The word "cure" has two diametrically opposite meanings. It is an equivoke and an unwary orthopath is liable to harm himself by its homonymy. It should be discarded by the Hygienist altogether, or otherwise he should state clearly the meaning he is using it with. Orthopathically, cure implies a reinstatement of health in a sick organism and involves three distinct processes--namely (1) cure is a physiological process and involves the normal and "abnormal" actions (biogonies) of the body in throwing off the causes of pathology and repairing damages; (2) cure is the removal of cause, that is, the removal and correction of all enervating influences; (3) cure is the restoration of a positive, vigorous condition of the whole body and is brought about by the causes of health. Cure is not a fetish, to be given with the idea that, in spite of law and order, health will be restored. There is no cure outside of evolution under favorable environment. We cannot cure; we cannot usurp one of nature's prerogatives. There can be no real or lasting cure except that produced and maintained in a physiological manner, through the observance of the laws of wholesome living.

Cure may properly be said to be the natural and spontaneous return to normal condition and function after the purposes of "abnormal" function have been accomplished. The return to normal function, after the occasion for "abnormal" function is removed, does not require to be aided or forced. It is as natural as the return of water to its natural channel after the obstructions have been removed from the channel.

The disposition of natural forces may safely be left to natural law. The conduct of the forces of life under all circumstances and conditions of life, always and of necessity will be lawful and orderly. The forces of life can no more violate the laws of life than the force of gravity can violate the laws of gravity, or than the forces of chemistry can violate the laws of matter and chemistry. Every action and operation of the living body in health or in "disease" is, and must be, in strictest harmony with the laws of life. Were it otherwise, did chaos and disorder reign in the vital or organic realm, life, health and "disease" would be as uncertain and fortuitious as the medical professions all conceive them to be.

There could be no science of life (biology), or science of function physiology, or science of cause (aetiology), or science of "disease" (pathology). Where chaos and uncertainty reign science is impossible. When the medical professions learn that law and order reign in the living realm, the search for "cures" will cease and a study of causes will begin. It is probably too much to expect this to occur in the lifetime of the present generation.

Therapeutically, cure is the application of remedies for the removal of "disease." "Diseases" are inimical entities--evil spirits, imps, germs, etc.--created by the theological god to prey on unchristianized souls and unvaccinated children. The so-called fallacy of entitative "diseases" hangs on in the lay and professional mind and continues to form a delusional foundation for a belief in cure and cures.

Therapeutic methods are all of the same nature,--that is, they are all methods of driving nature with a whip of scorpions, on the idea that the recuperative power of the body does not know how to free the body of the pathoferic matter that is back of the "disease." God's great scheme of human healthiness and endurance is regarded as a failure, and practitioners of all schools are agreed that the great thing to be done, in all cases of "disease," is to "arouse the prostrated vital energies as quickly as possible." Hence the never ceasing search for powerful "remedies" with which to combat "disease."

Life and its variable phenomena, rather than therapeutic methods and their uses, should furnish the proper field of our inquiry. From such a study we acquire a knowledge of how nature acts under different circumstances. We will then know what life ordinarily does, and how it will act under constraint and compulsion, and what are the proper conditions for its ascendency over more material, crude and chemical forces.

No theory of cause and cure that is out of joint with universal law and order can hope to last. A theory of cause and cure that is full of uncertainty and that gives rise to the wildest speculations concerning causation and that results in the ever-changing treatment that we observe in the practice of medicine; and that gives rise to so many new schools and cults, with contradictory theories and remedies that are poles apart, each with its following, and each claiming cures to its credit, cannot be based on truth.

The sick seek to be cured. The term cure not only implies a reinstatement of health in an organism that is suffering from "disease," but, in its common acceptation, it also has reference to the means whereby this is accomplished. Ordinarily cures are supposed to be wrought by some external aid. As has been said: "The man is doctored as he is booted and coated; and physiced, as he is fed, in the confident assurance that he is fitted and burnished for new service in either case." The sick would scarcely be said to be cured, however perfect the recovery, without the aid of some therapeutic measure. Hence, cure has reference to an external rather than to an internal resource. It is the operation or the effect of something external. The term, then, will convey different ideas to different persons, depending on their understanding of what the act intrinsically consists in.

Living things only are the subject of these effects, and it is to the different estimates, relatively, that are attached to the vital or recuperative power, and the part that treatment plays, that serves as a basis of the different views of this subject. Heteropaths consider "disease" as a destructive principle, or even an entity, that will inevitably consumate its work unless it is met by some neutralizing or counteracting agent. These consider vitality as little more than an onlooker at the show, until it is either vanquished or accepts the victory wrought in its behalf. Others reluctantly award some credit to the vital force, when stimulated or goaded by measures capable of drawing out its actions defensively. There are but few of us who place no dependence on any other means of recuperation, save those that are all efficient in continuing vital changes in the healthy state.

Shall the sick continue to believe that God or Nature has staked the chances of their recovery upon the accident of their acquaintance with Dr. Quack's Quinine Bitters, or Dr. Ad Justem's bone popping, or Dr. Meta Psychic's affirmations and denials? Shall we go on trying to conjure cures out of everything?

The very principles upon which most of the theories that constitute the "science" of the various schools are based were never established. They are, and always were, false, and consequently, the superstructures that have been erected upon them are the baseless fabric of visions, transient in their existence, passing away upon the introduction of new doctrines and hypotheses, like the dew before the rising sun. Method after method has arisen, flourished, fallen and been forgotten in rapid and melancholy succession, until the whole field is strewn with the disjointed materials and one may search among the chaos of rubbish for ages without finding one well established fact.