all sorts of affections which we call disease.
For children to develop the affection known as diphtheria, all they need, in addition to their general catarrhal state, is a sudden change in clothes, weather, environment, and other influences, which brings on enervation; then add to these influences an unusual meal, or an unusual amount of meat, sugar, and rich cooking, such as served on holidays.
A child may be very enervated from whatever the cause, but it will not develop diphtheria unless it is poisoned by an oversupply of animal proteid.
Septicemia is poisoning from putrefaction. The poisoning may be slight and local, or it may be general and so intense that it overwhelms the patient, causing death in a few hours, and certainly in a few days.
A type of local as well as general septicemia may be furnished by puerperal subjects.
An injury at childbirth--a simple tear in the neck of the womb--may be bathed in a putrefactive lochia. The puerperal woman may not be kept clean--douches are neglected until the discharge is allowed to become septic. The torn part is submerged in this putrefaction, and enough is absorbed to set up a local inflammation and derange the blood so as to ruin the mother's milk for the infant, perhaps causing convulsions; or, if not so bad, then the milk may cause such a derangement of the stomach and bowels as to force weaning. In the mother's case, she may get off with a local ulceration, an endocervicitis, or an endometritis; or she may develop a phebitis (milk-leg), and systemic infection may follow, leaving the way clear for a general or organic diathesis to establish a predisposed disease--namely, tuberculosis in one or more of its many phases, kidney, heart, or nervous diseases, or gout in the various forms.
When the septic infection is great (as it is when the womb is misplaced and drainage imperfect), absorption to a fatal amount is no infrequent happening.
There is a cut-and-dried classification of toxernias which corresponds to a bacterial classification that is legionary. To minds which respond only to the mystical, intricate, complex, and infinitely imaginative, bacteriology, with its infinite variety of germs of diseases--its theory of bacteriemia and bacterio-toxemia--certainly must be satisfying to a superlative degree.
Bacteriemia.--Bacteriemia is where the bacteria invade the entire organism and develop septicemia, without causing the special lesions; or they locate in viscera or tissue, and cause purulent foci (pyemia).
Bacteriemia, then, is general infection. In bacterio-toxemia the bacteria remain localized and secrete toxins, causing intoxication. This is an ingenious explanation which, defined, is a distinction without a difference. Indeed, according to the same authorities, the blood will not tolerate bacteria; it kills them, or forces them to ensconce in the tissues of the body,
Pyemia is distinguished from septicemia by the germs locating in the tissues and becoming purulent foci. True pyemia is exclusively ensconced in the tissues, while in septicemia the microbe is present in all parts of the organism. 'These are bacteriological teachings.
The only theory that appears logical--consistent with the unity of scientific knowledge and philosophy--and works out satisfactorily in a clinical way, is that bacteria, or organized ferments, begin their work where enzymes, or unorganized ferments, leave off. When physiological fermentation leaves off, pathological fermentation begins. In nature's economy, one is as necessary as the other; for one process is organizing and the other is disorganizing: one is evolution, the other is dissolution.
The old demonistic idea of warring forces--of good and bad being locked in mortal combat--is worthy of the childmind, but certainly ill becomes enlightened interpretation.
Science is nature defined. It is possessed of rigid necessity and absolute universality. Philosophy is the unifying of all knowledge--all science--into a logical unit. Unless fragmentary knowledge can be unified into a consistent whole with all other knowledge, such knowledge is not truth. Philosophizing is trying out knowledge--it is testing and proving the truth of experience.
According to the logic of absolute science and philosophy, a unitary cause of disease must act under all circumstances, and it must continue to act so long as cause and the object on which it acts are occupying the same environment. If this cause acts only under special and favorable circumstances, then it is not a cause, but one of a series of causes, any one of which is as important as any other. To build a system of cause and cure on one causative factor, taken from a multiple of factors, is building a fool's paradise. And that is exactly what our so-called specific cause is in our bacteriological system.
Germs of fermentation take on specificity from the toxins--chemical medium--which they themselves cause to generate in a given compound of elements. Single elements are proof against fermentation; only compounds are susceptible to organized or unorganized ferments. Organized ferments dissolve organized compounds, and fit them for elimination; the toxin is a resultant of the action of the ferment on the compound. The toxin is potential in the compound, but not in the germ.
It is true that the withholding of food from a septic patient ends the septic fever. Fasting stops disease, because fuel for fermentation is withheld. Bacteria appear to be unable to cause fermentation when the organization is normal in energy and possessed of sufficient unorganized ferments to digest all the food taken into it.
In the light of these facts, the proper treatment for toxin poisoning--septic or pyemic poisoning, syphilitic or gonorrheal poisoning (the toxins representing the decomposition of several tissues in the body)--is to withhold food until nature has eliminated all toxins. Then feeding for the first week should be fresh, uncooked fruits and vegetables.
Septicemia--Infection always means that there is retention of a superfluous amount of reparative material. and confinement of this material in the womb, or in wounds, or in excretory canals or ducts, until putrefaction takes place. If the amount of infection is not overwhelming, and fatal, it may end in suppurative inflammation and formation of septic abscesses.
Milk fever, traumatic fever, putrefactive fermentation, syphilitic and gonorrheal infections, are different forms of septicemic inflammations. The distinguishing characteristics are furnished by the tissue involved, To make my meaning clear, think of the action of organized ferments (bacteria) on carbohydrates and fats. The result is to develop an acid which is more or less an intoxicant, but very unimportant compared with the toxins generated by the ferment on protein--meat--substances containing sulphur and nitrogen. It is probable, however, that excessive fermentation in the digestive tract of carbohydrates does impart a putrefactive change in the proteid tissues of the body and is the cause of offensive odors, hardening of tissues, inducing sclerosis and cancer.
Sclerosis.--Sclerosis means hardened tissue. Tissue in that state is very feebly vascular. It is white, firm. and resistant, grating under the knife. Keloid, which is an exaggerated development of scar tissue, is a form of sclerosis. Cirrhosis of the liver is a type of sclerosis, and atrophy of the liver is another form.
Organs that have been hardened from inflammation sometimes take on compensatory hypertrophy (enlargements). Then is presented normal tissue endeavoring to replace hard tissue, and this modifies the form of the organ.
Fistulas are the result of a hardening of the walls of an opening through which pus has been discharging. Instead of the walls on an abscess closing and healing, a hardening of the walls takes place, and the result is fistula.
When urethritis has continued for months, the walls of the canal harden at those points where the inflammation has continued. The result is hardening or stricture. Stricture of the urethra may form with no more to irritate the mucous membrane than unusually strong urine from meat eating.
When an irritation has continued for months or years, as in continuous acidity of the stomach, a chronic inflammation is produced, enlarging, and then hardening. If the offense to the tissue is continued, the end of the degenerative process will be cancer. Cancer is a form of spontaneous gangrene. When tissues have hardened to such an extent as to cut off the oxygen supply, there is nothing left but dry atrophy. If, however, there are islands of tissue throughout the mass of atrophying hypertrophy which still receive nourishment, life will continue until the hardening encroaches on the inlets of food to such an extent that nourishment is shut off. Then decomposition takes place, with the development of toxins; following which comes, slowly but surely, systemic infection.
An acidosis of a subtle form may develop a general hardening of tissues. If the circulatory system is most involved, death will come from atheromatous diseases--arteritis, endocarditis, apoplexy, paralysis, or arteriosclerosis. If the glandular system is most involved, then tuberculosis may follow. If serous tissue is most involved, perhaps cancer will be the ending of life.
The probabilities are that when syphilis, tuberculosis, gangrene, sclerosis, hypertrophy, atrophy, and all the various forms of infections and so-called contagions, are understood, they will prove to be different forms of one and the same thing; namely, sclerosis--or infection, inflammation, gangrene, death; and the various causes are all different forms of one and the same thing. Multi-specific causations, followed by multi-specific effects, as a basis on which to build a rational theory and practice of healing, are so out of keeping with the teachings of science and philosophy that it is a continuous surprise that such a system can receive the endorsement and support of as large a body of intelligent professional men as are found banded together under the banner of modem medical science.
'The whole phenomenon or complex of life, health, and disease may be summed up in three words; namely; digestion, nutrition, infection.
