The nosologies of the schools class as evil, as "disease", all vital efforts to get rid of pathogen. Hence inflammation, though a vivid effort to remedy trouble, is "a disease" ; fever is "a disease", though it is only part of the vital efforts to destroy and eliminate pathogen; diarrhea and dysentery is "a disease" although only Nature's effort to wash away and expel offending matter; a cough is "disease", though only a vital effort to expel irritants and obstruction. These mistakes arise from confounding vital action with the thing against which the action is directed. The moment these efforts are classed as "disease", attempts are made to suppress them, to prevent their continuance. Poisons are the time honored agents with which to suppress the vital efforts, commonly called "disease", but at present there are numerous drugless methods of accomplishing the same end.

Observations of the "cure" of chronic "disease" by acute "disease" led to the present efforts to "cure" various chronic "diseases" by the use of artificial fever. It has long been known that remissions of chronic "diseases" may occur after an acute or "specific" fever, or a long continued suppurative process. As early as 1810 it was noted that cases of general paralysis frequently showed remissions of symptoms, and that often apparent cures followed "fevers."

Improved general health is frequently observed after typhoid, smallpox, acute gout, and other acute, febrile "diseases". Dayton's Practice of Medicine remarks of gout: "After the attack the general health may be improved". It will be difficult to account for improved health following "acute disease" on any basis of "attack," except the one that it is the body that does the attacking.

A few years ago the newspapers of England carried the story of a man who was suffering with tuberculosis, developed chicken-pox, and when he recovered, discovered that he was also well of the tuberculosis. English medical men explained that the chicken-pox germ had destroyed the tuberculosis germ and that, by the "ill-wind" of the battle between these warring germs, the patient had been "blown some good."

Sir Wm. Osier says, "If survived, an infection, such as confluent smallpox, seems to benefit the general health." Sir Wm. Broadbent declares, "Smallpox has been known to eradicate consumption." Wm. F. Harvard, N. D., says, "Patients who are given proper care do not die while under-going an acute reaction to pathogenic influences." The Hygienist "can conduct their convalescence in a manner to build them up into a better state of health than they enjoyed before their acute illness, showing that the body was improved by being purged of an accumulation of impurities. *** He can prove by his experience, if it has been extensive enough, that where a patient develops an acute reaction ("disease") during the course of treatment for some chronic ailment, the progress of the chronic condition is checked and a positive repair begins. Let us cite one case as an example of this. A man of fifty-eight years, suffering from chronic articular rheumatism, presented himself for our care. He was almost a cripple and had been the despair of numerous doctors and sanitariums for fifteen years. According to his history the trouble had started shortly after a seige of malaria. The latter was suppressed with copious doses of quinine. After six months of Naturopathic care, with little noticeable improvement, this patient developed a typical case of malaria, which lasted six weeks. Now for the miracle. On moving about he found that the pain had disappeared from his joints and the motion in them had increased a hundred per cent. His improvement continued, and in a short time he was actively engaged in engineering work."

The biogonic character of small-pox, may be seen by watching the evolution of a case. Chill, perhaps a convulsion, pains, vomiting, rapid pulse, restless delirium, and a high fever and, then, large quantities of toxin-laden blood thrown into the skin causing redness. The toxins are collected into circumscribed lumps, after which the temperature returns to near normal and the other symptoms practically cease.

A similar evolution is seen in measles, scarlet fever, chicken pox, etc., with the addition of a "cold in the head" at the beginning. In the preemptive stage of an exanthematous "disease," especially scarlet fever, the convulsions may be followed by coma. The coma disappears with the appearance of the eruption.

The eruption is identical with the pustule with which the body removes a sliver from the flesh. It is identical with the eruptions with which many drugs are eliminated from the body. Bromide, arsenic, mercury, iodine, quinine, salicylic acid, morphine, turpentine, chloral, the coal-tar products, copabia, cubebs, belladonna, veronal, digitalis, and all serums, are only a few of the drugs that, taken internally, are eliminated by means of various forms of skin eruption. Various infections, such as vaccination and so-called syphilitic infection are frequently followed by generalized skin rashes, as is also, snake bite.

Hygienists have insisted that skin eruptions expel materials that the regular organs of excretion eliminate with difficulty. Dr. Henry Lindlahr especially emphasized this fact. He says, "the organs of depuration are so constructed that they eliminate only waste materials of comparatively simple chemical composition." The causes of the eruptive diseases are "made up of chemically highly complex substances which cannot be eliminated through the organs of depuration." Dr. Tilden has long insisted that these "diseases" result from protein poisoning. Recently, medical investigators claim to have isolated some of the "viruses" they have held cause these "diseases", and they turned out to be proteins. Protein poisoning, produced by serum inoculations, occasions all the symptoms-- chill, fever, pain, convulsions, eruptions, etc.--seen in the exanthema.

Returning to smallpox, or to other acute eruptive "diseases", the pain, fever, convulsions, coma, etc., are preparatory to the skin eruptions and cease or decrease as soon as they have succeeded in getting the toxins into the skin and the pustules have formed. The eruption rids the system of the poisons that are endangering life. Thus is manifest the truth of the oft repeated assertions of Louis Kuhne, when dealing with small pox, measles, scarlet-fever, and other eruptive diseases, that "the more profuse the eruption the less is the child's life endangered. The less abundant and slighter the eruption, on the other hand, the greater is the danger." "The smaller that portion of the skin which co-operates in expelling the morbid matter, by admitting an eruption to break out, the greater the danger." "As soon as the rash is fully developed, vital danger is over in most cases." This may be questioned by some because confluent smallpox is more severe than the discrete form. But this is only an apparent contradiction. Such cases represent, it is true, more severe forms of the "disease", but the greater severity, is not due to more rash but to more cause for the rash. The fact stands, I believe, that the greater the area co-operating in the work of elimination (eruptions) in these cases, the less is the danger to life in the individual case.