Under the heading of fluxes I intend to treat acute and chronic discharges, such as "colds", "catarrhs", "running sores", etc.

A few years ago the medical head of a sanitarium with which I was connected, said to me, with reference to a vaginal discharge in a case of uterine cancer; "I'll stop that discharge yet." A few mornings later, while walking over the sanitarium grounds with my wife, I met the doctor. He said, as he came up, "I finally got that discharge stopped. I did it with an ice bag." He passed on and I remarked to my wife; "That is compounded murder." One hour later the patient was in a septic coma, in another half-hour she was dead.

The value of drainage in wounds and abscesses is recognized, but its value in uterine cancer is not. An abscess in the ear presents no danger so long as it drains well. Danger arises only when the pus becomes pent-up. When the doctor suppressed the drainage in the above case; that is, when he stopped the bleeding by which the body was flushing away the septic cancerous matter, he sealed the patient's death warrant. The pent-up "secretion" killed the patient.

To suppress a discharge is to "lock-up", as it were, in the body, the septic materials expelled by means of the discharge, thus, compelling the body to develop another channel of vicarious elimination, providing, of course, the powers of life are not overwhelmed before this can be established. If this does not immediately destroy life it may result in serious damage to the body.

A "running sore" is a drainage canal, a fontanelle, through which systemic poisons are discharged. The discharge is not all locally produced. The elimination of sugar through the urine, in diabetes and some other states, is a means of protecting life. If the elimination of sugar is checked without first correcting the nutritional perversion upon which it depends, the trouble will be metamorphosed into some acute febrile "disease", or into coma. Any sudden tax upon the already impaired nervous system of the diabetic, any influence that suddenly dissipates nerve energy--heavy eating, exposure, chilling, over-work, worry--that interrupts the exit of sugar, may precipitate a fatal coma.

"Colds" and "catarrhs", whether acute or chronic, and in whatever part of the mucous membranes they are located, are characterized by the flow of large quantities of abnormal mucous--watery, thick, white, yellow or green. In a cold, large quantities of mucous are excreted through the membranes of the nose and throat, in leucorrhea large quantities of mucous are expelled through the membranes of the vagina.

Two antecedent conditions are responsible for fluxes of this kind-- namely, enervation, and plethora. The one results in checked elimination with toxic retention; the other in nutritive redundancy--particularly carbohydrate excess in catarrhs--and both of these conditions necessitate the establishment of channels of compensatory or vicarous elimination. A "cold" or a "catarrh" is simply a safety valve. Waste and toxins that are in excess of the excretory capacities of the regular or ordinary channels of elimination are excreted through the mucous membranes. These membranes cooperate in eruptive and other "diseases".

We do not catch a "cold," as popularly believed, nor does it catch us. Instead of ' catching something we are getting rid of something, and the process is too hot and feverish to be called a cold. The prevalent, widespread fear of colds, the opinion that if they are not "broken up" or "thrown off" they will "throw" one into pneumonia or consumption is a delusion. The tendency of a cold is to "throw" one directly the other way. If colds are let alone and not suppressed or interfered with, they will be shorter in duration, more regular in their course, will leave the system in an improved condition and develop less often.

The eliminative work accomplished by catarrh is plainly evident in the following facts presented by Burton-Opitz's text-book of Physiology : "Cilia are found in the respiratory passage, where they beat towards the outside. Their function is to move the particles of dust into the pharnyx, whence they are flushed into the stomach by saliva. It is true, however, that a certain proportion of dust always gets beyond these ciliated regions into the finer bronchioles and alveoli of the lungs. Thus, the domestic animals and inhabitants of the cities commonly present lungs considerably stained with dust. It is true, however, that a much greater amount of this foreign material would be able to enter if these tubules were not ciliated.

"Particularly heavy depositions of dust are frequently found in the lungs of coal miners and marble cutters. Nature eventually endeavors to dislodge them by a catarrhal inflammatory reaction which may at times assume the general character of tuberculosis."