Reparation of Lesions.--When an injury has broken down and destroyed cell-life--when inflammation from any cause has broken down and destroyed cell-life--reparation cannot be perfect. The destroyed cells will be supplanted by sclerose tissue. This scar, or cicatrix, is more or less of a menace to the health and life of the tissue in which it is located, depending, of course, on the vital importance of the organ or tissue. If of the valves of the heart, the ending will be fatal without a rational treatment begun in time; if of the neck of the womb, a cancer may be the ending, if proper treatment is not instituted in time; if a gland of the breast be the injured part, then, without proper treatment, cancer will end all; if a stricture of the urethra, and neglected, bladder, and possibly kidney, disease may be the consequence; if a catarrhal thickening of the mucous membrance of the bile duct, and its obstruction is not relieved, stone in the gall bladder will result; if the hardening is of the spinal cord, ataxia and other forms of paralysis may result. The affections that result from hardening can only end with those limitations of tissues and organs of the body; and offenses to the tissues and organs of the body which may cause cicatrical tissue end only with the sum of everything in the environment of man capable of injuring his body and mind.
The lower the order of tissue life, the more power it has for regenerating. In a few animals it is possible to remove a portion of the liver, spleen, or kidney, and it will be rebuilt. It is said that the mutilated organs are reproduced according to their normal type. In spite of this fact, their lives are short compared with that of man, who has a very limited power of reproduction.
Intoxications of All Kinds.--Psychological intoxications--drunk on ideas, emotionalisms--and physical intoxications, such as alcoholic, tobacco, coffee, tea, acidosis from fermentation of carbohydrates, sugar, and fats, and toxin infections from the putrefaction of nitrogenous compounds--proteins; auto- intoxications caused by checked elimination from enervation brought on from overwork and worry; perverted nutrition, causing activities to start up in diatheses--all have an aging effect on the tissues of the body. Alcohol, when used in small quantities, has the effect of hardening the arteries, and when used in large quantities it produces fatty degeneration. When used in small quantities continually, the effect is to produce cirrhosis. Tobacco, coffee, and tea harden tissue. These drugs also produce arterial pressure.
A regular diet of bread, meat, preserves, cake, pie, puddings, coffee, and tea will bring on sclerosis by first creating toxemia.
Where Sclerosis Gets Its Origin.--Primarily a cell is produced under almost ideal conditions. It has been seen that health is a state that only approximates the ideal. Under the most favorable circumstances, a cell is approximately ideally developed. The state of nutrition that favors cell development means the normal balancing of energy, unorganized (enzymes) and organized (germs) ferments, and food (building material). If nerve energy runs low, enzymic power is weakened, cell-building drags, building material accumulates, obstruction takes place, and it is necessary for organized ferments to start an abnormal elimination. This means fermentation, irritation, inflammation, ulceration, sclerosis, cancer, and death.
The microbe acts as traffic police in keeping the avenues of the body cleared. This clearing-out process causes the death and disorganization of a few cells in the midst of the fray, This results in the formation of cicatrices; and here is where sclerosis originates.
This scarring process, this hardening of tissue, goes on rapidly in those who live in a way to keep cell development more or less retarded by overstimulation from toxins autogenerated or brought in from without. When a cell is destroyed, a cicatrix is formed. When cicatrices multiply because of a continuance of cause, the accumulation may be so great as to destroy the nutrition of important parts by cutting off the circulation.
Impaired nutrition of important organs is brought about in this way; nephritis, hepatitis, and inflammation of other organs is brought about in this way. It should be understood that an inflammatory process started in this way grinds out to its end very slowly. It may end in hypertrophy, atrophy, cancer. etc.
Arteriosclerosis.--This affection may be general, with special emphasis placed on one or more of the viscera.
Just which special organs will be most affected will depend upon which have borne the stress of wrong life. If the brain and spinal cord have been kept hyperemic from venereal excess, or overstimulation--overstimulated from toxins taken in or toxins autogenerated--then apoplexy or ataxia will follow.
The affection is the last state of the effects of morbid stimulation, either mental or physical, or both. This derangement of the arteries is quite natural, for toxins are circulated throughout the body. The walls, or coats, of the arteries are infected and forced into degeneration sooner than other parts of the body. The highly complex tissues of the body, such as the brain and spinal cord, take on sclerotic change sooner than others.
This affection may begin early in life, but it is seldom absent in the aged, and it is common in adults.
Arteriosclerosis is seldom equally distributed. The parts most affected are those most used. Those whose occupation requires head work will develop hard arteries of the brain. The degeneration in the brain will be that of softening; when of the extremities, it will be dry or senile gangrene.
Symptoms are first dizziness, dyspnea of an asthmatic order, somnolence after eating, and hemicrania. Asthma and headache are the first symptoms in many; and these symptoms point to kidney affection. In women there are sudden congestions and sensations of heat, which pass as symptoms of change of life.
On examination, the heart gives out a tympanic click along with the second sound, with intermittent systolic and diastolic murmur. (See Heart Symptoms.) The arteries are hard; the sphygmomanometer indicates an elevated pressure of about twenty centimeters.
In the second stage there are many local manifestations. Whichever viscus (organ) in any of the four great cavities of the body (for instance, the brain in the cranial; lungs or heart in the thoracic; liver, intestine, or kidneys in the abdominal; and uterus in the pelvic) is the victim of special stress, in arteriosclerosis it will appear to be the cause of discomfort and sickness. If the stomach is the most vulnerable organ, then the subject will be treated for indigestion, dyspepsia, ulceration, or possibly other so-called diseases; if the intestine or reproductive organs are the hyperemic centers, these will be vandalized surgically; if the lungs are the most vulnerable organ, that organ will be the cynosure of the professional eyes of those who are consulted; the same will be true of the breast and other organs.
These various diseases (?)--symptoms or affections, more correctly speaking--are transitory and intermittent, and are in evidence only when the sclerotic subject has been imprudent, and when, through overwork, worry, excessive eating, or sensual indulgence, excessive, functional activity has been brought on. The correct prescription is simply abstinence, followed by greater moderation. Sclerosis means aging, and all nature cries out for rest or moderation. Indeed, rest is the price of continuing in life, and death is the penalty for not resting.
Arteriosclerosis is not a disease that can be cured, but it can be held in check, and the subject made comfortable and quite efficient. It should not be forgotten, however, that the leading prescriptions are proscriptions. The object in treating such subjects is to encourage "status quo".
The organs of the body are sufficiently nourished when not pushed beyond the daily habits; but when speeded up, they do not receive enough blood to be supplied with the oxygen immediately necessary for a quick extra demand or nourishment required for the increased demand. Exercise makes a demand for more nourishment, and hardened tissues work slowly at best; hence great care must be taken not to overwork a sclerosed subject with hardened arteries.
Sudden speeding-up of the digestive organs, and of the heart and arteries, causes spasmodic breathing, clouding of the brain, and inhibits the kidneys, causing transitory uremia, evidenced by heavy drowsiness at inopportune moments when it is embarrasing to appear sleepy. After dinner the sclerosed subject will get heavy and sleepy, in spite of his endeavors to stay awake.
Arteriosclerosis manifests itself early in those of gouty diathesis. It must be understood, however, that toxin poisoning is necessary. Children and young people, as well as adults, must have the overeating habit; they must be in the habit of eating beyond their enzymic capacity. This, of course, necessitates bacterial fermentation of all superfluous nutritive material, and the generation of toxins. When this becomes an established habit, the blood becomes charged with toxins, and necessarily the intima (the internal coat of the arteries) and the endocardium (lining membrane of the heart) must become diseased.
Arteriosclerosis in the first stage presents, as one of the first symptoms, dizziness; dyspnea of an asthmatic character, somnolence after meals, and hemicrania (migraine--pain in one side of the head) are others. The observing physician, in examining all asthmas and hemicranias, will be on the lookout with a view of ascertaining if there is arteriosclerosis as the probable cause. If of a sclerotic origin, there may be a kidney change. In women there may be hot flashes--sudden congestions and heat-flashes--attributed to change of life, when sclerosis is the real cause.
To prove that the above symptoms are due to sclerosis, the heart must give out a tympanitic click at its second sound, and not always murmurs both systolic and diastolic.
The second stage presents organic disturbances, which come and go in keeping with excessive functioning.
The limping and stiffness accompanying this stage of sclerosis are called rheumatism--rheumatic stiffness. Inactivity is followed by claudication, (limping), stiffness, and more or less tenderness, which pass off shortly. Asystole (feebleness of the heart with dilation) presents itself intermittently; so do cerebral clouding and uremia.
