Medical literature abounds with discussions on the successive stages of "disease," the sequelae of "disease," "secondary specific diseases," etc., but they fail to grasp the essential oneness of all so-called "disease." They are like the Irishman who, upon his first visit to the city, could not see the town for the houses.

If it is possible to have a pathological chain of symptom-complexes, starting with a cold in infancy or childhood and ending years later as an ulcer or a cancer, or as tuberculosis, or Bright's disease, it should become common knowledge so that the layman, being aware of such a possibility, may live in a manner to avoid such an ending. There are few etiological factors outside mental and physical habits to account for the extensive nomenclature of the profession, and the well informed layman may avoid these habits.

Think for a minute of a series of stomachic crises developing over a period of years, and, eventually, ending in cancer. Each crisis or "stomach attack," as it will be called, is treated as an individual manifestation of a spontaneous derangement of the organ, as the cause is never clear in the mind of the doctor. When the crisis passes, the "disease" ends and a cure is pronounced. No thought is given to any relationship the "disease" may have to the sufferer's habits, nor is it thought that its cause remains and another crisis will occur soon again. The incident ends as it began, with neither the sufferer nor the doctor any wiser; hence, not fortified with a knowledge of prevention. Years of these periodic spells of indigestion end in ulcer or cancer, a wholly unnecessary ending if the cause had been known and removed.

Tilden says: "After a pathology is evolved doctors think they know all about the disease; but the underlying cause remains unknown to them. If any relationship is thought to exist between habitual periodic discomforts--crises--and the life-ending pathologies, it is that the pathologies have been for years the unrecognizable or undiscoverable causes. In this the cart is put before the horse; and herein lies the reason for the prevailing chaos in the cause and cure of disease.

"Without established effects--pronounced pathologies--the most expert diagnostician aided by every known instrument of precision and expert analysis, throws up his hands and declares that he can find nothing wrong with the patient, even when the patient declares himself sick. These patients are junked in a class all their own, and labeled neurotics-- neurasthenics.

"Etiology goes no further back than established pathology, according to the regular school. Indigestion, according to present-day diagnosis, is a symptom of a functional or organic disease of the stomach. If functional, it is passed as a cured derangement at each manifestation, with no bearing whatever on any organic pathology that the stomach may present thereafter. It matters not how many functional crises, when they pass there, they end, so far as cause is concerned. When organic disease evolves, from that point on the cause and termination of disease is worked out so scientifically that it is almost an exact science."

All organic pathologies pass through a similar development period. Most of them give years of flashing warnings--functional disturbances-- in the form of crises, or biogonies (so-called acute "diseases"), before organic change occurs. Headaches end in apoplexy; the removal of a uterine fibroid is followed ten years later by cancer; Bright's disease follows many crises extending over a period of years. Those who do not heed Nature's warnings, but become accustomed to crises, live through many of them, and gamble on the chance of living through many more, develop the worst types of pathology.

Toxemia is the much-sought-for unknown beginning of all pathology. It is only when organs, because of perverted anatomism or organic change, due to being frequently stressed by toxic saturation, fail to function properly, that "scientific medicine," begins to talk of "diseases" and their causes. All of the preceding stages in the development of the trouble are ignored, even unknown. Yet, as Dr. Tilden says: "Toxemia is the only rational explanation of the evolution of all so-called diseases. Such pathologies as cancer, tuberculosis, Bright's disease and others are proved by the toxin theory to be as orderly in their inception course, and termination, as the germination of an acorn--growth, nutrition, fructification, decline, and death of the oak tree. All pathologies are as orderly in their inception, course, and termination as any evolutionary phenomena in Nature."--Philosophy of Health, March, 1925.

The Hygienic theory is that all so-called disease (biogony), in whatsoever form it may manifest itself, is, in substance, an effort of the body to rid itself of accumulated waste matter (toxemia) and poisons, which taken in their entirety, we call pathogen. They are house-cleaning efforts. But at, no time, from the first cold to the end, during a "fatal disease," or an "incurable chronic disease," is the blood free from an excess of toxin. All the time there is gradual accumulation of toxin and a gradually increasing toleration therefor; all the time the system is in a state of overstimulation from the toxins, and all the time an imperceptible organic change is taking place in all the tissues of the body; and the part of the body bearing the brunt of the "crises" is imperceptibly taking on greater organic change, until its function is lost. All the organs of the body are weakened--the ductless glands as well--and various derangements develop, as their secretions and excretions are arrested by continued toxemia and pan-toxemia. If the organ most crippled chances to be a vital organ, the subject dies. Pathology is the end-effect of perverted physiology--a perverted evolution. Every organic change has its-beginning (cause), its individual evolutionary course, and its end.

The eliminative process often extends to the surface of the body, producing one form or another of what Tilden calls exanthematous or eruptive gastro-intestinal catarrh--measles, smallpox, chickenpox, etc. He adds, "respiratory diseases and eruptive diseases are interchangeable." "This brings up the relationship of pneumonia and smallpox--the former an extension of gastro-intestinal catarrh to the lungs, and the latter an extension of gastro-intestinal catarrh to the surface of the body. Both of these types of disease vary from, a light, almost insignificant derangement to a malignancy that is fatal in almost every case."

How much, and what portions, of the body will be requisitioned to do vicarious duty will depend on the amount and nature of the toxins and the relative degrees of vulnerability of the various organs. Tilden says: "If the most vulnerable organ of the body is the skin, it determines the type of the disease. If other organs happen to be the most vulnerable, they take on the burden of elimination; then the crisis may be a pneumonia, gastritis, typhoid, rheumatism, or other so-called disease, taking its name from the organ through which elimination centers. A Bright's disease develops when the kidneys take on the work of eliminating infection absorbed from the bowels; tuberculosis of the lungs develops when the elimination is by way of the lungs. The character of all so-called diseases is the same, varying in intensity as the toxemia varies, as the organs differ, and as the psychology and physical environment vary. The manner of manifestation is not the disease; that, is only the peculiar way the system has of eliminating toxins which have accumulated until reaction forces elimination."