As the majority of the readers of this book have been educated to recognize the naming of diseases as necessary to an understanding of them, and an inability to name disease as evidence of ignorance, I have decided to indulge this fallacy by treating of the various diseases under the regular nosological classifications. If I had pleased myself in the matter, I should have written this book from the standpoint of my belief; namely, that there is but one disease-Toxin Poisoning, or Autotoxemia.

The names given to pathological processes are really nothing more than classifying affections; the real disease being simply crises--explosions, so to speak--of this constitutional derangement--disease.

All diseases may be likened to a string of beads, the string representing the true disease--toxemia--and the so-called diseases, which should be called affections, being represented by the beads. Break the cord, and the beads are lost--correct the toxin, and affections subside.

J. H. Tilden, M. D.