The third stage is characterized by the localizing or organizing change. The heart may be the vulnerable organ, and the diagnosis may be sclerotic myocarditis. The heart becomes weaker and weaker, marked by asystole (shortened and weaker systolic contractions), which means that there are dilation and feebleness.
The arterial type is characterized by vascular dilation, with formation of aneurisms, and embolism is imminent.
The cerebral type is marked by unilateral headache, dizziness, etc. This type is liable to terminate in softening, or hemorrhage in the cerebrum, or the meninges. This ending is called cerebral apoplexy.
The renal type of arteriosclerosis is marked by nephritis, with polyuria, slight albuminuria, palpitation of the heart, tension of arteries, and galloping murmurs, Death occurs from uremia, uremic convulsions, gradual weakening of the heart, and sometimes from apoplexy of the lungs.
Treatment.--Why should drugs be given? Can drugs add to life, or stop a habit that lowers the health standard? The habits of life that are using up nerve energy must be reformed. Those who are predisposed by diathetic heredity to develop the disease early should get away from family habits, both mental and physical, as soon as possible. Why should not a son or daughter develop affections like those of father and mother, when living in the same environment and practicing the same daily habits?
12. Tumors--Definition of*
(*To my lay readers: Do not fail to read this subject,
even if it contains a few technical terms.)
Tumors are divided into benign (innocent) and malignant (dangerous to life).
Benign tumors may be considered as hyperplasias of any of the organs of the body. Hyperplasia means the overmolding of organs--hypertrophy--overnourishment; or, to speak in every-day parlance, an enlarged organ. A type of benign tumor, or hyperplastic development, is seen in what is called a keloid tumor. This tumor develops in scar tissue.
Histology.--Tissue science--the study of the structure of tissue.
Tissue.--The elements of a part of organ; for example, skin tissue, muscle tissue, glandular tissue, etc.
The keloid is described as an exuberant fibrous production, caused by the hyperplasia brought about by inflammation. Such growths are more inclined to develop in those who eat heartily and of gross or greasy foods, and who do not exercise enough to stimulate the required elimination.
Histology tells us that simple or benign tumors are made up of tissues having normal arrangement as to structure, or which are sufficiently normal to resemble somewhat the tissues from which they are developed.
Adenoma (a tumor of a gland) is found to have glandular structure. The cells proliferate (bear offspring--generate) and fill the alveoli (the cells of a gland; these cells may be likened to a bunch of grapes). They remain inclosed by the limiting membrane of the gland in which they develop, and show no tendency to invade surrounding tissue. This means that, no matter how large the tumor gets, it is always encompassed within the gland-covering.
Malignant Tumors have a different arrangement of structure; indeed, they are chaos itself--King Disorder reigns supreme. The cells, which vary in form and size, are inclosed in membranes--alveoli (the skin of the grapes--the covering of each gland-cell) of independent growth. These growths break through the retaining membranes (skin of the grapes) and invade any and all environmental (surrounding) tissue. As "war is hell" turned loose in social fife, or in civilized life, so is the histological insanity known as cancer. Indeed, cancer has not even the order or system of so-called civilized warfare. It is more on the order of guerrilla warfare, or a war of extermination.
Embryological Tumors.--A class of tumors due to defective development. They may be divided into those that start before birth and those that develop after birth.
Teratology is a branch of biology that treats of malformations. In the study of embryological tumors there is described the phenomenon of two spermatozoa penetrating into one ovule, which gives birth to two beings when development is normal; but when, from some cause, one remains rudimentary (fails to develop), it may become inclosed in its well-developed fellow and in future evolve into a tumor. This anatomical and physiological perversion has been offered as an explanation of all neoplasms--new-growths or tumors.
Is it strange that, in an organism so infinitely complex, and subjected to such an infinite number of unfavorable influences, as the human body, there should be many blasted cells, or defects in glandular development, in the course of physical development? Certainly not. Then, when health is impaired-nutrition perverted-it is not !strange that these defects should take on independent growth and become tumors, or abnormal growths.
It is also reasonable to believe that, so long as the organism remains in a state approaching the normal, it can dominate any tendency which these blasted cells (be they congenital or caused by postnatal injury) have for taking on their pathological trend. But when enervation is lowered and elimination imperfect, causing chronic intoxication, these defective developments, or crippled tissues, find in this perversion the encouragement to grow--to take on pathological activity--for, being defective, if they develop at all, it must be in keeping with their histological bias.
This blasting of cell- or gland-life, when it occurs in the skin or ordinary tissues of the body, usually ends in the development of benign tumors; but when it takes place in the higher type of glandular structure, and then meets with the necessary pathological nourishment--namely, chronic autotoxemic poisoning--it may start a state of anarchy--malignant disease.
This is perhaps more true of the lymphatic system. The reason for this is that the best and worst nourishment is found in the lymphatic glands of the body.
The lymphatic glands may be likened to quarantine stations--places where all suspicious characters--infections--are held up until they can be dismissed with a clean bill-of-health. The lymphatic glands in the groin arrest the infection of venereal disease that threatens to invade the organism, and hold it long enough to immunize it. When the amount of infection is great, and the immunizing power of the glands is inadequate, suppuration takes place, the infection being thrown out of the body by way of a heavy pus discharge. In this phenomenon, life-preservation is a grand struggle against mortality. Years after glands have been altered in their structure from suppurative inflammation, degenerative activity may spring up, and malignant disease (cancer) may develop and run rapidly to a fatal termination.
The lymphatic glands in the lungs arrest toxin infection that has been absorbed in the bowels. When their power to antidote the infection is not equal to the task put upon them, inflammation and suppuration take place, with systemic poisoning. This disease is called tuberculosis. The bacillus tuberculosis is a scavenger germ, and not the infecting agent. The infecting agent is a toxin developed in the bowels.
If the bacilli tuberculosis are like all other scavenger germs, they depend upon toxins for their specificity, and the infecting agent comes in by way of bowel absorption.
When resistance is low--when enervation is pronounced--the resulting autotoxemia so weakens the immunizing power of the glandular system that blasted or defective cells, from any cause, may be encouraged to take on pathological development; which means benign tumor, or malignant tumor--cancer.
Where there are no blasted or defective anatomico-physiological structures, the organs with the most defective functioning will bear the brunt of the incoming infections, and the following diseases may develop; tuberculosis of any part of the body, glandars, syphilis, scrofula, scurvy, etc.
Cancer must jump the bounds of glandular limitation before life is overwhelmed by its cachexia (blood-poisoning).
Cancer.--So long as the cancerous process is going on within the limiting membrane of the gland, its growth is restricted; but after it breaks this membrane, its growth is unrestrained, and the pathological metabolism taking place in the growth quickly sets up the cancerous cachexia. The reason why the removing of a cancerous growth or disease fails to cure, is because the cancer has potentized the surrounding tissue with its toxin.
The conservative power of the body limits the infection as long as possible to the lymphatic glands. Why? Because the glands have more immunizing power than ordinary tissue. The spread of all infecting diseases is along lymphatic chains; but after lymphatic restraint is lost--broken--all the fluids of the body become infected, and life is destroyed very quickly.
That is the manner of poisoning by cancer, which is a form of sepsis. The difference between traumatic septicemia, puerperal septicemia, and the septicemia of cancer, is the slowness of the infection from cancer. However, if the cancerous tissue is torn or cut, freeing its infection from the limiting membrane, cachexia, or septicemia, will develop rapidly. If the wound into the cancerous tissue is open and drains well, absorption will be very limited; but if located away from the eye, where drainage and cleanliness must be an unknown quantity and quality, cachexia (septic poisoning) will spread rapidly. Indeed, patients will die from septicemia as quickly when developed from cancerous tissue as when developed from injured normal tissue.
Cancerous tissue will not unite--once severed, always severed. Torn, bruised, or severed cancerous tissue does not drain well, but tends to break down very rapidly. Bruised and torn cancerous tissue differs from healthy tissue in that the malignant tissue does not contract and retract, forcing waste fluids out of the bruised and torn channels to drain, but the fluids remain, flooding the parts, forcing rapid decomposition and absorption, and causing acute cachexia (septicemia) and death.
