The cause of any phenomenon is the sum of all antecedent conditions necessary to bring about the effect, result, condition, or phenomenon. An antecedent is a determining factor--a contributory cause. An occasion is any particular agent, or event, or juncture of events presenting a need or exigency requiring action. It is that which leads out or brings about the action.

If this definition is accepted, it becomes evident that the cause of any condition can never be stated in full; for, in a sense everything is the cause of everything. The chain of causation is too intricate to ever be completely unraveled. Explanations, therefore, seek the nearest causes, or those which have been noticeably potent in bringing about the condition observed. It is the duty of scientific investigation to establish for each observed effect the immediately prevenient cause; but, since nothing results from a single antecedent, to discover the antecedents is more important.

We have drawn a sharp line of distinction between biogony and pathology. We have shown that pathology undergoes evolution from minute beginnings to advanced states. We have shown that the vital force is the power by which biogony is--the cause. It remains now for us to find the cause or causes of pathology.

Let us begin by recounting the general steps in pathological development as outlined by Graham and Jennings. It is interesting to note that in his Cholera (1883), Graham clearly developed the fact that (enervation, brought on by overwork, emotional overirritation, overeating, wrong food, sexual abuses, "unnatural stimulants," etc., reduces the power of the eliminating organs to "separate out and throw off the impurities (waste) of the blood," so that "the blood is not so thoroughly purified." He says "the performance of the functions of life and the welfare of each and every part of the system, depend upon the integrity of the nerves, in supplying the necessary vital energy."

Jennings traced the development of pathology through three grand stages as follows: 1. "Declension of power." No part of the body, he assures us, ever falters in its function until its energies have been reduced to a point below that necessary to sustain it in normal function. 2. "Impairment and derangement of function, functional disease." When the energies of an organ or group of organs have been reduced to a point below that essential to the maintenance of healthy function, its functions are impaired. In a sound state of the body, when all the parts are sufficiently supplied with power, there may be a large temporary diminution of the power of one or more organs of the body, without any derangement of function, but when the general stock of energy is reduced to a supply barely adequate for ordinary use, any reduction below that level must be followed by derangement. When such a condition exists and the body is subjected to circumstances that require more energy to maintain its function at the standard-level of comfortable health, than is required under the usual conditions of; life, then impairment of function must follow. Sudden and great changes in the weather, exposure, fatigue, overeating, excitement, grief, shock, prostrate the greatly enervated, not the vigorous and strong.

Every organ and part of an organ is liable to functional impairment as a result of a reduction of its sustaining energy. Only where there is a pinching scantiness of functional power, do organs fail to carry on their work efficiently. Jennings says: "We have no vitometer by which to graduate this defect, and it is only when power is reduced so low that action falters, or structure changes, that we can begin to measure the damaged condition of the body; and from this point the symptoms become our guide, and our only guide to knowledge of the quality or kind, seat and extent of disease--in the common use of the term." 3. "Structural impairment, or change--organic disease." Every part of the body is susceptible of change or impairment of its structure and substance. This results from functional impairment.. A change in the substance or structure of an organ can only be reached through functional impairment; although the action of pathogenic substances is primarily and directly upon the substances of the organs of the body, yet the injurious effect would be discovered first--if we had any means of measuring the vitality of its parts--in a reduction of power. Want of power, then, the most vital kind of power is the immediate cause of impaired action and structure.

Unfortunately, Jennings failed to discern that "disease" is poisoning; or, that weakness is not "disease." For this reason he failed to recognize the office of what he called "arrears of expurgation" in the production of pathology. Graham did understand the evil that flows from the failure of the eliminating organs to "separate out and throw off the impurities." We may briefly summarize the principle developed by these two men, in this order--wrong living, lowered nerve energy, faulty elimination, impure blood, functional "disease" (crises), and organic "disease." Let us begin with: