The fact that so-called acute "disease" is a curative process is so revolutionary in its nature that its acceptance by the various schools of Heteropathic medicine would mean the complete destruction of all their laborously constructed therapeutic systems. For this reason there has been much theoretical acceptance and practical dismissal of this great truth, such as has been accorded many other important principles which have been discovered and given to the world after much effort, cost and suffering by a few earnest workers.

Great as is this truth and revolutionary as is its nature, it is not the whole truth. When the whole truth is accepted] it will work an even greater revolution in practice than any save the purest Hygienists have ever visualized. Probably Dr. Jennings, himself, had the clearest vision of what this revolution would mean in practice.

The whole truth is that, while biogony is a curative process; it is not a radical or complete cure. It does not apply the axe to the root of the trouble, and it stops far short of complete elimination of the immediate occasion for the curative reaction.

The true nature and purpose of biogony has been made clear in a previous chapter. The nature and sources of the poisons against which biogony is directed will be made clear in a subsequent chapter. At this point it is desirable to understand why the curative process is not complete.

The whole process of the development, of biogony (acute "disease") and pathology (organic "disease") is similar to the results following the use of tobacco and a comparison of the two will help to make the whole matter clear.

Tobacco is one of the most poisonous plants in the whole vegetable kingdom. When taken into the undepraved organism, its presence is met with vital resistance for the purpose of expelling it. There follows in rapid succession a distressing dizziness, muscular relaxation, tremor, weakness, perhaps fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and convulsions. The whole system appears to be thrown into disorder, yet through it all, law and order reign supreme, while every evidence of apparent disorder and chaos serves a definite purposive end. This aggregate of symptoms constitutes a biogony and is designed to free the organism of the tobacco poison.

Such a reaction always follows the introduction of tobacco into the undepraved organism; and the more vigorous and undepraved that organism, 'the more prompt an powerful will this reaction be.

By commencing a career of depravity, with cautiously measured steps, we may easily break down the body's resistance to the poison, and ultimately bring about a condition in which the body actually appears to call for and embrace its arch foe. The body may become so accustomed to <the deadliest poisons that these may be habitually taken, in considerable quantities, and only bring about an immediate feeling of apparent well-being.

The opium addict can take at one dose, enough opium to kill several non-users outright, but it produces no apparent immediate harm in him. Indeed, it appears to act beneficially, for when his damaged nerves come out from under the narcotizing influence of opium, their true condition is revealed and the victim suffers great agony. He resorts to another dose of his arch enemy to re-narcotize his nerves and silence their outcries. His suffering makes him a slave to the very thing that causes it.

The coffee and tea addict can take enough of these poisonous decoctions at one time to make real sick the non-user; yet it only quiets his nerves and relieves his headache.

In like manner, the tobacco user, deprived of his tobacco, finds his nerves unsteady and his disposition unbearable. A dose of his favorite weed and his unsteadiness is gone and his irritableness gives way to cheerfulness and a feeling of well-being.

The process of adaptation to poisons is a depraving process. The greater the physiological depravity--the greater the enervation and organic damage--the greater the amount of the accustomed poison will be demanded, and the more can be used without arousing vital resistance. In other words, in precisely the proportion to which one becomes accustomed, by habitual use, to any poisonous substance--the greater the degree of physiological depravity--the less defensive or reactive power he possesses, not alone against the particular poison, but against all poisons.

There is not a poison in the animal kingdom which the human body cannot, by carefully graded steps, become accustomed to, so, that it no longer offers any resistance to its ingestion. Arsenic may be taken as freely as table salt with little immediate evidence of its poisonous character. Even prussic acid, which kills instantly, like lightning, where the body is wholly unaccustomed to its use, may be used with considerable freedom as a means of exhilaration and intoxication, after one has carefully accustomed his body to its use. But the whole organism pays for the apparent impunity by general enervation and lowered resistance to every other influence.

