By suppression is meant thwarting, subduing, inhibiting, suspending, repressing, and destroying the automatic or spontaneous efforts of the body to defend itself from injury, repair damages and eliminate offending agents. In previous chapters, the methods employed to suppress inflammation, fever, coughing, pain, etc., have been discussed and their evils noted. It is intended here to consider these matters in a more general way.

Efforts at suppression grew logically out of the false views of the nature of "disease" which mankind has entertained for ages. The fundamental error of the many schools of physic has been that of viewing irritation, inflammation, fever, pain, diarrhea, coughing, and other physiological actions as evils in themselves. The doctrine that these modes of vital manifestation, these peculiar forms of organic behavior, constitute the "orders of disease," forms the false foundation in principle underlying all systems of medicine. Upon this false foundation they erected their systems of practice--that the practice of medicine should destroy irritation, inflammation, fever, etc.

This false principle leads to the belief that every symptom is noxious and, as such, must be stamped out with relentless determination. The illness must be stayed, the temperature must be lowered, pain subdued, coughing made to cease, diarrhea checked, and the patient must be made to eat despite lack of desire for food.

So long as these symptoms, singly or in the aggregate are regarded as "disease," anything that destroys or suspends the power of the body to manifest them, will be considered curative. If these functional modifications are regarded as evil, "remedial" efforts will, accordingly, be directed towards suppressing these symptoms. For example, if fever, a vital manifestation or adjustment, is mistaken for the evil (the "disease"), then lowering of temperature will be made the chief object of the "therapeutics of fevers." If the fever actually constitutes the evil, then its reduction should constitute cure.

Exaltation of function, as seen in biogony, represents an effort of the body to eliminate pathogen and repair damages. In this respect it is desirable and beneficial under certain conditions. Such exaltation of function indicates a wrong somewhere and this wrong should be searched for and removed without depressing or lessening the sum of the vital energy. To believe that it is necessary to check the fever, stop the cough, relieve the headache, "dry up" the expectorations, stop the sweating, etc., by means of drugs and injections, is to disregard the role of the natural defenses. We simply oppose our treatment to spontaneous cure and suppress a bearable inconvenience only to have it superceded by a worse trouble.

It is an established law of the animal economy that, when any part of it is subjected to irritants, poisons, or injury by whatever means, so that it is depressed, or "over-excited," the "action" from other parts accumulates at the point of injury or "excitement," to defend it against injury, or to repair it. The whole organism rushes to its support and this support is commonly mistaken for evil.

This accumulation or concentration (mobilization) of defensive forces may be forcibly withdrawn by irritating a counter part--counter irritation--and thus "disease produced by local irritation may be cured by counter irritation." This forcible drawing off of the curative forces is a form of suppression.

The right of the body to control its own affairs in "disease" has been denied by the members of all schools of healing, in all the ages, and every effort has been made to force the body to act as the physician thought best. In this respect the sick body has been regarded as an ill-mannered child that must be whipped or forced into good manners or good health. And this is what we mean by suppressing "disease."

Jennings says: "The symbols of distress will not exceed the reality, that is, the real danger or difficulty that existed in this case in a latent form, back of all the symptoms, was fully commensurate with the aggregate of phenomena that will be manifested in the whole progress of development; for it would require at least as much attractive force to change the current of vital action, as it would to continue it in its natural or usual channel. The symptoms then, or the deviations from the natural condition in function and structure, are the spontaneous and necessary result of an embarrassed state of the vital funds, and the latter can only be improved, and the former restored by the regular administration of the vital economy, with but little aid directly from the hand of art. ***and it would be unwise, if it were practicable, to compel a return of that sooner or faster than it will return by due course of law, after the object for which it was withdrawn is accomplished; for it is now doing more good where it is, than it could do if it were immediately remanded back to its old position. *** Large bleedings, a free use of cold water and other powerful perturbatiug or annoying means might probably bring decided and temporary relief to this woman; not by 'helping nature' in any wise, but by compelling her to desist from her present purpose, and send home detached forces against the ruthless hand of art."--Philosophy of Human Life, pp. 164 and 165.

Is not this principle of diverting the energies of life from one "field of battle" to another field, to defend the body against another foe, the principle upon which medicine always worked. Indeed, did not Galen's "law of antipathies"--(coiltraria contrariis curantur), and Hanhnemann's "law of similars" (similia similibus curantur), or the cure of one "disease" by producing another--opposite or similar, "disease," really recognize the fact that they subdued one "disease" by producing "another." This idea that one "disease" can be made to antagonize, neutralize or supersede "another" was called a "law of the animal economy."

Trall declared, that it is really no law at all, but: "It is the resistance that the vital powers make to morbific agents, which pathologists have misnamed a law of the animal economy. Two diseased actions, or diseases in two different parts of the body, or obstructing or offending materials in two or more parts or organs, will manifest different phenomena from what are observed when one part or organ only is affected, because vital resistance is then distributed to several points instead of being concentrated at one.

"If a person is laboring under a fever, that commotion of the organism which we denominate the febrile paroxysm is the manifestation of the vital struggle to defend the organic domain against some morbific cause, or to expel some injurious matter. If the vital powers are making the principal effort to the surface, the introduction of a cathartic dose of epsom salts would divert some part of the vital effort to the bowels to meet, defend against, and expel the new enemy which is committing its ravages there, and thus purgation would result, while the depurating or remedial effort to the skin would be materially diminished. The seat of war would be changed or the battle-field divided, but so far from being a 'friend in need' the saline purgation, by drawing off and wasting a portion of the vital power would only prove a 'foe indeed.' "--Hydropathic Encyclopedia, Vol. II, pp. 12-13.