How does disease originate in a body created and brought into the world in supposedly normal condition?

At what age does disease show?

How long may disease continue without destroying life?

Every infant born of parents even approximately normal should be in perfect condition when first it opens its eyes on a new world.

That this is not the case we too often realise, but it is no fault of Nature that this is so, for you still cannot make something out of nothing, nor can Nature create the essential chemicals out of anything less than the elements which enter into these, so in the case of a shortage of these essential elements in either or both of the parents Nature is balked in her efforts to create a perfect specimen of health.

Deficiencies in heredity may vary from slight catarrhal manifestations at or soon after birth, to hare lip or spina bifida or other physical incompleteness.

All such are evidence of deficiencies in the parents, particularly in the mother, as laboratory experiment in the feeding of animals so clearly proves.

While the grosser deficiencies in development are not correctible, yet it may be safely stated as a fact that anything less than these is no bar to perfect growth and development from birth on to adult life, if proper feeding habits are faithfully followed.

As a general proposition every child with vitality enough to be born alive has vitality enough to grow up into a healthy adult, barring only these incompletenesses of structure before referred to.

Going back again to the statement of Sir Wm. Arbuthnot Lane, before quoted, all disease is "deficient drainage," we will readily see that accumulations can easily occur in the recently born infant, through gross errors of feeding almost from the very day of birth.

Nursing too often or too much, even supposing the milk of the mother to be all that milk should be.

Perhaps the most frequent cause in the new born, however, is the fact that a toxic mother cannot furnish anything but toxic milk for her infant.

Nature is most kind to the foetus during intrauterine development, for whether or not the mother can spare the necessary building materials for her developing infant Nature sees to it that she robs herself in its interest, which accounts for the fact of falling hair, decaying teeth, declining complexion, so common during pregnancy as to be thought a part of this.

However, Nature cannot make the mother give up more than she carries, and so runs short of building material at times, resulting in incomplete development of the foetus, for even Nature cannot make something out of nothing.

At birth the infant begins taking its nourishment from the mother, as is the case with all mammals, and here again Nature cannot make something out of nothing, for what the mother does not have Nature cannot make her give up, and the deficiencies are transmitted to the infant in the form of deficiency conditions of all kinds, chief of which is, possibly, rickets, or deficient lime salts.

But granting that the mother is replete with everything that the infant needs, there is still wide opportunity for the toxic state to develop, for it is characteristic of every mother to feed her infant more frequently than is either necessary or advisable, with the result that wastes are created from excess nourishment, and more or less of these retained.

Watch Nature trying to get rid of this excess through regurgitation of milk or the passing of curds, even diarrhoeas.

The very first particle of milk that is regurgitated, the first curd passed through the bowels, is evidence of this overfeeding that should warn the mother that she should cut down on the frequency or the length of the feeding periods.

Every diarrhoea is evidence of gross over-feeding, with a fermentation of retained dejecta in the colon and a condition developing there that is intolerable to the system.

Yet it is characteristic of the body to seek to adapt itself to every condition, and in time tolerance for these acute overfeedings will develop, so that perhaps no more diarrhoeas or vomitings occur, but this is no evidence that the same process is not going on at the same old rate.

In spite of this the baby grows, perhaps at the usual rate, with more or less colic and discomfort, but still it grows, the mother is satisfied, for it is an average baby; the doctor is satisfied if no definite pathology develops, and the thing is allowed to go on indefinitely.

It is small wonder that 200,000 infants in our country never see the end of the second year of life, only those who have been able to develop tolerance for the sins of overfeeding or deficient feeding being able to reach the period when the teeth have developed fully and there is opportunity to feed on the outgrowth of the soil, Nature's food for everything that grows, after the nursing period has passed.

Here again there is danger, for the average pediatrist believes that the growing infant should have plenty of concentrated protein foods, animal foods, such as meat or eggs, and insists on the use of one of these each day, with the result that the infant starts early in life this accumulation of protein debris that furnishes the highest toxicity of all food residues.

Here again Nature falls down, in the fact of too much and too great a handicap, for 400,000 of these little ones never see the tenth year, through inability to develop tolerance fast enough to keep their tissues clear of the accumulating waste, or build resistance that will take care of this in the body.

The usual child is either dead or largely immune to the effects of acid accumulation by the end of the tenth year, so that mortality statistics show less deaths between the tenth and fifteenth years than earlier, but this shows only a survival of the fittest, and does not argue a correct manner of life.

If the tolerance for overfeeding and deficient feeding is not created early in life there will never be the large appetite that urges frequent and heavy eating later on, and the body will be freed from this great danger.