There is evidence to show that the adaptive process by which the body adapts itself to poisons is accomplished by changes in the cells and tissues that are away from the ideal. This change in structure cripples the physiological efficiency of the organs and lowers the body's resistance to every influence. The pneumonia death rate is much higher in alcoholics and morphine addicts. Thus it will be seen that, when toleration for a poison is established and the body ceases to react violently against it, the destructive work of the poison does not end. On the contrary it slowly, insidiously, surely, undermines the whole constitution and produces organic damage, such as is seen in smoker's cancer, tobacco heart, alcoholic liver, delirium tremens, etc.

Returning, now to nicotine poisoning, once toleration is established, acute nicotine poisoning may be produced only by taking an unaccustomed amount of tobacco. If sufficient excess above the accustomed amount is used, all the symptoms of the first chew, dip, snuff or smoke, may be occasioned. The biogony thus produced will last until it reduces the nicotine to the toleration point and 'then subside.

The subject is not, thereby, cured of nicotine poisoning--chronic nicotinism. He is still chronically poisoned. He still has the tobacco habit. The chronic poisoning is still at work slowly undermining his body. The crisis only eliminated the intolerable over-load of nicotine.

A radical cure, in such a case, can come only by ceasing to use tobacco. Cease the poisoning and go through the period of reaction-- depression and irritableness--that follows. The body will then eliminate all nicotine, restore dissipated nerve energy, repair structural damages and then, and only then, can cure be said to be complete.

So-called acute "diseases" (biogonies) represent processes of compensatory elimination by which the body eliminates what Jennings called "arrears of expurgation," and infection (putrescence) absorbed from the digestive tract. The symptoms are identical with and similar to those developed in reaction against nicotine poisoning.

The body learns to tolerate metabolic toxins, food poisoning, toxins resulting from pathological processes, etc., in the same manner that it learns to tolerate nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, opium, arsenic, etc. Once toleration for these toxins is established it can be aroused to reaction against them only when they accumulate above the toleration point.

Reaction in such a case takes the form of a cold, gastritis, diarrhea, skin eruption, pneumonia, or other so-called acute "disease." But, as in the case of nicotine poisoning, the biogony lasts only until it has reduced the toxins to the toleration point, or slightly below. There is some evidence that in some instances these "healing crises" do reduce the toxins much below the toleration point, before they subside, but they never last until the system is wholly free of its accumulated toxins.

A dynamic biogony leaves the body in a state of chronic toxin poisoning. The body is still enervated. There is still impairment of function. The enervating habits of living that are responsible for the enervation, functional impairment, and toxemia, are still uncorrected. For this reason, after the crisis has passed, more toxins accumulate. The biogonies come and go--the toxemia remains. Health does not return when the symptoms subside, but a state of near-health returns. Although this state is called recovery and the patient is said to be cured, the patient is still toxemic.

The evil effects of a poison do not cease merely because the body has learned to tolerate it. The habitual use of a thing which is injurious in itself, does not alter its nature and render its use salutary. In the same way,, toxins do not cease to produce evil effects merely because the body has learned to tolerate them. They continue to damage the tissues and organs of the body and slowly, insidiously undermine the constitution. Tolerated toxins are the only cause of death not due to violence.

A radical cure in this case, can be accomplished only by complete eradication of toxemia, restoration of full nerve energy, and by a correction of all the habits and influences that are responsible for enervation and toxemia. This necessitates a complete revolution in the mode of living and a prolonged period of mental, physical, physiological and sensory rest. Life must be ordered in conformity with physiological law and an opportunity afforded for recuperation of dissipated energies.

The practice here indicated is not the usual or popular one. Physicians generally, of all schools of so-called healing, make little or no effort to correct the patient's mode of life, but usually goad the organs on in their work with irritants--stimulants--and prescribe "plenty of good nourishing food," meaning, of course, plenty of the conventional diet of meat, eggs, white bread, denatured cereals, coffee, etc.

All efforts to eliminate pathology and restore the primitive health standard which do not recognize the enervating factors of the mode of life as the remote and actual producing causes of impaired health, and which do not seek, first of all, to correct these, are doomed to failure and disappointment. At its best, such a mode of practice is but a system of doubtful palliation; at its worst, a destructive suppression, like so-called Modern Medical Science.