The reason why cancer cannot be cured is obvious. If all infected glands could be extirpated before the limiting membrane of any of them has been broken, and the growth has passed out and become mingled with the surrounding tissue, largely devoid of immunizing power, the disease could be cured; but this possibility is almost nil, for large lymphatic glands are surrounded by many small ones, and, while removing the large ones is an easy matter, small ones are overlooked and left to continue the work of the larger ones that have been removed.
The worst feature of the operation is that some of the infected glands are injured. This allows the cancer to spread in non-glandular tissue without resistance, which quickly involves the fluids of the entire body.
This is why people often do not live so long when operated upon for cancer as when left without an operation.
Where do cancerous diseases get the infection that initiates their evolution? From putrefaction taking place in the large intestine. The infecting material is absorbed; and if the cause (decomposition in the bowels) is only temporary, and not of frequent occurrence, no permanent harm will result. But if imprudent eating is continued until the latency of a pathological process in gland structure is rendered dynamic, then a morbific process is set up that is called malignant or cancerous.
If the disease could be detected early enough, and removed, a cure would follow. But often the disease is not suspected until fatally developed.
Before malignancy can develop in any part of the body, it is necessary for it to be potentized by exogenous or autogenerated infection. And since infection must be septic in character, but absorbed so slowly as to bring on cachexia, the cancer must begin to break down before the fluids of the body become infected by the poison.
Before a morbid process can evolve, resistance must be broken down. What is the nature of the resistance that is lost before cachexia is developed? The immunizing power--the power on the part of the body to generate its own immunizing agents.
Immunizing power has but little to do with physical force or strength. A very weak man physically may have the power to protect himself from the disintegrating influences of his environment, while a very strong man may not.
Histogenetic Tumors ("histo," web or tissue; "genetic" (from "genesis"), generation).--In biology, the process or function of cells and cell-products.
This class of tumors are not supposed to be of embryonic origin, but develop from connective, muscular, nervous, or epithelial tissue.
The sarcoma, which grows very rapidly and becomes very large, is considered as standing between a malignant and a benign tumor.
Myxoma belongs to the mucous tissue. Fibroma belongs to the fibrous tissue. Lipoma belongs to adipose tissue. Condroma develops from cartilage. Osteoma grows from bone.
Vascular, lymphatic, angiomatous, endotheliomatous, and lymphaornatous tumors are produced from serous membranes derived from the lymphatic system.
Muscular tissue gives origin to two species of tumors--namely, leiomyomata a n d rhabdomyomata--which correspond to the non-striped and the striped muscle fiber.
Adenoma.--A benign tumor that has its origin in canals, ducts, and follicles of glands which have become stopped up, causing a cyst (sac) to form that is filled with a perverted secretion. Sometimes the lining membranes of these little cavities take on an excessive growth and end in what are called simple tumors. Such tumors do no harm, except for their unsightliness, when developed on exposed parts of the body, or from size. The tissues of these tumors always resemble those of the structure from which they are built. They have no tendency to break through their retaining membrane, which, of course, was originally the lining membrane of the passage that became plugged up.
This is not true of epithelioma (a true cancer). This disease respects no restrictions; it breaks through and invades any tissue, spreads in all directions, and leaves destruction behind it.
When Does a Cancer Become a Cancer?--That simple adenomatous tumors, and epitheliomatous degeneration, are related much as cause and effect, there appears to be convincing proof. In other words, cancer at the start is not always cancer. The question, then, is: When does it become cancer?
In the stomach there is first irritation from acid, due to overeating. If the overeating is persisted in, the acidity continues to irritate, until subacute inflammation is established. If the causes are not removed, the next stage is ulceration; then, further, degeneration into malignancy.
What can be the difference between last year's ulceration and this year's cancer?
That "cancer" is not always cancer, every experienced physician must have acknowledged to himself, if not to others. The question to be settled, then, is: What is the cause of the transformation?
I have thought that in ulceration the blood-vessels and lymphatics are sealed by adhesive inflammation before the sloughing or necrosis of their involved portions takes place, leaving them intact to perform their function of supplying reparative material; whereas in cancer the ulceration involves the bloood-vessels and glands so far distant from the surface of the ulceration that oxygen and nourishment are cut off and putrefaction is established, following which systemic infection (cancer cachexia) is established, which in time inhibits all physiological processes.
The cause of rapid fatality in some cases is the slight resistance given by some tissue to the spread of the disease, while in others it is the extension of the disease into parts where drainage is cut off, forcing absorption and the rapid development of cachexia--blood-poisoning.
Another thought may be considered; namely, the state of the patient may be that of premature aging, and the blood vessels and tissues are sclerotic-hardened to such an extent that they offer no resistance to an ulcerative process. Under such conditions, the system can hardly be expected to generate anti-bodies for self-protection.
No doubt there are many factors in the process of evolving cancer. Those who would sidestep the trouble of thinking may say that germs cause the disease; but to the discerning, germs are a poor excuse for accounting for any disease.
In the building of all morbid processes, the chemic changes that take place in tumor-building must be known before the cause can be understood.
Cancer, tuberculosis, and other diseases appear to run in families. So do certain habits. Domestic peculiarities are confined to family strains. The relationship of given types of disease to strains or family peculiarities should be given attention until understood.
A peculiar style of eating, cooking, mixing, clothing, bathing, and thinking will be followed by a peculiar style of disease.
Like causes produce like effects--only, however, when everything is equal. When every phase of cause is known, the effect may be modified by changing the object on which the cause operates. For example: The sun, moon, and stars, or the astronomical bodies in general, we assume, are always the same; which, so far as the comfort and life of man are concerned, is not true. The subject on which these influences are spent--man, for instance--can be changed so that the fixed influences do not act the same; hence the effect cannot be the same. The sun does not act on the drunkard the same as on a sober man. The gluttonous and the temperate are acted upon differently by extraneous influences. Those of limited reasoning power consult the stars regarding their coffee-drinking, what clothing they should wear, and how to invest; when to bull and bear the market, and about their health; also when and whom to marry; in fact, regarding daily, monthly, and yearly affairs. There is no material difference, as far as ultimate results are concerned, whether sun, gods, planets, or devil be consulted--whether the Bible, the Koran, astrology, or other deific sciences be studied for the purpose of determining what is foreordained for man, domestically and socially.
All of which is as unscientific as to start children in the kindergarten in the study of mathematics.
If man ever finds God, he will begin the study with man; and if he ever finds man, he will begin the study with cell-life. If man ever finds the cause of his health and disease, he will find it by understanding the laws of his being; and if he is ever saved, he will save himself by obeying those laws. Yes, obeying every one--the most insignificant,
Man did not find the stars until he found the telescope; and he did not understand the, composition of stars until he discovered the spectrum.
There is but one door open to knowledge, and that is the ABC; and not the ABC of one department, but the ABC's of all departments. 'The ABC of God-knowledge is the laws of life. Unfortunately the study of God was begun with God; and, from the very nature of the subject, had to start with a hypothesis--a hypothetical God. As a consequence, no two people have the same God. A hypothesis must always be in keeping with the mental development of the individual.
Starting with a hypothetical Deity, it is not strange that many attributes, and even essential principles, have been left out. Those that concern us more than any other are natural laws--laws that minister to man's physical well-being. That these are left out of all theologies goes without saying, when we see theologians everywhere breaking the laws of health and life as ruthlessly as though they belonged to the devil. Ministers--moral teachers--know no more of nature than their parishioners; and they are not ashamed of their ignorance. Yet nature is God's expression; and if we know nothing of God's expression, how can we say that we love something we know nothing about?
All this infidelity and atheism of our deistical students would not be, if the study of God would begin at the ABC of the subject, instead of starting with the graduation exercises.
In regard to diseases, modem medical science, often starts at the finish--to diagnose them. In order to find out all about the disease that killed the patient, a post-mortem is held, and the morbid findings are given out as diagnosis. A cancer is found; a fibroid tumor is found; an abscess is found; but the causes that produced these diseases have passed. The laws which were broken still exist, however; and, when broken again in the same way, like diseases will result, no matter whether or not the interpretation of the stars or the deities agrees.
It is of far greater importance to know the chemical needs of the brain than to know the ethical laws of society.
It is more needful to know the mechanical and chemical laws governing the growth of a fibroid tumor than to know the most scientific surgical technique necessary for their successful removal; because removing the tumor is nothing more than removing a symptom, which is very often quite remote from the cause.
