In speaking of smallpox, medical men frequently say: "The chief difficulty in diagnosis lies in those cases where the disease is so virulent that the patient dies before the eruption develops." This statement confirms Kuhne's statements in that it reveals that death is not due to smallpox, but to the failure of smallpox--that is, the body was unable to develop the "disease," particularly the eruption, and was forced to succumb to the poisons it sought to eliminate. The patient was not killed by "disease" but by the poisons. He died because the "disease" failed. A successful acute "disease" would have preserved life.

A young boy was all his life, up to six and one-half years, in poor health. He was underweight, suffered with frequent nose bleeds, with the beginning of each spring had bronchitis, and had gone the usual round of treatments and operations. Tonsils and adenoids had been removed. He had been carried from one hospital to another and had had his lungs X-rayed a number of times in search of evidence of tuberculosis.

At six and one-half years of age he developed a very severe case of scarlet fever. His life was despaired of. The eruption was great and scaling afterwards was as great. But after this the whole condition of the boy changed. His weight became normal, his nose bleeds ceased, he had no more bronchitis, and, upon being examined at school, was given a health percentage of perfect. Improved health follows all eruptive "diseases", if they are not suppressed by treatment.

Francis Carter Wood, famous cancer specialist, tells us in his Notes on Tumors, that: "In a very small proportion of human malignant tumors spontaneous disappearance for longer or shorter periods has been noted. The greatest number of such disappearances has followed incomplete surgical removal of the tumor; they have occurred next in order of frequency during some acute febrile process, and least frequently in connection with some profound alteration of the metabolic processes of the organism, such as extreme cachexia, artificial menopause, or the puerperium". "Wood also says that there has been long current an idea that the body may develop an immunity to tumors similar to the immunity medical men regard as existing in the so-called infectious "diseases", and says that the basis for this theory is the occasional occurence of spontaneous disappearance of neoplasms (new growths or tumors), either following infections *** or subsequent to slight operative procedures, or even without any outside interference at all."

A few years ago a brilliant young English Nature Cure physician showed from the official statistics of that country, that wherever an epidemic of smallpox had existed it was always followed, in the locality, by a falling off in the cancer rate. The rate of falling off in cancer was far in excess of the number of deaths that occurred during the smallpox epidemic.

It has long seemed a curious thing that the great increase in the number of deaths in an epidemic of some "disease" like smallpox, does not increase the general mortality. It really often has the opposite effect. In a book on Cholera: Its Prevention and Cure, and later in another entitled Necessity for Smallpox, Joseph Wallace, (London) discusses the smallpox epidemic of 1871-2. During this epidemic 44,000 people died of smallpox in England and Wales. Instead of this great death-rate increasing the general mortality, it was ten percent, to a minute fraction, less for that year than for either of the preceding nine years. Wallace says: "and this lessening of mortality takes place in every form of organic or incurable disease." The epidemic, "rooted out organic disease of all those who recovered; giving each a new lease on life; and thus the epidemic was a blessing to mankind. It only requires us to look the subject straight in the face to recognize this fact. Had there been no smallpox that year, what then? Why some forty-four thousand odd people would have died of organic disease."

Dr. B. S. Claunch, Hygienist, declares smallpox to be almost a cure-all. There is no way to estimate how many people are saved from tumors, cancer and other degenerative conditions by the cleansing and reconstructive work accomplished by the biogonies. Were it not for the biogonies, man's present mode of living would produce far more physical degeneracy than exists at present, and would produce it much earlier in life. This is what Graham meant when he replied to a man who said he had never been sick a day within his memory: "that may be very greatly your misfortune."

It is of interest in this connection that this man died but a few days later, after much suffering, and Graham, who was permitted to attend the post-mortem examination, says: "though I have seen many diseased bodies opened after death, yet never in any instance have I found disease so extensive as in this case. The entire stomach and intestinal canal and other portions of the abdominal contents presented one general mass of deep and irremedial disease which clearly indicated a progress of several years, and which was of a character that fully evinced that it was not produced by any sudden or violent cause, but that it was the result of causes which had been gradually operating and by imperceptible degrees developing their effects, probably through the whole course of life."--Science of Human Life, p. 94.

All of this does not lead logically to anything so absurd as Galen's "law of antipathies", or that we "cure one disease by producing another (and opposite) disease", or Hahnemann's "law of similars", or that we "cure one disease by producing another (and similar) disease." No disease-producing therapeutics flows from a recognition of the essentially curative nature of what we commonly call "disease".

Since the true nature of acute and chronic "disease" is not understood and there is no proper appreciation of the fact that fever per se is but one of a large group of correlated curative phenomena, antecedent to, and concomitant and coetaneous with, and sequent to the increased temperature, efforts are made to bring about the curative effects of acute "disease" by merely raising the body's temperature. Fever is merely a link in a chain, it does not produce the chain.

So-called chronic disease is characterized by the presence of many active curative processes--coughing, sneezing, pain, inflammation, fever, eruptions, diarrhea, etc.--and conservative processes--lack of appetite, weakness, constipation, etc.--which differ from the same symptoms in "acute disease" only in being milder and prolonged. Repeating what Trall said, "disease is violent just as force is applied in a particular direction. Destroy or lessen the vital force, and just to that extent you diminish the ability of the system to manifest disease."

In Omego Reprint, Dr. August F. Reinhold says: "That tuberculosis is a healing process, is proved by every symptom: by the consumptive's cough, his expectoration, high temperature, lack of appetite, night sweats, diarrhea, etc. The cough proves the presence of abnormal material, which the system tries to dislodge by the expulsive efforts of the lungs to exhale. This is called a 'coughing' spell. If successful, the expectorated mass demonstrates that it obstructs free respiration. Thus 'coughing' is one of the cleansing processes, selected by Nature to purify the system."

The conception of disease (biogony) as a benevolent process is the only one possible in view of our present knowledge. It is because all agents that affect the body for evil, if they do not instantly paralyze it, excite it to acts of physiological character--conservative, defensive, sustaining, reparative--which acts are the processes of cure, that we live at all.