A child starts life under modern conditions of meddlesome midwifery, over-feeding, wrong feeding, coddling, over-clothing, too much handling, lack of fresh air and sunshine, noise, too much excitement, etc. He develops indigestion with flatulency, resulting in colicky pains in the abdomen which prevent him from sleeping. Frequent colds, and diarrheas and various forms of skin-eruptions develop as a result. These are palliated with poisonous drugs and their causes ignored.

The child grows older and the conditions and care, if anything, grow worse. Colds, sore throat, enlarged tonsils, adenoids, and the so-called "children's disease" follow it through the next few years of life. The child is drugged, inoculated, vaccinated and its tonsils and adenoids are removed. All the while the causes of its troubles are ignored.

Defective teeth, poor eyesight, defective development, a chronic catarrhal condition, and various acute "diseases" accompany the child on to adolescence. Puberty arrives and this may carry him by sheer force of developmental power through adolescence with but a part of the childhood troubles.

At adolescence he learns to smoke, drink tea, coffee, cocoa, chocolate, alcohol, soda fountain slops, etc., to stay up late at night, and to masturbate, and, as his sphere of life widens, he comes in contact with an ever increasing number of impairing influences. This period is marked with various forms of "acute disease," the appearance of asthma, hay fever, nervous troubles, skin eruptions, the first appearance of gray hair, early beginnings of baldness, pasty complexion, and often more serious troubles. The slight, but frequent headache, or other aches and pains, light but frequent, the tired feeling, the blotched, pimply face of the adolescent youth, the pale, ghastly face of the young lady, which she seeks to hide behind a camouflage of rouge and powder--these are small things; but, if neglected, they grow into larger things. They are early signs of deterioration.

Adulthood is reached, and the hair begins to fall out, lines and wrinkles form, sleeplessness and various acute crisis develop. In women painful menstruation develops, if indeed they have not had this from the beginning. They may become morbid, and perhaps more or less hysterical.

The excesses and dissipations of the period from twenty to thirty-five, coupled with imprudent eating and frequent drugging--catharatics, headache remedies, bicarbonate of soda, etc.--and operations, soon lay a secure foundation for "chronic disease." The sensuous and voluptuous usually keep up their bad habits until collapse of function calls a halt. Anorexia and nausea, perhaps, vomiting, force them to eat less. Repugnance to smoke and drink forces them to cut down on these for a period. A "break-down" compels them to rest. Such crises are common in the life of the average man and woman.

As soon as the crisis is over, these patients return, unrestrained and untrained, ignorant and undisciplined, to the same unwholesome mode of living they pursued before the crisis developed. And in this they are encouraged by their relatives and physicians, by their nurses and friends, and by conventional examples all around them. Indeed they are often coerced by ridicule, ostracism and persuasion to return to the prior follies, should they manifest a tendency or desire to live sensibly. The discerning will readily observe that in all the prevailing modes of treating the sick, there is no lesson taught, no discipline enforced, no condition instituted that is of any value in health or in a subsequent state of disease. The intellect of the patient is left blank and, more often than otherwise, his body is a scene of devastation.

At first these conditions are only functional and periodic, but as their causes are continued and intensified, the affected organs undergo structural changes. Anemia, gastric ulcer, visceroptosis, chronic rheumatism, tuberculosis, etc., now develop. When middle life is reached, and sometimes before, nervous "diseases", insanity, "diseases" of the heart and arteries, diabetes, Bright's disease, tuberculosis and cancer mark the final stages of degeneration.

From their functional beginnings in infancy, to their organic endings in middle life, these so-called "diseases" represent a continuous development out of ever increasing causes. Every chronic "disease" is of slow development and cannot exist without previous systemic impairment. "Functional derangements," says Dr. Tilden, "are of the same nature and from the same universal cause that ends in all organic so-called diseases. All so-called diseases are, from beginning to end, the same evolutionary process. All symptom-complexes--diseases--from their initiation to the ending, are effects, and the most intense study of any phase or stage of their progress will not throw any light on the cause."--Toxemia Explained.

He thus pictures the gradual evolution of pathology: "When the organism is enervated from the thousand-and-one influences incident to life, and intoxication has brought on such a state of metabolism that the organism is overwhelmed by waste--excretory products--it is then that inherited diatheses take on activity. If the diathesis is tubercular, gouty, neurotic, or of any of the special organs of the body, it is in keeping with the laws of health and life for the affection peculiar to the diathesis to spring up. If the causes are not removed, the affection will remain functional for a time: then organic change will take place. It is then that affections become diseases; it is then that irritation and inflammation from indigestion become uleceration of the bowels or stomach, and the ulcer perforates, and death ensues from peritonitis caused by the perforation. The peritonitis was caused by the perforation; perforation was caused by ulceration; ulceration was caused by inflammation; inflammation (catarrh) was caused by irritation; irritation was caused by indigestion; indigestion was caused by fermentation; fermentation was caused by enervation; and enervation was caused by the thousand-and-one influences which build or destroy the body and mind of men, depending on whether they are wisely or unwisely applied."--Impaired Health, Vol. 1. p, 258.

Each step is built on or out of the preceding one, as a result of the continued operation and intensification of the same cause or causes that produced the initial stages. Every so-called chronic "disease," every bit of advanced pathology, local or general, is of slow development. Each of the so-called "acute diseases" is a crisis and many of them occur before organic change takes place and chronic "disease" appears. Each toxemic crisis is palliated by drugs or treatment, which produce greater enervation, causes are ignored, and there grows an increased toleration for toxins. Chronic "diseases" are the legitimate outcome of palliated acute troubles.