Fibroid Tumor-Cause of
The erstwhile opinion of medical men was that back of the exciting cause of a tumor was that of inclusion during embryonic life: non-employed cells are enveloped in active cell-development; then in after-life they take on activity. That this was professional guesswork is evident, now that the latest guess is that tumors are caused by germs.
There are authors of standing who do not agree with the germ theory of tumor-development.
Every little while a laboratory scientist jumps into print with the announcement that the cancer germ has been developed in fish or mice by inoculation; and he enjoys an hour's fame, after which his little bubble of discovery reverts to oblivion.
No tumor can develop without obstruction to the circulation--without a local influence that disturbs nutrition and elimination.
It is safe to start with the hypothesis that, if full health is enjoyed, there can be no tumor-development.
The first thing necessary for the development of any form of disease is enervation, which always inhibits elimination; following which autotoxemia develops.
Fibroid Tumors of the Womb are developed about as follows: A young woman develops intestinal indigestion from imprudent eating. The catching-cold habit, with catarrh of the mucous membranes, follows. Soon there is developed intestinal putrefaction, which, being absorbed, causes infection. The pelvic lymphatics become involved. As there is more or less congestion of the mucous membrane lining the uterus and its neck, this condition is made more pronounced each month because of menstruation and the toxins being absorbed in the bowels, The uterine engorgement causes, longer and more profuse menstruation; painful menstruation begins, growing more pronounced month by month. Pain forces the calling of a physician, who on examination finds a flexed womb. The flexion is caused by a thickening of one side of the womb, which forces a flexion to the opposite side. The more thickening, the more obstruction to the circulation and the more bent is the neck of the womb; and the more bent is the neck, the more the canal is obstructed to the menstrual flow.
As the womb is flexed more and more, the circulation is more and more interfered with. The flexed side fails to receive the proper amount of nourishment, and the thickened side receives all that the uterine artery and other vessels can bring; but the return vessels fail to carry back the full amount, and, as a result, hypertrophy takes place--the parts are overnourished. Nature undertakes to organize the surplus; and she does--and we call it fibroid tumor. These growths grow rapidly or slowly, according to the amount of obstruction.
A growth may fill the pelvis and abdomen in five years; and again in some other women it may require twenty years to develop a tumor the size of an orange.
Injuries at childbirth often become the first cause of tumor, next to putrefactive infection from intestinal indigestion.
Another cause: A catarrhal inflammation locates at an old placental site, as a result of toxemia. Thickening and induration follow, impeding the efferent circulation. The more growth, the more pressure and obstruction, until the new-growth--fibroid tumor--is large enough to become a cause of its own growth, by impeding the circulation through its weight and pressure.
This work of overgrowth is pushed along rapidly by overeating, which means overnourishing; the surplus being organized into tumor.
Overeating and improper eating often cause gas distention of the bowels. The pressure from gas crowds and misplaces the womb. From such misplacements enough obstruction to uterine circulation may take place to cause hypertrophic enlargement, which is fibroid enlargement.
Constipation may cause enough pressure on the womb to start imperfect circulation, and later fibroid growth.
Wherever there is impeded circulation, new-growth must take place; and that means tumor. The kind of tumor will depend on the character of the tissues involved.
Add to these causes sclerosis, and malignant diseases may follow. That is, the benign tumors may become malignant.
Can they be cured?
Treatment.--Remove the cause, which can be done when understood. The circulation must be restored by removing the cause of the obstruction. Very few tumors require removal by the knife; for, if the cause is removed, the tumor will gradually disappear.
13. Synergies
Synergy means the unity of the organism under favorable or unfavorable influences.
In social life, an injury to one man is an injury to all; and so it is with the organs of the body--if one is injured, all are injured. Any influence that modifies function or structure of one part of the body influences the entire structure.
Family habits may be of such a character as to throw More stress on one organ than on another. The sequel is the development of an organic diathesis. (See subject of "Diatheses.") When this is true, the hundred-per-cent organs in the organism lend their influence in various ways to do vicarious work for the weak organ.
When the organism is enervated from the thousand-and-one influences incident to life, and intoxication has brought on such a state of the metabolism that the organism is overwhelmed by waste--excretory--products, it is then that inherited diathesis takes on activity. If the diathesis is tubercular, gouty, neurotic, or of any of the special organs of the body, it is in keeping with the laws of health and life for the affection peculiar to the diathesis to spring up. If the causes are not removed, the affection will remain functional for a time; then organic change will take place. It is then that affections become diseases; it is then that an irritation and an inflammation from indigestion become ulceration of the bowels or stomach, and the ulcer perforates, and death ensues from peritonitis caused by the perforation. The peritonitis was caused by perforation; perforation was caused by ulceration; ulceration was caused by inflammation; inflammation (catarrh) was caused by irritation; irritation was caused by indigestion; indigestion was caused by fermentation; fermentation was caused by enervation; and enervation was caused by the thousand-and-one influences which build or destroy the body and mind of men, depending upon whether they are wisely or unwisely applied.
When one organ gives down--when the blood is deprived of the proper amount of building salts--the whole organism is deprived of the necessary building salts. When imprudent eating--sugar-eating, cake-eating, rich-meat and gravy-eating--has been practiced so long that enzymic fermentation is not equal to the task of physiologically digesting the intake, then it is that organic ferments--bacteria, microbes--set up pathologic fermentation, which is slightly toxic when developed in the carbohydrates and fats, but putrefactive and decidely toxic in the animal products. The organized ferments cause a souring of fruits, vegetables, and starches; the acid builds irritations and catarrhal inflammations of mucous membranes; and in this way the stomach may become the exciting cause of organic depression and catarrhal affections of all the organs of the body.
It is very hard for average physicians to get away from the idea that each organ acts in an isonomic manner--that organs break away from the union of organs and develop a disease without the consent of the general government. This is not only false, but it is absurd. When from inherited weakness, or from injury, a part--an organ or a tissue--is below the general standard, it becomes the seat or center of affection when the general standard of health is lowered. When enervation is brought about, and, because of the enervation, metabolism is impaired, elimination becomes imperfect, and, to autotoxemia, toxins from imperfect digestion are added. The system, under these circumstances, becomes so toxemic that the inherited weaknesses, either organic or systemic, take on disease. The disease, however, is an affection; for the cause lies back in bloodmaking and nutrition.
In the tuberculous diathesis the lungs or other vulnerable organs of the body give down with tuberculosis when the general health is impaired and resistance broken. The gouty diathesis favors the development of any type of gouty disease that is in keeping with the vulnerability of organs and tissue of the body. The disease may be articular. If so, joint rheumatism will be the type of the disease. It may be the arteries, in which case arteritis with hardening will occur. The kidneys or liver may be the weakest points; then urinary calculus or gallstones will form.
There is a unity of sympathies and a unity of action. The nerves, the muscles, the motor cells, the blood vessels, and the organs generally are in reality a unit. The muscles and the cells cannot function without the nerves, and if the nerves be enervated from overwork or poison, they fail to function properly. Then the muscles become weak, waste is retained, the cells fail to renew, and degeneration takes place.
To overcome any disease, restoration of nerve energy is of first consideration.
A giving-down of some of the bony structure from injury or from disease, may cause more or less distortion of the entire anatomy. The distortion requires an anatomical readjustment-an endeavor to change the mechanism to meet the new requirements. In the changes that take place, important organs--such as the heart, lungs, etc.--may be forced to take on disease because of the interference with their normal functioning.
The body is at work readjusting every minute. The forces of health and life are at work in the line of readjusting and idealizing all the time. Nature--physiological energies--is all expended in healing--repairing and building. Man needs no doctor, so far as healing is concerned; he needs instruction in knowing how to avoid abusing his body, and how to live to conserve his energies.
If a bone is misplaced, it must be righted. If an artery is cut, it must be tied. Nature heals the bone when broken, if it is kept quiet long enough. If a large artery is tied, nature dilates and enlarges collateral arteries, so that the parts temporarily ill nourished will soon receive a full supply of nourishment.
All malformations are met with readjustments to give collateral aid.
Extirpation of the ovaries produces atrophy of the uterus and often of the mammae.
When the eating habits are such as to crowd and disturb the liver function--impair its function of preparing urea and sugar for further use in the economy--we see kidney affections springing up as a consequence. The cure must get back to the cause--namely, remove nerve leaks and correct imprudent eating. If the remedy is neglected until the liver, kidneys, or pancreas take on organic change, then a cure is often impossible.
