After pointing out that the elements of nutrition--warmth, moisture, food, exercise, etc.--are the requirements of health, growth and maintenance, Dr. Densmore says: "This is a universal law in organic life, as applicable to a grass plot or a tree as to the organism of an animal. If a grass-plot has sunshine, warmth, moisture, and fertility, (or food), there is health and growth. If food or moisture or warmth be taken away, there is sickness; and if continued, there is death. No medicine is needed to secure a restoration of health and vigor to the plant that has thus been made ill; all that is necessary is to supply any or all of the lacking elements of nutrition--light, warmth, moisture, or food.

"It is a universal law of organic life, be it vegetable or animal, that all tendencies are toward health. It is as natural to be well as it is to be born.

"Note the grass-plot before instanced. It may be ever so brown from the summer sun and drought, or scarcity of fertility; if disorganization be not already set in, if there yet be life, all that is needed to restore the beautiful green color and vigorous growth to the grass is to supply it with whatever elements of nutrition it has been deprived of--sunshine, warmth, rain, or fertility--and it at once begins to mend; in a few weeks green blades have taken the place of seared ones, and in a short time there is often no trace of the previous lack of vigor.

"As for the grass-plot, it is quite universally known that growth and vigor always follow upon a supply of the necessary conditions--sunshine, warmth, moisture, and food. If from the outset the plant has had these necessaries, unvarying vigor results; if the gardener perceives a failing color in the plant, or any other sign of disease, he knows that some of the necessary conditions of grass life are lacking. If this inquiry be extended to an examination of the more complex forms of life, it will be found that the same law obtains. The fishes of the sea, the birds of the air, and the wild animals of the woods are quite usually found in perfect health and vigor. When the fisherman or hunter finds an exception to this rule, he knows at once that some of the normal conditions of animal life has been wanting; there has been a lack (in the absence of poison or injury from violence) of food, or water, or light, or warmth.

"It will be seen after the most searching scrutiny from whatever point of view, that a tendency toward an abounding health and vigor is inseparable from life; and, moreover, whenever and wherever the normal conditions of healthy life have been interfered with, and weakness, lassitude, or any of the symptoms of ill-health appear, as soon as the conditions natural to the organism are restored, a movement toward health is always sure to follow.

"The law of cure may be defined as the unfailing tendency on the part of the living organism toward health; and since disease; as above defined, is but the expression and result of a disturbance of the conditions natural to life, the only useful office of the physician is to restore those conditions; and there will be seen to follow, as a result of the law of cure, the disappearance of disease and the establishment of Health."--How Nature Cures, pp. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

How different from this is the usual practice! The physician is the creature of his education, and his treatment is sure not only not to follow Hygienic methods, but to rely upon drugs; for, he feels called upon to interfere with the workings of nature. He builds more and more complications as his treatment continues. The impropriety of calling such a harmful force into the sick-room should be plainly evident.

If you imagine, from the above, that you can so live as to produce trouble, and can, then, undergo a fast and a general upbuilding program, and, after recovery, be as you were before, you are mistaken. No disturbance of the normal course of the functions and no alterations of the structures of the body can pass away and leave things just as they were. A permanent damage is done; a "scar" is left behind that, while perhaps not immediately appreciable, is there to tell against you in the long run.

Resistance can be built up in every one to a greater or less extent, but probably never again to the point of original strength. For practical purposes, and granting a moderate degree of vigilance, every patient who has been relieved by Hygienic methods can increase his reserve of vitality to a point amply sufficient to meet the emergencies of a normal and active life. It will be wise to take account of stock frequently, and be ready to repeat from time to time, if necessary, the "rest cure," which gave nature her precious opportunity to rejuvenate him.

We stay "cured" until we build "disease" all over again. There is no permanent "cure" of any so-called "disease" and there is no so-called "disease" from which man suffers that will not stop when cause is removed. Stop smoking and heart weakness subsides; resume habitual smoking and heart weakness returns. This "kindergarten babel" is necessary because even educated people do not appear to know that, everything being equal, like causes produce like effects. The sober man becomes drunk again if he returns to drink; the "cured" man becomes sick again if he returns to a "disease"-producing mode of living.

The age-long quest for cures has been carried on from the point of view of "disease," not health. What will cure "disease," not upon what does health depend, has been the question in the minds of the searchers and researchers. The significance of the principle that "the whole needeth not a physician" has been missed. Nature aims at integrity--wholeness-- and the real Hygienist has inscribed on his banner--Integrity versus Patchwork. It is possible to attain such a high degree of health as to prevent us from being made ill by causes so slight as those suggested. On the other hand; a perfectly healthy person may easily become unhealthy through wrong living.

I am not interested so much in teaching you how to repair yourself after wrong eating and bad living habits have damaged you, as I am in teaching you how to live and eat to avoid the damages.

Health is above all a matter of nutritive, vital and psychical hygiene, and cannot be acquired through unwise treatments which limit themselves to the destruction of microbes or to the chemical (drug), mechanical, thermal, electrical and emotional overexcitation of certain organic functions and processes. There is always the temptation for the practitioner to rely upon his "remedies" and neglect the benefits of healthful circumstances.

We must put our physiological house in order, not by myriads of local treatments as physicians, with a financial interest in our suffering, are bent upon doing, but by duly adjusting ourselves to the ordered harmony of Nature upon which every organ and function in our body depends. We cannot expect Nature to alter herself and accommodate herself to our morbid appetances and selfish ends. Our real object is to bring self-knowledge to the people and teach them to guide themselves. The patient cannot learn these if he is taught the current conceptions of sickness (microbes, exposure, etc.) and the current conceptions of cure obtained through a purely symptomatic fight with the exclusive assistance of drugs, serums, and knives.