Over 135 years ago, Dr. Benjamin Rush said : "The physician who can cure one disease by a knowledge of its principles may cure all; for their causes are the same." Look at the confusing medley of conflicting theories and practices of medicine today. One "disease" is treated with drugs, "another" with the knife, "another" with serums, still " another" with radium or the X-ray, and "another" with diet. A true principle of "cure" should apply to all "disease." Many methods, based on many principles, must be false. The intelligent man who desires consistency in his thinking, and a parallelism between his thinking and his doing, simply cannot endure the contradictions which medical theory and practice make inevitable.

Many have often felt impelled to apologize for the instability of the theories and practices of the physicians. Their practice has been very rich in theory but poor, very poor, in the practical application. Indeed, the tinsel-glitter of fine-spun theory, and of favorite hypothesis which prevail in their ranks, so dazzles, flatters, and charms human vanity and folly, that, so far from contributing to the certain and speedy cure of "disease," it has continuously proved a bane and a disgrace to man. In despair of making their practice a science, they have agreed to convert it into a trade.

The living organism is self-evolving, depending upon a few simple conditions; is self-maintaining and self-repairing, depending upon these same conditions. Its normal condition is one of abounding health; impaired health follows upon a disturbance of the conditions of life. How reasonable, then, the spontaneous return to health when the disturbing conditions are removed.

Graham correctly reasoned that "the essential elements of health are the healthy conditions and function of the organs of the body; and these elements are preserved by a strict conformity to the laws of constitution and relation established in our nature, and they are destroyed or impaired by every infraction of these laws. And such are the sympathies of the system, that not only are the organs immediately acted on by disturbing and morbific causes themselves affected, and their function deranged and diseased by such causes, but other organs also, sympathizing with those immediately acted on by these causes, partake of their irritations, and by these sympathetic irritations, are often made themselves the seats of local disease; and when disease is thus once induced, even slight habitual disturbances and irritations from dietetic errors and other causes are sufficient to keep it up for many years, till it terminates perhaps in death.

"We see, also, that no physician, nor any other human being in the universe, can come to us when we are diseased, and by any exercise of skill or the application of any remedy, directly and immediately impart to us any health, or remove from us any disease.***

"All that nature asks, or can receive, from human skill, in such a condition, therefore, is the removal of disturbing causes; and she will, of her own accord, as naturally as a stone falls to the earth, return to health, unless the vital constitution has received an irreparable injury.--Science of Human Life, p 424-5.

The usual practice is to try by some "remedy" or "cure" or "therapeutic" method or device, to force the organism to act normally in spite of the disturbing conditions, and without correcting these. Organs and functions are stimulated or inhibited, as, in the opinion of the doctor, they should be, and little or no attention is given to finding and correcting the conditions that have impaired the life functions. The stimulating or inhibiting method employed may be chemical, mechanical, thermal, electrical or mental; the results are the same in kind.

Just as you can't sober a man by letting him drink, or rest a fatigued man with work, so you cannot treat a man into health while the pathoferic conditions or influences remain unconnected. After these are corrected the so-called therapeutics are not needed; at no time are they useful. The organism can make use of those natural elements and. influences that are used daily in producing and maintaining it in health and no other. The amount of food or rest or exercise or water or air or sunshine, etc., needed may vary from time to time, depending on the general condition or work of the body but, beyond this there is no difference in the needs of the body. It cures itself.

It is the Hygienic contention that " if a body has vitality enough to live under wrong conditions, it has vitality enough to get well under right conditions." There is no truth in nature more positive than that the normal condition of man is one of health. That all the organs and functions of the human body are designed and adapted to produce this result, appears to be a proposition so self-evident that to argue it would seem to be a work of supererogation. Yet man has lived so long in violation of the laws of his being, and as the inevitable consequence, has suffered "disease" so long that he has come to forget, or lose sight of the fact that the natural condition of all organized beings is one of health and not of "disease" ; that instead of the sickly, deformed creature he is, with both mind and body dwarfed in conformity to the false conditions under which he lives, he might be and should be a healthy and well developed being, in the enjoyment of all the resulting consequences of such a condition.

Those who have never attempted to present health truth to mankind in general are hardly aware of the prejudices to be combatted, the ignorance to be removed, before mankind will be brought to see that it is far better, from every point of view, to live in a state of health than in a state of "disease"--in a state of happiness than in one of misery and suffering. Upon no subject is agitation more necessary than on this. Line upon line, precept upon precept, and volume upon volume are needed to arouse and convince the suffering millions of the grand truth that health, not "disease," is their birth-right--a birth-right which they continually sell for a mess of indulgence.

Notwithstanding the constant evidence of our senses that nature is capable of, and does maintain the organism in health during its existence, it is very difficult for some to believe that she has any power to restore lost functions, or heal an organic lesion without some artificial spur or aid. Something positive and decided must be done to meet adequately the emergency. The old school physician is never easy unless he is putting something into his patients or abstracting something from them. As Elbert Hubbard wittily remarked, the old school physician believes in cutting out things, lopping off things, rubbing on things, pouring down things, and squirting in things. Operations are performed and medicines given to impress, most powerfully, the vital domain with the idea that there is the most absolute and stringent necessity therefor--while, perhaps, a little discretion would have done more service by letting alone. Nature is constantly and ceaslessly working for life and health and any interference of a decided character may be hazardous.