A slight sense of uneasiness, we call irritation; if it is severe, we call it pain. Irritability and excitability are terms employed to describe the ability, disposition, or property of cells and tissues to respond to the influence of "stimuli"--appropriate and inappropriate.

It is unfortunate that with our loose use of terms, the words irritation, excitation and excitement are used to signify both the application of an irritant to a tissue, and the action or response of the tissue or organ when so irritated. In other words, in regular usage, both the vital excitement and the means or process by which the excitement is aroused are called irritation. Apply a small amount of mustard to the skin and there follows a stinging, burning sensation, redness, mild swelling and vesication. The mustard is called an irritant; its "action" is called irritation. But the burning and redness, and the swelling and vesication, all of which are vital actions, are also called irritation.

Irritation is purely physiological action. It does not matter what the irritant may be--fire, sword, poison, or electricity--the irritation itself is vital action; is a defensive response to the injurious agent. It is necessary that we distinguish between the irritation (vital excitement) and the thing that occasions the irritation (the irritant) and not confuse these under the same term.

In like manner no distinction is made between the "irritation" provoked by poisonous substances, harsh or ill treatment, etc., and the "irritation" which is a response to physiologically compatible things, like food, which "excite" the organs to the full performance of their physiological functions. This comes of permitting medical men to dictate the terms to be employed. Due to their adherence to drug-therapy, they are constitutionally incapable of differentiating between the body's reaction to food, for instance, and its reaction to poison or violence.

It is quite true that whether the action of the body is provoked by poison or violence, or elicited by food, air, water, sunshine, etc., the action is always produced by one and the same cause--vital power--and is always sustaining, conservative, and curative. But there is a vital distinction between the two forms of response. The organism reacts to food, air, sunshine, etc., to appropriate these and make them part of itself; it reacts to poisons, violence, etc., to reject them, escape them and in various ways to defend itself against them.

Irritation, inflammation and fever are not essentially different from each other and are not entitled to the appellation of pathology. Irritation corresponds to certain qualities of the organism. It is vital, or physiological action aroused and concentrated for the purpose of performing extra duty. It is a protective response of the living, irritable organism to the goading, pricking influence of the irritant. If we close our eyes when an intense light is thrown into them; if the cow shakes her skin to cause the flies on her to cease biting, the purpose of these forms of irritation is to protect against or remove an offending agent. The excitement, or irritation in the stomach in vomiting and in the bowels in diarrhea, is defensive vital action and should not be regarded as evil in itself.

Irritation is a most faithful sentinel and tends to preserve us from injury. Faulty or strained positions produce irritation and this causes us to alter our position. If we do not alter our position the irritation becomes pain. Heat provokes irritation, which if prolonged or intensified becomes pain. Irritation no less than pain is intended to compel us to get away from the heat. Whether the action is "high" or "low", "regular" or "irregular", local or general, the vital process called irritation is always a lawful and orderly adjustment of means to ends.

I am well aware that there are those who cannot comprehend the lawful and orderly adjusting of means to ends that is present in so-called "disease." If the bowels are "sluggish," these must be made to act promptly, else the patient will die of poisoning; if heart action is rapid, it must be depressed, else immediate death will occur; if an irritant in the air passages occasions coughings, the coughing must be checked, etc. In other words, mistaking the processes of life for the devouring work of the fell monster, "disease," they seek to suppress, and subdue these processes.

Irritants demand to be removed because of their ability to injure the tissues. Indeed it is the injury they inflict that occasions the irritation. But it is one thing to remove an irritant and another to depress the nerves. Irritation should be treated only by removing the occasion for it. In no case should the power of the nervous system to produce the "irritated action" be destroyed, or inhibited.

The prevailing notion that "over excited" nervous action is disease and should be treated by depriving the nerves of the power to produce action, has led to the use of "medicines" called narcotics and drugless methods that depress ("soothe") the nervous system. The deadening of the nerves permits us to endure the irritant, of which we are no longer conscious, and thus it continues to damage us. Local narcotization must also greatly impair the local reparative processes as much as general narcotiztion. Sedatives are agents which directly depress the vital powers and, as such action is not consonant with biological law, we cannot accept these agents nor their influences.

None are so nervously irritable and disquieted as the habitual users of nerve-quieting "remedies", whatever their form or nature. The healthy person making use of these things soon becomes the same way.