The muscular system and the liver are allies. Exercise uses up energy (sugar), which the liver furnishes. If the muscular system is not worked, the liver becomes engorged with glucose, or the glucose is sent to the circulation to be excreted by the kidneys.
Exercise is necessary where there is too great a supply of carbohydrate foods. Either the intake of starch and sugar must be limited, or work must equal the eating.
An organ, when enlarged, may, by pressure, affect other organs. An enlarged liver may impair the stomach and other organs. A dilated stomach, or gas-distended bowels, may create affections of the heart, lungs, or pelvic organs from pressure. Indeed, intra-abdominal pressure may be the cause of heart palpitation, asthma, hay fever, bladder and urethral irritation, falling of the womb, and displacements of other organs.
Because of compression from fat or gas distention, the excretory ducts, such as the bile-duct, are partially obstructed, In gouty subjects the formation of biliary calculi is liable to, follow; in tubercular subjects, tubercular inflammations, etc.
Where compression of a nerve is continuous, neuralgia, spasms, paralysis, and nutritive changes take place.
The part of the body most affected by nerve compression is the head and spine--the face rather than the head. The cerebro-spinal nerves pass out through various passages and foramina (small openings in bone). These openings are liable to have their caliber narrowed from a thickening of the walls from injury and consequent deposit of reparative material. So many are the ailments due to this cause that whole systems of healing have grown up, exploiting this etiological factor into a marvelous universal cause of all diseases.
The tendency for man to allow large sections of his body to lie fallow is the cause of much nerve compression, and consequent pain and sympathetic disturbances. When men stop their boyish exercises and settle into a routine business, only those parts of their bodies are exercised that are used in their business; the rest become fallow. A neglected part in time takes on deposits, and naturally grooves, foramina, and narrow openings between bones will become the repositories of deposits. This brings on compressions, with consequent impingement on the blood vessels and nerves. To secure relief, the patient must exercise the parts, or employ someone to massage; or, what is better, call a physician of one of the bone manipulating schools, who will relieve the nerve pressure. The members of these schools are wonderfully adept in bringing quick relief. But unless the patient--the one relieved--is taught the necessity of right living--taught the necessity of exercise, and how to eat to secure proper elimination--someone will have to be employed all the time to manipulate the unused parts of the body so as to keep down deposits and keep the body comfortable. It is not necessary for people to become athletes in order to avoid taking on these deposits. Athletes have their troubles-namely, over-development, which is not conducive to the best health and long life.
Compression of the pneurnogastric nerve may start up a pneumonia. Certainly there is much stomach derangement due to this cause. From such compression, stomach irritation, inflammation, ulceration, and cancer may follow. Cancer may result from compression on a small artery, causing the territory supplied by it to become ischemic (local anemia). From the same cause, neurosis or gangrene may result. It should not be lost sight of that wrong eating-haphazard eating-bringing on toxemia, has much to do with the manner of degeneration.
Compression on an excretory duct causes a backing-up of excretions; and, if it is of long duration, the blood win not be drained of that particular excretion. Other organs may do vicarious work. When compression is removed, the injured organ may have developed a sick habit and may never get back to the normal. This is daily observed by busy physicians in affections of the liver, kidneys, and pancreas.
When tissues such as the neck or body of the womb, or the pylorus of the stomach, etc., suffer from irritation and hyperplasia, cutting off a normal supply of blood, the effect is to cause an ischemia (anemia) of a small territory of tissues supplied by the arteries compressed. If the ischemia is pronounced, the result may be necrosis or gangrene. If the compression is of such a character as to affect only the venous circulation--the return blood to the lungs--the parts become hypertrophied, the tissues harden, the carbon and oxygen gases fail to exchange. Irritation, inflammation, ulceration, and cancer are different phases of the degeneration that will follow. The chronic state of the tissues from venous stasis is sclerosis. Fibroid tumor of the uterus is a type. It is obvious to the reflective mind that if this change of tissue can take place in the musculature of the womb, stomach, and other organs, when the circulation is interfered with, the same change can and does take place in the muscular tissue of other parts of the body, including the coats of the arteries. The change is brought about by cell compression caused by the irritation brought on from toxins generated in the intestine or f r o m chronic autotoxemia.
Compression of nerves causes neuralgia, spasms, paralysis, disturbances of nutrition, and at times fatal infections.
Compression or section of the pneumogastric nerve is followed by pneumonia.
Cancer of any part of the body in time infects the whole body through the autogenerated toxins--the toxins resulting from the degeneration of the neoplastic growth. The fact that neoplasms of all kinds owe their existence to local obstruction of nutrition should not be forgotten, nor the fact that perverted nutrition is characteristic of the life of these tumors, or growths. The chemistry of these growths is not in keeping with their environments, and it is liable to sudden and destructive changes. When the change of nutrition is great enough to cause a breaking-up or disorganization, the fluids pass into the environmental tissues; and, as the blood and lymphatics have power to oppose and neutralize the infectious infiltration, the spread of the toxin is held in check. But a time soon comes when the body's defenses are overcome; then cachexia rules and the body dies.
Malignant growths are built by obstructing the normal nutrition of otherwise healthy tissues of the body, but which, when abused, soon take on a chemistry in keeping with the sum of their elements plus fermentation. As these perverted tissues are on the descending plane--on the involuting route--it is only a question of time when degeneration will take place and such powerful toxins will be formed that the life of the body, which unfortunately becomes host for the erstwhile innocent neoplasm, will be destroyed.
Cancers are not malignant at their beginning. A fever is not septic at the start. Vaccination excites tuberculosis only in the tuberculous disthesis--it simply arouses the diathesis into activity. Perverted nutrition of the liver is not stone building at first. Hyperemia of the brain is not apoplectic at its beginning. Worry, over-worked emotions, and chronic toxemia ultimately become arteriosclerosis. Yeast and dough may become bread by baking. Organized germs and a beefsteak may end in putrescence, and the generation of toxins that may destroy life. Bacteria cannot poison without the meat, and the meat's toxic potentiality cannot evolve without the germ. Two atoms of hydrogen are not water; one atom of oxygen is not water; but when the two are combined, water is made. Disease, health, life, and everything pertaining to animal existence, depend upon physiological chemistry for their existence. The immunization practiced on our hundreds of thousands of soldiers will prove to be the exciting cause for lighting up many latent pathologic diatheses; or planting purulent or septic foci which will develop into many unaccountable diseases by and by--diseases which the pension boards will not reckon as so many obligations of our government. Well may the helpless discerning say: "What will the harvest be?"
Neoplastic cells and pathogenic microbes, which are credited by the profession generally as being the cause of cancer, are not creative. All they can possibly do is to become elements in a chemical compound whose individuality is a so-called disease of some kind--cancer or syphilis, if you please.
Heart weakness may be brought on from many causes: fear, overworked emotions, anything that uses up nerve energy and produces its consequent autotoxemia; habitual overeating, and its consequent toxemia; intoxications from tobacco, coffee, tea, alcoholics; enervation from excessive venery. 'The result of heart weakness may be stasis in the brain, liver, kidneys, or pancreas.
Drugs or palliatives of any kind that stimulate the heart muscles relieve the headache, torpid liver, albumin or sugar in the urine; and the edemas (dropsical symptoms) disappear. The arterial tension is temporarily restored, and the patient is well, so far as his feelings are concerned. But the cure is palliative, and will soon prove but a short respite. There is but one cure, and that is to remove the cause. If this is done before organized changes have taken place, the cure will be permanent; if too late for a cure, then comfort and increased length of life may be expected. Those who have headaches often relieve themselves with coffee, or take a drug prescribed by a physician, and they call their reliefs cures; but, alas! the "cure" builds more heart disease, and hurries the end.
Embolism is a sudden occlusion of a blood vessel by a small body traveling in the circulatory system.
A strong organism is not given to gathering moss, so to speak, as we see in the case of the old oaken bucket. However, there is a very strong tendency for the development of emboli from deposits taking place in the heart, on the valves of the heart, and in the blood vessels, when there has been toxin infection running on for years. This occurs when the blood fails to carry a normal amount of enzymes.
A normal blood digests all clots which form from whatever cause. When foreign bodies succeed in gaining entrance into the circulation, they must be very resistant if they are not digested and made a part of the blood. The same is true of the lymphatic circulation. The lymphatic glands have the power of benevolently assimilating toxins that are absorbed.
