"The opposite theory of cure is the one now everywhere advocated. Sustain the patient's strength, is the cry everywhere heard. Support the vitality and the patient will surely rally. The theory we hold to be true beyond all peradventure; it is the application of the theory that is erroneous. If the real is the opposite of the apparent; if we are deluded by appearances which are generally the opposites of the realities; if substances administered to give strength to the patient appear to do so only by taking away his strength, who cannot see how utterly destructive and fallacious a practice based upon observation must be. If disease, instead of being an enemy, is really nature's effort at cure, who fails to perceive ample justification for the alarming increase of nervous diseases in our time, as the result of the use of the tonics and nervines so generally employed. Something does not come out of nothing; no effect exists except from an adequate cause; the facts of today prove either a failure of the theory that nature cures, or a failure of its methods of application. The latter error is the true one. Because of a theory of vital force and its source, which is equally opposed to the facts, men proceed to produce the diseases they imagine they are curing, and to exhaust the power they are trying to sustain. The consequence is the more one is cured the more he needs to be cured; and the more he is sustained the greater his need to be sustained; or, to put it in concrete form, the more whiskey or other stimulant or tonic we administer to the patient, the more he needs it; the more we sustain him by the methods of the schools, the weaker and worse he gets. We turn our attention to the accumulation of vital power as the true means by which obstructions shall be overcome, disease rendered unnecessary, and good health be restored. The methods of recuperation that we shall advocate are all based upon the theory that life is an inheritance and not a product. If life could be manufactured there would at least be some excuse for exciting into action the organs which are supposed to manufacture it, but having absolutely disproved the transformation theories, and shown that life comes only from life, we are shut up to the alternative of securing recuperation of power through cessation of its use. We cannot recuperate by increasing its use. Recuperation must come through rest and sleep, and the necessity for these in every living thing is the best proof that it cannot be obtained in any other way. If we could manufacture vitality for horse or man, what need of sleep and rest half the time; if hay and oats could take the place of sleep, the horseless age would still be far away.

"The word recuperate, which means recover, is a term chiefly employed in connection with living things, or at least with such things as spontaneously recover their powers. We may recuperate our health or strength; an orchard or a farm may recuperate, and of late years the term has been applied to electricity, as in the recuperation of a battery. But no matter in what connection it is employed the leading idea is rest. Under the Mosaic law the necessity for rest in order to recuperate was everywhere recognized. Even the land had its Sabbath. Man and horse and ox are expected to recuperate every night, in addition to the rest of every seventh day. The battery also recuperates when we cease its use; but no matter in what department we use the term, the leading, if not sole idea, is recovery through rest. We do not recuperate a steam-engine, a wagon, or a plow; we repair these: we recuperate only those things which have within them the power of recovery when we cease to use and expend the power. The battery recovers its powers by cessation of work; the orchard and farm recuperate so as to produce a harvest after a season of rest; man and horse are always reproducing, and therefore, recovering their powers. It is properly said also that the spendthrift recuperates his fortune when he ceases to spend it. But this is a true use of the term only when his fortune is an inheritance. If he is a self-made man, his fortune being the product of his own labor, we would not think of him recuperating his fortune by rest; we would speak of him as making his fortune by greater activity and vigor. Just so with the vital organism; we may recuperate its powers because they are an inheritance which we receive as an income, that may be squandered by ceaseless activity, riotous living, or accumulated to great abundance by rest and waiting. But if it be true that man, manufactures his vital powers, then recuperation is an entirely improper word to use in connection with this increase. If tonics and stimulants and food and drink and air make for us vitality, then accumulation of power must come through increased work, as during the day, while sleep and rest would prove to be not only useless but destructive. If power could be manufactured out of food or drink or medicine, what excuse would there be for holidays and sabbath days as well as for nightly rest. Where is the necessity for rotation of crops on the farm if fertilizer will answer all purposes. Why not heavy fruit crops every year if feeding the soil can take the place of rest. Once let it be shown that vital power can be manufactured, and rest is at once proved an unnecessary indulgence. If increased work can produce vitality for any one, sleep becomes a reckless waste; if we can give strength to an invalid by the use of a drug, we ought to be consistent and repudiate sleep as a contribution to senseless fashion.

"But men are seldom consistent. They seek to give strength from without at the very time they admit the importance for the invalid of rest and sleep. Recuperation means the hoarding of power through its non-use; a statement which, if true, shows the absurdity of the attempt to give power by its increased use through increased activity. Both these plans cannot be true. We recuperate through rest or we manufacture power through active work; but we never have done, and never can do, both at the same time. There is a dilemma here, and we may take either horn we please; no one can ride two horses at the same time when these are going in opposite directions.

"The primal thought of the system we advocate, therefore, is rest-- rest of body and of mind, of muscle and of nerve, of heart and lungs, liver and kidneys, stomach and bowels. This system might thus be called Scientific Rest-Cure. It is Rest-cure because it inculcates and promotes rest as the sine qua non to recovered health, and it is scientific because it is a logical development, not from supposed facts, but from established first principles, to the elaboration of which development future chapters are devoted."--Life's Great Law, pp. 192 to 198.

Rest lacks color and dramatics; physicians and patients prefer spectacular forms of treatment that stimulate the imagination. Patients protest against having to rest. They prefer their accustomed stimulations and activities. However, rest secures recovery after repeated failure of the stimulating method.