True to our ancient practice of lopping off branches instead of cutting away the roots, we suppress "colds," "fevers," "eruptions," "pains," and other symptoms; remove tonsils and adenoids, drain the sinuses, trim up the nose, pull or plug the teeth, cut out the gall bladder, excise the appendix, extirpate the ovaries, saddle the nose with a pair of eye-crutches, etc., and give no attention to the causes of the troubles we are trying to cut away or palliate. It seems never to occur to us that the teeth should not decay, the eyes should not fail, the child should not have to have a diarrhea, or a skin eruption, the tonsils should not have to enlarge. That these things are preventable seems to have escaped general notice.

A woman was examined and X-rayed a number of times by various doctors over a period of time. Her most important troubles were gall stones, weak heart, stomach trouble with "soreness of the stomach," catarrh, inflammation of the bladder, womb, and intestine, "pus" on the left tonsil, blood pressure 100, very weak, poor memory, dropped stomach (gasteroptosis). Four years before I saw her she had had an operation with her first child, since which time "her health had not been good."

Under the modern plan of giving over each so-called disease to a specialist, this woman required a gastro-enterologist, a gynecologist, a laryngologist, a psychologist or psychiatrist, a heart specialist, a surgeon, and finally (or first), a clinician to survey the whole field and parcel her out among the ex-spurts.

Another woman, age 23, sought my advice for pulmonary tuberculosis. In addition to the usual tubercular symptoms, she complained of numbness of the whole left hand and arm, painful urination, sinus troubles, abscessed teeth, pleurisy, dizziness upon arising, shingles, intense pain with menstruation each month, simple goitre, low blood pressure (90 mm), rapid pulse, ranging from 98 to 130 a minute, dropsical swelling of one foot, with infection of the bone, neuritis, and trouble with her hip where tubercular serum had been injected. She had had five operations, at least one of these a major operation; had had pneumonia five times, "influenza" nine times, typhus fever, typhoid fever, a "nervous breakdown," and had had to learn to walk again at the age of nine. At twenty-two years she weighed 90 pounds, having weighed two pounds at birth. Both her parents had died of tuberculosis. This woman was "diseased" throughout, and those local conditions which were the worst were labeled as "diseases." They were simply local manifestations of the persistence, accumulation and extension of the same common causes. Each of her so-called diseases is only a part of the universal deterioration of her body.

A. Rabagliati, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.S., Edin., grand old Hygienist of Great Britain, says: "most local ailments are only local expressions of general states. The specialist is by implication here relegated to his proper place, and is informed, if he has wit enough to read the lesson presented, to him, that it is not sufficient to remove an ovarian tumor, e.g., and that if nothing is said at the same time or subsequently as to the causes which induced it, a positive damage may be done to the woman, who may, therefore, while considering herself cured, proceed to manufacture one on the other side, or may find herself in a few years suffering from cancer in the stump of the previous one. Or the child who has tonsils removed, and adenoids cleared away, may and certainly will subsequently suffer from colds, bronchitis, broncho-pneumonia, and the like, and bye and bye probably from rheumatism or rheumatic fever, etc., unless at the same time or subsequently to the operation, his mother is advised to treat him differently from the way in which she treated him before. For, if she does not, a worse thing may happen to him in the future, and so the operation which was intended to benefit may eventuate in damage and not in good. Evidently the same causes which enlarged the tonsils and caused the adenoid growths on the soft palate and nose will, if they are allowed to go on, tend to make the child ill again either in the same or in some other way. Or the middle-aged woman, who has a chronic discharge from her nose, may get it stopped, indeed, by having her nose cauterized by a platinum wire made white hot by the electric current, only to find herself in a few months suffering from a cancer of the breast, which, being in turn removed, eventuates in cancer of the liver, for which there is no relief. These illustrations are, I may say, by no means imaginary, but are drawn from experience of cases in practice."--Air, Food and Exercises, pp. 129-130.

Local affections, or local manifestations, are far more serious as being marks of the general condition of the blood, than, they are as being mere local affections. If then, a sick person presents a number of "local diseases" they are not to be considered as independent, or idiopathic diseases, nor yet as symptomatic diseases, one derived from the other, but as concomitant or successive effects of a common cause. Thus when a man presents arthritis in one or more joints, valvular heart disease, or myocarditis, and tonsillitis, the first named local affections are not to be considered as having been caused by the tonsillitis, and as curable by removal of the tonsils, but these affections and the tonsillitis are to be regarded . as being due to a common fundamental cause and all, alike, curable by correcting or removing this common cause. Patients often develop endocarditis first, then arthritis, and then tonsillitis last. It is a bit hard to make tonsillitis responsible for these other two conditions when they develop in advance of the tonsillitis. It is just as logical in such a case to say that the endocarditis or arthritis caused the tonsillitis, as, in other cases, to hold tonsillitis responsible for these other conditions. The only tenable view is that the three conditions have a common origin, even if this does knock the idea of specific diseases due to specific causes into a cocked hat and support our contention for a unitary cause, and the unity of disease.

A study of the causes of pathology will prove more practical than a study of the pathology or its symptoms and subsequently treating the local "disease." Pathology is a changeling and a symptom is often nothing more than a single flicker of a moving-picture. Today it is present, tomorrow it is gone. Causes go on. The study of pathological changes which occur in an organ in chronic "diseases", let us say in the kidneys in Bright's disease, is all very well for the technician, although as Dr. Page observes, "If too much time is devoted to it, and to the relation of drugs thereto, by an individual, he may be, probably will be, the very least fitted to advise an inquirer who desires to know what he can do to be saved from disease and the supposed necessity of taking medicine." Now, "from a practical standpoint" as Page says, "when a man's sickness is attended with a certain set of symptoms, as albumen in the urine, final suppression of the urine and uremic poisoning--occasioned by a peculiar degeneration of the kidneys,*** we care nothing about the kind of change taking place in the kidney, but rather ask what kind of change in our habits will keep this, and all other organs of the body in healthy condition." To put this more simply, the study of the conditions of health is of far greater importance than is the study of pathology after this has developed from a failure to comply with the conditions of health.

Physicians of all schools tend to treat "disease" by name and consequently in a stereotyped manner. Names are arbitrary things. A knowledge of the causes of a malady and of the means of removing these causes is alone of real value. All else is charlatanism.

Treating or removing local parts, suppressing local symptoms, removing one of two antecedents, treating so-called "specific disease" with "specific remedies"--all of this is unsound and futile. Neither physiology nor pathology afford any ground for specific treatment.