However, this need not bewilder or confuse us; for, it all sums up in toxemia. All of this confusion clears away when toxemia is understood ; order is brought out of chaos and certainty takes the place of uncertainty. Until a universal cause for pathology is universally accepted we shall have a multiplicity of cures in keeping with a multiplicity of causes. All theories of cure must come to one cause and this will destroy the bewildering conglomeration of therapeutic measures now advocated by the various "schools of healing."

The admirable Hygienist, Dr. Oswald, wrote: "Diseases plead for desistance, rather than for assistance, and the discovery of the cause is the discovery of the remedy. For there is a strong upward and healthward tendency in the constitution of every living organism. Nature's revenge is but an enforced condition of peace. Pain, discomfort, and even the premature loss of organic vigor, are the attendant symptoms of a reconstructive process, and their permanence is a presumptive proof that, in spite of such admonitions, that process is a struggle against a permanent obstacle or against a constantly predicated frustration of its efforts."-- Nature's Household Remedies, p. 15.

Pain is not a plea for pain killers, but for rest and desistance. Discomfort does not call for sedatives or tonics, but for desistance. Nausea and vomiting are not pleas for anti-emetics, demulcents and digestives, but for abstinence from food. Loss of appetite is not a call for tonics and digestives, but a "closed for repairs" sign hung out by the body.

If you roast your shins too near a glowing fire the toasting nerves cry out for a lower temperature and not for liniments or pain killers. Desist! Desist! This is the cry of nature. She does not need your puny "aid." She only asks that you cease your foolish interference. Physicians of all schools insist that nature cures and that they only "aid nature." Some of them have some rather curious and damaging ways of aiding her, however. Too often they assist her out altogether and the patient succumbs to the "aid."

Pain is not a cry for aid, but for desistance. If you tread on tacks, the resulting pain is not a call for liniments and salves but for the removal of the tacks. Keep off the tacks, the forces of the body will do the rest. Pain in the stomach following a meal is not a call for pepsin or alka-seltzer, but for rest--for abstinence from food. Nature but cries out for you to cease abusing your stomach. The natural forces of repair and recuperation will take care of the stomach when you cease to abuse it. Indeed these forces are continuously at work in an effort to counteract and overcome the effects of the abuse you heap upon your stomach or any other part or parts of your body. No doctor and no drug can do this work, but Nature can if you cease the abuse.

Any attempt to "cure a disease" without removing the pathoferic influence is rank folly. Take, for instance, the prevailing methods by which it is sought to purify the blood. Some method is employed to whip up the activities of the eliminating organs. It is like the attempt to dip a fountain dry without cutting off the water supply. One dips and dips until exhausted only to find that as much water exists in the fountain as before. Likewise, when the eliminating organs are made to work overtime by some drug or drugless method, and the source of the impurities is not cut off, these organs are soon exhausted and the blood stream is as foul as before. Such methods may whip up the eliminating and other organs and produce a temporary semblance of health, but the exhaustion following such treatment soon permits the victim to become worse than before.

Breaking the removal of occasions up into two subdivisions we must:-(a) Correct all enervating practices and influences. This is a necessity both in primary and secondary "diseases," although nature herself corrects as many of these as relate to the individual himself, in the primary "diseases." Tilden says: "There is but one rational treatment for the entire chain of morbific phenomena, ranging from the first cold to Tuberculosis, to Bright's disease, to Cancer, to Diabetes, to Rheumatoid arthritis, to Ataxia, to Appoplexy--to any pathological ending; namely, correct the manner of living and stop all enervating habits of mind and body. Normal elimination soon gets rid of Toxemia, and crises quickly disappear. Then those with functional derangements promptly return to health; all organic change, if there is not too much destruction of tissue, is gradually restored to normal, and health returns in full."

To get well it is necessary to stop doing the things that produce illness. All have what they admit are bad habits, but few are able to catalogue the many minor transgressions that go to make up their entire pathology-building complex. An analysis and summing-up of these factors is necessary and constitutes the first step in "diagnosis."

Let us notice these a bit further. Why should enervating practices and influences be corrected? Because these are the remote causes of the trouble. These have brought on the enervation responsible for the lowering of organic function. So long as these are continued the enervation lasts, and elimination and drainage will be faulty. Recovery, real lasting recovery, is impossible under such conditions.

How are such habits and influences corrected? By stopping them. Suppose the patient is addicted to the use of stimulants; correct such a habit by withholding the stimulants. Suppose he is being forced to expend his nervous energy resisting cold. He is chilled. Correct such influence by supplying him with warmth. If it is an acute "disease" the patient will be forced to remain in bed, he cannot be spending his nights in revelry, but the chronic sufferer may be doing this very thing. It must be stopped. Anything and everything that uses up nerve energy is a handicap. So-called "diseases" should be ignored ; errors of life should be corrected.

Those under the thraldom of one or more enervating habits must rise above their enervated state. Unless the life that brought on the ill health is changed, any so-called cure that may occur will amount merely to a longer or shorter respite from symptoms, but in no sense can the individual pronounce himself healthy. He will be liable to go down again under almost any unusual strain.

"Cures that cure," says Tilden, "in spite of wrong living are shortlived, and require chloroform to put their victims out of their misery and the misery of their friends. Ulcer, pain, hemorrhage, and cancer cachexia often bring to an end a life that would have been willing to go the chloroform route months before."

Because a man gets out of bed and back into the routine of life's duties and responsibilities, is no evidence that the cause of his suffering has been removed. No pathology is ever ended so long as an enervating habit is practiced. Tobacco, coffee, tea, alcohol, wrong food, anger, envy, hate, passion, lack of poise, and all other nerve stimulants, or irritants, break down man's vital energy and help to kill. Any stimulant uses up nerve energy. It is not possible to get well so long as you continue to enervate yourself by stimulants.