Leaving the directly harmful effects of drugs aside for the moment, we do not believe in the possibility of a "cure" in the ordinary acceptance of the word.

You can no more undergo a cure that will keep you cured without continued care, than you can take a bath that will keep you clean without further effort for the rest of your life. Any cure to be lasting must be kept up all the time if we are to remain healthy.

The plain fact of being alive means that all the time body cells are breaking down and so manufacturing acids and other debris. Even so, the body happily keeps itself wholesome and clean if honestly cared for—cured, in the correct sense of the word, if you live reasonably. Probably it is "The Angel at the Gate", that is why some people dislike our philosophy. They hate the idea that in the end, they alone, with their own daily habits of living, decide their good health, or lack of it. But whether you like it or not, that, within limits, is the almost universal fact. Exceptions do occur because of accidents, and to some extent, your present health stems from how your father and mother lived for years before you were born, and even from the habits of their fathers and mother, back to the third and fourth generations.

If their and your own margins of safety allowed for a full disposal of the body’s day-by-day production of acids and broken down cell debris, then physically, you are set for the maintenance of good health into a vigorous old age. But you cannot possibly remain healthy if you are unable to eject your daily accumulations of debris quickly. It is that difficulty which produces so many serious problems for the city dweller. A body which does not succeed in keeping itself clean, gradually builds up deposits of rubbish until it crowds the vital machinery. That is why, and when, a "house cleaning" is called for. What is referred to by Nature Cure as a "health crisis" means that this rubbish, by an extraordinary effort, is being worked out of the body in one or the other of many forms—boils, pimples, rashes, discharges, scurf, colds, diarrhea, fluxes, and fevers. All these are useful house cleaning efforts as we understand them—the natural way for the body to throw off any excess impurities. But the medical doctor, instead of seeing these efforts as something to be thankful for, something to leave alone, convinces himself, and many of us, that the body’s actions must be opposed.