Dr. Hugh S. Cummings, Surgeon-General of the United States Public Health Service says: "Physical examinations of school children have shown that defects are common in the lowest grades. Data obtained by the officers of the Public Health Service showed that enlarged tonsils and enlarged cervical glands were most prevalent at six or seven years of age. The incidence of adenoids was high at six with its peak at eight years. Speech defects were most numerous in the six and seven year-old groups, and decay of teeth was widespread at seven. Other investigators have found that poor posture is common in children from two to sis, and that many visual defects are found in children from two to seven."

The period between the ages of two and six is one of rapid development and if the requisite nutriment is not supplied and if there are present factors which impair nutrition, the child may change, in what seems an incredibly short time, from a normal to a defective one. The foundation for the so-called degenerative diseases is laid and it is only a matter of time until the accumulating causes will produce one or more of these, unless of course, death should occur first.

Drs. Hartman, and Sanders, of the Pathology Department of the University of Texas, stated before the Texas Medical Association, in Brownsville, May 24, 1929, that post mortem findings on patients ranging from 14 to SO years reveal that practically every kidney shows some structural damage "due to 'diseases' suffered earlier in life."

A few years ago a physician investigated the health-history of what he called his "well patients," meaning those whose internal organs were not seriously impaired. He found that of the total number 100 per cent. had had measles, chicken-pox, or whooping cough in childhood, most of them reporting they had had all three; 70 per cent. had had more or less severe attacks of tonsillitis or quincy; half of them had had "colds" or something else that the attending physicians called influenza, one-fourth of them had had scarlet fever; 17 per cent. gave a history of diphtheria; 13 per cent. had had pneumonia; 7 per cent. had had typhoid fever; and 3 per cent. gave a history of tuberculosis; half of them had lost one or more permanent teeth; 33 per cent. had had their tonsils removed; 20 per cent. had been operated on for appendicitis; and almost every one of these "well patients" had some more or less serious disorder of the digestive tract.

Had the physician carried his search a little farther, he would have discovered that his "well patients" were not healthy, except when judged by a very low standard. They all had many evidences of deterioration in their bodies. It would be interesting to know how many of them wore glasses, what percentage were bald-headed, how many of them made frequent use of aspirin and bicarbonate of soda, due to headache, and indigestion. Just why were they patients if they were well?

Almost every man and woman in civilized life today has something wrong with him by the time he is thirty-five. They are sick and, even though they pass for healthy, one who knows them intimately soon discovers that they are not really so.

We get a still deeper insight into the "health" of the "well patient" when we learn that one out of every six "normally healthy" women over forty and one out of every eight "normally healthy" men over forty die of cancer. Ninety-two out of every one hundred of these "normally healthy" men and women have dental troubles. The majority of "normally healthy" men and women over forty have kidney trouble or heart trouble, or liver trouble, or nervous trouble, or diabetes, or vascular trouble. The prevailing normal standard is so low that the death rate in peace times is higher than the death rate from the casualties of war among warring armies.

The breaking down of the body begins in infancy, often long before, and continues, with increasing speed as we grow older and are subjected to an ever-increasing number and amount of impairing influences. The degenerative changes show up first, as eye defects, teeth defects, posture defects, failure in development, weakness, and "susceptibility to diseases;" later by decayed teeth, falling hair, blindness, deafness, hardening of the arteries, hardening of other tissues of the body; destruction of tissues in various organs, gray hair, bald-headedness, feeble mindedness, and all permanent pathological changes anywhere in the body. It sums up in "Bright's disease, diabetes, tuberculosis, cancer, brain and nervous "diseases," "diseases" of the heart and arteries, etc., and culminates, finally, in death.

There is strong resistance to the causes of degeneration and efforts to repair damages. There are frequent acute reactions against the toxic condition that is slowly undermining life. This fight against the causes of destruction is manifested by such things as colds, diarrhea, constipation, hives, fever, tonsillitis, enlarged tonsils, adenoids, enlarged cervical glands, indigestion, measles, scarlet fever, etc. These manifest in infancy and follow the child through childhood, youth and adulthood.

It is the regular practice to remove the tonsils and adenoids, cut out the cervical glands, plug the teeth, fit glasses to the eyes, suppress the acute reactions, the biogonies, give laxatives, serums, vaccines and drugs, and ignore all of the causes that produce these degenerations and make the biogonies necessary. Such patch work and suppressive methods overlook the fact that the eye defects, teeth defects, postural defects, glandular enlargements, etc., are not "specific diseases," but stem from common causes.

The bearing of all that has gone before upon both the prevention of "disease" and the care of the sick must now engage our attention. There never was a "disease" begun, that did not continue without intermission, till cured subsequent to the removal of its causes, or till relieved by death. The conventional methods of dealing with such conditions are faulty in that they consider an individual to be healthy, however evil his mode of living, if no physical signs of disease are to be found. The causes that produce these signs and the period of preparation that precedes the signs, are ignored, perhaps; even, unknown to the "schools of medicine." The nescience of "modern medical science" with respect to early pathology, constitutes a fatal hiatus in its structure.

Pathologists have made great advances in the determination of pathology and of differential pathological states, but this has caused them to attach too much importance to special points of pathology, which, therefore receive exclusive "therapeutic" attention.

Our knowledge of actual and differential local pathology has been greatly improved, thanks to the searching character of modern inquiry; while the causes upon which these states directly depend have been most unaccountably ignored. Our "therapeutics" have been directed, not at the removal of causes, but to the palliation of their effects--to the suppression of symptoms and the removal of local parts. The common results of practice are, consequently transient; the actual pathology continues, while the symptoms fluctuate. While intent on the multitudinous aspects of pathology we fail to comprehend its essential nature as related to ultimate causes.