The above fully explains and makes clear what Jennings meant when he declared that "curative" measures, if they are to draw off all the vital powers from a local seat of "disease," must at least be equal in "attractive force" (that is, equally as injurious) as the cause of the struggle. Drugs or other measures, by dividing the body's forces, by calling for a supply of blood and energy to be sent to other parts of the body, easily and quickly diminish the symptoms of the "disease," yet they do so, not by any influence they exert upon the cause of the original defense, but because, by their own injuriousness, they call for part of the body's army of defense to be sent against them. This both prolongs the "disease," weakens the patient, and, perhaps, results in death.

Dr. Felix L. Oswald says, upon this same point: "Drugs can rarely do more than change the form of the disease, or postpone its crisis. Mercurial salve, which conscientious physicians have almost ceased to regard as a lesser evil of an alterative, was once a favorite prescription for all kinds of cutaneous diseases; it cleansed the skin by driving the ulcers from the surface to the interior of the body. A drastic purge counteracts constipation--for a day or two--by inducing a still less desirable state of dysentery. Combined with venesection the same 'remedy' will suppress the symptoms of various inflammatory affections by compelling the exhausted system to postpone the crisis of the disease; in other words, by interrupting a curative process.--Nature's Household Remedies, pp. 14-15.

He continues this thought: "opiates stop a flux only by paralyzing the bowels--i.e., turning their morbid activity into a morbid inactivity ; the symptoms of pneumonia can be suppressed by bleeding the patient till the exhausted system has to postpone the crisis of the disease. This process, the breaking up of a sickness, in the language of the old-school allopathists, is therefore in reality only an interrupting of it, a temporary interruption of the symptoms. We might as well try to cure the sleepiness of a weary child by pinching its eyelids, or the hunger of a whinning dog by compressing his throat. *** It is not only the safer but also the shorter way to avoid drugs, reform our habits, and, for the rest, let Nature have her course; for, properly speaking, disease itself is a reconstructive process, the expulsive effort, whose interruption compels Nature to do double work; to resume her operations against the ailment after expelling a worse enemy--the drug". If a drugged patient recovers the true explanation is that his constitution was strong enough to overcome both the disease and the druggist."--Physical Education.

Sylvester Graham explained, suppression in the following words, "It is true, however, as we have seen that by the continued application of such remedies, the original symptoms for which they were applied may, upon the principle of counter irritation, be removed and other symptoms be established, which will disappear when the remedies are abandoned; and thus, in some instances, health may be restored; in other instances, the old symptoms will return after a short time, and probably in a more aggravated form, and in other instances, new symptoms, and perhaps of a much more serious character, may be permanently established, while the patient himself, and very often his physician also, will never suspect that the new symptoms have been produced by the very remedies by which the old symptoms were removed."--Science of Human Life, p. 424.

Medical men regard each "disease" as separate and distinct from every other. Diseases are said to be specific, having a specific cause and requiring specific treatment. Thus pneumonia is separate and distinct from typhoid, their causes are different and thus they must be treated differently. But medical men do not have specific treatments for these so-called specific "diseases." Quinine for malaria, arsenic for syphilis and antitoxin for diphtheria, are about the only claimed specifics and (here does not exist unanimity of opinion about these, while, even in treating these diseases with their supposed specifics, other measures are employed with which to attack symptoms. In few words, medical measures are always symptomatic treatment and never specific.

Let me first explain this last statement and then give an example or two. About the first thing a physician does when called to see a patient is to give a physic. If fever is present, quinine or antipyrin or some other coal-tar drug is given to reduce the temperature. If the patient is in a state of "collapse" or "semi-collapse," heart stimulants--strychnine, digitalis, aromatic spirits of ammonia, caffeine, nitroglycerine, strophanthus, camphor, etc.,--are administered. When the heart fails to respond to one of these, another is substituted. If there is severe pain, opium or its derivatives--heroin, morphine, codea,--or some of the coal-tar products is given. If he is sleepless an opiate, a bromid or chloral is administered. The opiates and bromids are used to stupefy and paralyze the brain and nerves.

If the temperature is above normal, antipyretics forcibly reduce it; if it is below normal it is forced up. If there is pain this is deadened with morphine or other anodyne. Coughing is checked with cough "remedies," tonics are given to stimulate an appetite, when this is lacking, and food is forced upon the body. Night sweats and foot sweats are suppressed; a "feeble" heart is sustained with stimulants until it is exhausted. Vomiting and diarrhea are checked. Constipation is broken up. Glands are stimulated or inhibited as the physician thinks should be done. Skin eruptions are suppressed. Stimulants force increased action in those organs presenting reduced action, thus preventing energy conservation. Depressants check the activities of accelerated organs, thus defeating the efforts at cure. Thus we might go on indefinitely with our recital and we would find the physicians of all schools busily engaged in trying to produce a forced state resembling that of health; in trying to force the body to act normally in spite of the presence of causes that require a different course of action.

A sick man has pain, fever, a rapid heart, diarrhea, etc. The doctor "relieves" the pain, reduces the temperature, slows up the heart action and checks the diarrhea. How? With drugs that force these conditions. What is, then, the true condition of his patient? Who knows? His present state is a forced semblance of healthy function. But cause has not been corrected. This is a dear bought "relief." It is paid for with increased and prolonged suffering, invalidism and premature death.

Think of fever--when cause is removed the temperature will again become normal. Does the physician bother with its cause? He does not. He administers an antipyretic, which reduces the temperature by reducing heart action and paralyzing vital functions. Fever is treated as though it is its own cause or as though the functions of the body have rebelled against vital law and have become anarchistic. This is often continued until the heart is greatly weakened and then the physician resorts to heart stimulants, which are often employed until they completely exhaust the heart and produce death. If there is restlessness and mental distress there is a cause for these and they will cease as soon as cause is removed. But the physician does not attempt to find and correct cause. He administers a bromid or other nerve and brain paralyzing drug and thus clubs the brain and nerves into insensibility and stupor. The restlessness and distress are temporarily suppressed but appear again as soon as the body has eliminated the drug. Another does is then given and this process is kept up until permanent damage is done to the nervous system. The same is true of pain. The nerves of sensation are sandbagged into insensibility by an opiate or a coal-tar product. The cause of the pain, the condition that gives rise to it, still exists; all the drug does is to paralyze the nerves, and weaken the functions of the body, thus effectually interfering with every curative process that is going on.