Emboli are divided into exogenous and endogeenous--those entering the body and those developed in the body.
Endocarditis ends in atheromatous productions which open into the general circulation. The same occurs in arteritis. This accounts for many sudden and unexpected deaths.
Blood clots form on the interior of the blood vessels. They are caused by injury and various diseased conditions. Inflammation of the aorta may at almost any time furnish an embolus. that will swing into the circulation and cause a fatal obstruction.
Inflammation of veins is very liable to cause emboli. Phlebitis is caused by infection, This disease is very prone to cause embolism. It should never be forgotten that, if it were not for man's great immunizing power, he would be unable to protect himself against the many invasions of his organism.
Course of Emboli: Emboli follow a regular route. Those of the arteries start from a lesion of the pulmonary veins, of the left heart, or of the aorta. They pass into the left carotid. They stop at the sylvian, and produce hemiplegia with aphasia. The embolus may follow the aorta, and may stop in the splenic, the renal, or the iliac arteries.
Effects of Embolism: Arrest may be in the heart. In this case sudden death may occur. A reflex syncope is produced, due to the excitation of the endocardium.
Pulmonary apoplexy may be caused by an embolus.
Softening is a common effect of embolism. Apoplexy is another effect.
When emboli are very small, only headache, dizziness, or some mental disturbance may result.
Partial or complete blindness may result from embolism of the central artery of the retina.
There are fatty and gaseous emboli.
Nerve Connections.--Compression of nerves may cause pain in distant parts.
Irritation of the biliary or urinary passages may cause nausea and vomiting.
Inflammation of the neck of the uterus or misplaced uterus may cause pain in the back of the head.
Excitement may produce paralysis, fainting, and other nervous derangements.
Red cheeks and lung irritation go together. Red cheeks may accompany congestion of lungs and hepatic colic.
Salivation goes with irritation of the stomach. Excessive flow of urine accompanies sciatic neuralgia. Stricture of the urethra, cystic irritation, and prostatic irritation may cause pain in the sciatic nerve.
Hepatic colic causes change in the circulation of the blood in lungs. The heart is also influenced. It may become insufficient, systole occurs, and edema may follow.
The kidneys affect the heart; the heart affects the lungs; the liver and the kidneys affect themselves.
The physician should trace the successive changes that take place. It is necessary to know the morbid sympathies. It should not, however, be understood that organs take on disease per se.
The cause of an organ becoming diseased is usually abuse of some kind. The stress of life rests more heavily on one organ than on another. Whenever an organ goes wrong, others are affected through sympathy. Then, after functional derangement has gone on for a certain length of time, organic changes take place; after which organic disease becomes a cause of other affections.
Inflammation.--Diphtheroid gangrene is declared by bacteriology to depend upon microbic infection; yet at the same time it is declared that a specific diphtherogenetic microbe does not exist. This certainly is true of every so-called specific disease.
Gangrene is the resultant of a morbid process of sufficient virulence to cause the death of the tissues involved in the inflammation. Necessary to this process must be lowered vitality, lost immunization, and a chemical change on the order of disintegration.
"Pseudomembranous sore throat may be produced by numerous microbes." Just the reverse is true. The chemical changes taking place in the throat, from the initial inflammation to ulceration, on to gangrene and sloughing, due to the influence of the fermentation initiated by organized ferments in the nitrogenous tissues involved. Then these organized ferments take on an individuality and personality in keeping with the chemical medium resulting from the diseased process. In a breaking-down process there are all stages represented. Then why should not these organized ferments--microbes of fermentation--be found in all stages of transformation, from the simple germs of fermentation on to the virulent types found in putrefaction and gangrene?
It is well to keep in mind that putrescence, or the toxin resulting, is not potential in the microbe, but is potential in the protein, requiring the fermenting influence of the organized ferment to evolve the toxin. On the other hand, protein food has peptone as a potentiality; but without the fermenting influence of the unorganized ferment (enzyme), peptone would not evolve.
The material out of which pseudomembranes, are formed is a fibrogenic exudate--the very same material that is thrown out on abraded surfaces, or into solutions of continuity in any and all wounds. The quantity thrown out is always abundant, but the amounts are greater where the local irritation is great.
In pseudomembranous inflammation of the throat everything should be done to avoid breaking or loosening the membrane; for the more it is interrupted, the greater the local poisoning, and the more toxins there will be swallowed to be neutralized by the stomachic secretions.
Positively nothing is to be put into the child's mouth; not a drop of water, for swallowing must be avoided. The act of swallowing breaks the membranous protection. The old treatment of gargling and swabbing was barbarous and, for intelligent people, criminal.
Thirst must be controlled by frequent small enemas of water. Nourishment is not life-saving, as many think, but positively disease- and death-provoking.
Every patient, when prostrated with a disease, has locally or generally passed from enzymic control to bacterial control. All efforts of cure must be in the line of crossing back to enzymic control. This may be done if the intoxication from bacterial fermentation can be controlled before enervation is so profound that the nerve centers are paralyzed.
If the patient is plethoric, and the gastro-intestinal canal is full, and kept full, of food, the bacterial fermentation must thrive so long as such a state is continued. The enzymic production is at a halt, and every particle of food taken into the body becomes an ally to organized fermentation.
Stop food, and wash out the bowels daily; otherwise let the patient alone, except for gentle rubbing and bathing for comfort. High fever means much bacterial fermentation, and should be controlled by baths and the withholding of food.
The fact that the temperature declines with the consumption, or rather with the exhaustion, of the food supply should be proof sufficient to convince the skeptical that feeding the sick is encouraging disease.
A membrane is a protectorate--not simply a protector. For under this membrane is the process of repair, which requires rest, and the control of bacterial fermentation, and an enzymic influence sufficient to encourage all development. There must be enough retrograde fermentation to destroy obstructive accumulation, and enough constructive fermentation to fit the necessary amount of exudate for reparative work. This process requires a covering--a membrane-to protect from traumatic injury and an oversupply of bacteria or organized ferment.
From the foregoing explanation it is obvious how dangerous is the old-time practice of swabbing and gargling the throat. No wonder the mortality was great, and no wonder the antitoxin treatment has proved such a success. Its success, however, has been of a negative character--on the order of the lesser evil. If the antitoxin has any influence--if it is not inert--it certainly must make a change in the nervous system; and this change must be reconciled, and an equilibrium or readjustment take place, before a normal healing process can be resumed.
The unreasoning cannot see that food is disease-producing from every point of view--from every conceivable influence which it may have on the subject. If this is true of food, why may it not be true of every influence, even though theoretically it is beneficial? It is the same rule that applies in all warfare; namely, the efforts put forth in times of peace for the upbuilding of the morale of a people become treason when attempted while the country is at war. Feeding in disease is treason to the body's government.
Suppuration.--Suppuration is of three kinds: phlegmonous, caseous, and thin pus.
Phlegmonous pus--or what is known as laudable pus--is a yellowish-wbite, creamy, thick, odorless liquid. It is met with in phlegmons and suppurating pleurisies.
Caseous pus resembles soft cheese.
Thin pus is a serous liquid which exhales a fetid odor.
The color of pus varies from a light yellow to an orange, brownish red, or greenish. The coloring may be from bile or blood.
Pus in sputum sinks in water, Pus in urine precipitates with the addition of ammonia. The microscope will reveal pus cells.
Bacteriology gives many pyrogenic agents, but there is much distinction without differences. A ferment and a protein end in fermentation, inflammation, and suppuration. The chemistry of the compound does the rest. Chemistry is the determining factor.
Purulent Foci.--Suppuration may exist in a tooth, in the antrum, in the ear, or elsewhere. When once formed, it may become incysted and take on a fatty degeneration. It may extend toward a hollow organ, as a suppurating appendix, if left alone, will surely insinuate an opening into the gut--a natural cure.
Pus has a tendency to follow tendons and aponeuroses. or muscular interstices, vascular or nerve sheaths. Nature controls pus by the action of enzymes, which keep it laudable. It is only when the organism becomes acid--when acidosis develops--that pus foci begin to break down, the pus becomes thin, and begins to poison the organism. it is then that organized ferments preponderate over the enzymes in the purulent foci. It is then that latent inflammations of a specific character take on activity and are said to be developing the various stages. Why this latent stage? Because the life of the patient is not sufficiently correct to allow a complete cure; hence in from ten to twenty or thirty years, when protection is prostrate, the focal points take on activity and the organism give down to an old enemy.
