These modifications of functions are looked upon by the various "schools of healing" as foes of life. The efforts of the body to defend and repair itself are looked upon as the very things that endanger life. They have confounded vital action with the actions of pathogenic agents and influences. Their practice, based upon this false premise, is largely one of suppressing symptoms.

When a poison, mercury for instance, is taken into the system two sets of effects are observable--first, the reaction of the system against the drug, and second, the destructive effect of the drug upon the tissues, fluids and organs of the body. If the drug is taken in by way of the mouth, vomiting or diarrhea follows. These are organic reactions against the drug--efforts at elimination. When the drug gets into the blood it begins a work of destruction that may end only in the death of the victim. Just to mention one of its destructive effects, it destroys the tissues and cells of the kidneys, where it is taken for elimination, and produces "Bright's Disease". The part it plays in destroying the functioning cells of the organs of the body and thus producing other degenerative diseases--diabetes, disease of the heart and arteries for instance--should be known. That it does destroy bone and nerve substances, gland substance and the structures of the hollow organs of the body, as well as the skin and mucous membrane, is well known.

Thus it is clear that symptoms of "disease" are of two classes. These should be clearly defined and separated from each other. Functional modifications sequent to pathological changes should be differentiated from functional modifications designed to remove the cause of the pathological changes. The first are the results of degeneration; the latter are the results of vital adaptations. Pathology proper is a regressive metamorphosis of the tissues of the body, due to the united imparing influences to which the body is subjected. We name as "diseases" the terminal stages of the few lines of divergent evolution which pathological change may follow and do not recognize that an indissoluble relationship exists between the terminal pathology and every antecedent pathological condition which preceded its appearance. Thus, we fail to discern the basic unity of the many superficially differing so-called "diseases."

That is only one side of the picture. The organism puts up a stubborn resistance to the causes of deterioration and only slowly yields one tissue after another when it is compelled to do so. To the popular medical systems these phenomena of resistance are purposeless, profitless and wantonly distressful, actually destructive. These, too, are called "disease". Then, there are those who insist upon calling the causes of pathology, "disease".

We use terms so loosely that half the time we don't know what we mean ourselves. Disease, which means, literally, discomfort, or lack of ease, is applied to so many and such varied and distinct phenomena, resulting from almost as many different causes, and its meaning is so vague and indefinite, that we would profit by ceasing entirely to use the term. "Disease" is a process of cure, say many. But, if "disease" is the process of cure, what does it cure? It cures the man! Cures him of what? "Disease" is the inability of an organ or tissue to perform duly its function, say the physio-medicalists. "Disease is a salutory effort of the system to remove disease," wrote Dr. Beach, an early eclectic physician. "That is as bad as making the stomach vomit itself," replied Dr. Curtis of the physiomedical school. "Disease" is a departure from health, say the allopaths, while the homeopath's say "disease" is the "totality of the symptoms".

A man receives a stab wound with a knife. The knife is the cause of the wound. Are we to consider cause (the knife) as "disease"? The wound is a condition of the tissues and a corresponding inability to duly perform their functions. It is a departure from health. Are we to consider the wound as the "disease"? The bleeding, pain, scab, fibrin formation, inflammation, etc., are the curative measures instituted by the body. Are the curative measures to be called "disease"? Or, shall we lump them all together and call the collection, "disease"? Nothing could be more ruinous to our logic, nor more damaging to our practice, than to confound a consequence with a cause. To make this mistake in biological science is to view the vital actions intended to remove pathology as the pathology itself; is to class life's efforts to restore health as the very thing that endangers life.

This one mistake has been the fundamental error that has vitiated medical theory and practice throughout all its past history. In one form or another the idea has prevailed that the vital phenomena constituted the danger, the evil, and this has lead to the effort to secure quiescence of function, without regard to the condition upon which the "disturbance" depended, and without consideration for the object aimed at by the active (and passive) operations of the vital powers. For the sake of clarity, symptoms may appropriately be divided into two general classes:

1. Vital--the actions (dynamic and adynamic) of the body in defending and repairing (healing or curing) itself--those that are the result of the organic struggle against the toxins or other things that are endangering life. Rausse called these "symptoms of reaction". He pointed out that the "symptoms of reaction" in their perfection, totality and greatest strength are only to be found in acute, or as he called them, the "primary or healing diseases," but that they exist although in lessened strength and perfection in the chronic or "destroying diseases." Observe that Rausse's symptoms of reaction include both the conserving reduction and suspension of functions and the actively resisting acceleration of functions. In other words the symptoms of reaction may be subdivided into these two classes.

2. Degenerative--the changes and alterations of tissues and fluids directly due to pathogenic causes. This represents those mechanical, chemical, cellular and organic conditions that are produced by the directly destructive actions of poisons, parasites, burns, mechanical injuries, etc. These are the true pathologies. These Rausse called "symptoms of destruction".

"Disease" in its broad sense represents (1) the resistance of the living organism to pathogenic agents, and (2) its destruction by these agents. Any effort to obliterate the separating lines between the vital phenomena (the processes of healing) in "disease", and the destructive phenomena resulting from extra-vital causes, and thus reduce all of the phenomena of "disease" to destructive processes will mislead the doctor as much as would the effort to characterize both groups of phenomena as vital. Either effort veils the actual agencies that are responsible for both groups of phenomena.