Chyliform collections are found principally in serous membranes. They occur from rupture of a vessel or even of the thoracic duct. In most cases, however, they are due to a primary purulent collection whose microbes have succumbed to the supply of unorganized ferments furnished by a healthy organism (enzymes) sufficiently to cause a granulo-fatty degeneration. The fat is freed and emulsified, giving the liquid a milky appearance.
If the liquid is absorbed, a cheesy mass remains, which may take on calcareus transformation. Tubercles sometimes take on this change or cure.
Symptoms of a purulent focus are pain, heat, redness, swelling. Pain is the first symptom. It is caused by an increased flow of blood to the part, which causes swelling and heat, as well as the redness.
The pain is of a pulsating character. In time the pulsating pain gives way to a feeling of constriction, due to stretching of the nerves. After pus forms, the pain may subside, to appear only upon pressure. Cold abscesses are considered tubercular. They form without causing much reaction. I have seen reputable physicians confuse sarcoma and cold abscesses.
Gangrene.--Defined, gangrene is mortification or putrefaction of tissue. The process is named necrobiosis. It is declared to be of microbic origin. It is well, however, to be reminded that microbes are always secondary causes, and to declare that a given disease is of microbic origin is to leave the question of real cause in the air, from which it will never come down for a thinking mind until it is furnished an adequate cause. The fact that there is no specific gangrenous microbe is proof that, following the cause of the devitalizing of a given tissue, any organized ferment is sufficient to cause putrefaction of the dead tissue. The colon bacillus is sufficient to set up putrefaction or gangrene of the undigested food in the intestine.
When a part is dead, it must either desiccate or putrefy. Where there is heat and moisture it rots; and that is what gangrene is. The causes leading to death of tissue may be mechanical, physical, chemical, or animate: mechanical when a part is killed by machinery; physical when a part is killed by strong acid, excessive cold, or excessive heat; and animate when a part is killed by bacteria. It should not be forgotten, however, that germs must be aided by a forerunner which first devitalizes. The animate agents follow all agents that devitalize.
Anything that cuts off blood or nerve supply may devitalize to such an extent that germs may finish the destruction.
Fermentation of food may cause sufficient intoxication to destroy tissue. Then gangrene follows.
If it is understood that any putrefactive process, it matters not what the cause, is gangrenous, it will not be necessary to go into detail and name all the diseases which end in the death, or gangrene, of isolated spots of tissue or integument. Suffice it to say that the infections from typhoid fever, syphilitic chancre, gonorrheal bubo, septicemic fever, etc., are all putrefactive--gangrenous--infections.
Every diathesis takes advantage of systemic enervation to use these foci as centers from which to spread its peculiar type of disease.
If those who have suffered infection--an invasion--from a septic disease of any type (so-called contagious or infectious) will live in such a manner as to encourage elimination and an increase of nerve energy, these internal foci will be destroyed--will be used as fuel; and then it may be said that a blood poisoning--a specific disease--is cured.
A cure cannot be made by drugs, because a drug adds nothing to nutrition. A drug may irritate an organ and force artificial functioning, as in purging the bowels. But what does really take place? The bowels are forced to empty, but their functioning is inhibited, and, if the abuse is continued, they will cease functioning entirely. This is true of all medication and all organs affected by drugs. The so-called eliminating drugs irritate, but do not eliminate. They depress, enervate, and join with the enemies of the body in breaking down resistance and establishing infection rule over the entire body, or what "Damaged Goods" so graphically describes as the inevitable taint.
I here and now call upon all truth that is potential in medical science to bear witness to the statement I am about to make; namely: The human body is fully able to eliminate all infections, if it is given reasonable care in the lines of feeding, bathing, clothing, and mental poise. If, from an inherited diathesis, the constitution cannot resist the breaking-down influence of an infection, even when aided by the best of dietetic and hygienic care, the only possible results from medication and baths must be further enervation and less resistance to septic (specific) infection. Nature can eliminate and readjust, if permitted to rest physically and physiologically.
If proper care--a care that favors a better elimination and tissue renewal--fails to rid the body of septic foci, it is a beggarly reasoning power that ran believe that a medication which impairs nutrition and hardens tissue--causes a gingivitis (shedding of teeth) and ulceration of glands and bones, and even blindness--can act favorably and persuade or force a health standard that does not exist and is not potential in an organism.
The consensus of medical opinion holds to the superstition that by some magical power the drugs mercury, arsenic, iodin, potash, or a mysterious compounding--a synthetical blend--of drugs, can be made to go on a still hunt through the organism and drag out of their hidings all septic foci and expel them from the body, "Some dream," I admit; but no unprejudiced mind can find any proof for it in any of the fundamentals of medical science yet recorded.
Tubercles.--Those desiring an extensive bacteriological history of tubercles should procure a monograph on the subject.
All germs of a bacterial or microbic character are capable of generating fermentation in an environment favorable to their functioning; namely, a crowded nutrition, or overworked enzymic fermentation; threatening fatal obstruction to physiologic processes or devitalized tissue from injury.
When enervation is great, those who have purulent foci deposited from septic fevers, syphilitic ulcer or chancre, gonorrheal bubo or stricture, or chronic colitis with putrefactive fermentation, will develop affections in keeping with their diatheses. If they have the tuberculous diathesis, or if they are predisposed to take on glandular inflammation of a scrofulous nature, the type of their disease will be tubercular, which may be developed in any tissue of the body. If the diathesis should be of a nature to develop sclerosis, heart and arterial diseases will develop.
So long as any and all affections (so-called diseases) are permitted to develop only after the body's natural immunization is exhausted, it is very far-fetched to declare that a process which is wholly house-cleaning--wholly an emergency auxiliary to a physiological process--is disease-producing, or the cause of disease. Indeed, disease is a state, and those influences that increase or decrease the comfort of that state are causes of health and disease. Organized ferments are a part of a necessary and a properly organized environment for man. This is equally true of enzymes, food, sunshine, and other elements. Indeed, like every entity in the environment, each can be made man's friend or enemy, food or bane. Food is necessary to health and life, yet it is made man's greatest enemy.
For those with a diathesis there is but one immunization--namely, good health. Instead of seeking cures, prevention is the rational work--not extermination of germs, which is obviously impracticable, even if it were possible. And prevention is encompassed in one word-namely, moderation.
The control of tuberculosis must begin in childhood, if not before. Proper feeding, bathing, and clothing, along with enough intelligence to put such knowledge into practice, will stamp out the disease.
Localization and Evolution of Tuberculosis.--Theories of localized tuberculosis other than of the lungs are quite plausibly worked out. Of course, the pulmonary variety of tuberculosis is pretty generally conceded to come from inspiring infected air, or from taking the germ into the stomach with food. The bacilli introduced by the inspired air ingraft themselves in the apices of the lungs. The reason for this particular localization is attributed to the limited expansion of this part of the chest, and especially the weakness of the expirating movement. The natural sciences--especially mechanics--are frequently used by medical science in reinforcing a theory; but the student should not allow plausible argument to paralyze his real effort at getting at the truth.
If the theories of scientific medicine regarding tuberculosis were true, there could be no plausible reason given why tuberculosis, syphilis, or a fatal contagion had not depopulated the earth; and certainly, if the theories of bacteriology were true, there could be no good reason given why germs had not prevented the populating of the earth.
The fatal weakness about all the germ science is that it cannot give a good reason why man is not extinct, if its theories of causation are true; and, on the other hand, if all it boasts of its great art and science be true, why disease is not stamped out.
Why do not all people who inhale bacilli develop the corresponding disease? Why are there people who cannot be made to take tuberculosis, and why are there a small percentage: who cannot be prevented from taking the disease? The answer to these questions will give a good working hypothesis on which to base a rational theory of causation.
The theories advanced in the various chapters in this book certainly are plausible, and the fact that, when applied, they work is all the proof that rationality needs. Bigotry and prejudice have never been, nor ever will be, convinced that the other fellow is not an ignoramus.
The theories of diathesis, enervation, and autotoxemia, when applied to tuberculosis, work out and rationally explain the cause, and certainly give the only depend prevention or immunization.
The various types of tubercular diseases--the classified tubercular diseases--are easily explained when it is known that this infection cannot be made to infect a gouty diathesis, but that it is easy to cultivate all types of tubercular affections--graft them, so to speak--on the tubercular diathesis.
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