Chronic disease recovers not less surely, though the rebuilding process must be longer, of course.
The foregoing leads to the inevitable statement that when we speak of constructive treatment for disease, all we can do is to stop causing disease, and the cure is up to the body itself, as only the body can repair itself. Those factors that the only ones included in any consideration of constructive treatment, as everything done for the symptomatology is merely a recognition of the state of the body, but not doing anything constructive for it.
When we recognize the presence of appendicitis, we have two courses open to us. The one is removal of the diseased organ, surely not a constructive procedure, and the other is a recognition of the factors producing the condition and their removal, which is surely not destructive, but wholly constructive, as it permits of the bodys own efforts at repair.
All disease originates in the bodys inability to keep itself clean inside, just as Sir William Arbuthnot Lane so aptly says when he states that: “After all, there is but one disease- deficient drainage”.
If our intake of food covers our every need, if it does not embarrass the body with a heavy eliminative task, if the necessities of digestive chemistry are kept in mind, separating wholly alkaline tasks from wholly acid tasks, if we are using sun, air, water and exercise sanely, then we are living constructively, and when we analyze the constructive treatment for disease, we find this also among these constructive treatment for disease, we find this also among these prerequisites named, and nothing outside these. STROUDSBURG, PA.
DISCUSSION.
DR.UNDERHILL;Dr. Hays more excellent paper well deserves our careful consideration.
He may possibly have stepped on a few sensitive ones who feel that “the physicians high and only mission” is to prescribe medicine for the sick without any particular thought as to the cause of the trouble or effort to remove, at least in some measure, the obstacles to recovery.
Surely we can agree with the Doctor that a very large percentage of all cases if illness are hindered rather than helped in the recovery process by their medical advisors and attendants. This is particularly evident in acute illness where the so-called accepted and accredited modes of treatment run the death rate up to appalling figures.
All members of the International Hahnemannian Association will agree that acute illness is a house-cleaning proposition, an eliminative effort on the part of the constitution.
Now as to treatment, the Hahnemannian will endeavor to prescribe the similimum and quickly reduce and sublimate the body toxins. In a remarkably short time the patient is well and able to resume his usual occupation. Diet has not been stressed, case management has been perhaps inadequately considered, but the results of skillful homoeopathic prescribing in acute disease will over-ride all obstacles and spectacular cures are consistently reported.
Let us hear again from Dr.Hay. He “looks first to a detergent purge of simple salines, followed by through emptying of the colon and complete inhibition of all nourishment. These measures so quickly allay fever, bring relief from pain or other discomforts and so rapidly initiate recovery that he has not in several years found it necessary to administer any similimum.”.
Here we find ourselves on controversial ground. Agreed as to the cause and purpose of acute disease, we are confronted with two apparently unrelated views as to treatment.
Results count, at least they are supposed to count, so what about the patient? He will almost certainly recover under either system of therapy, for both are sane, sensible, conservative and scientific, and should by all means be intelligently combined in the treatment of the sick. Case management in general and dietetic correction in particular are woefully weak points in the treatment prescribed by the average physician, the Hahnemann homoeopathist unfortunately not excepted.
Again quoting Dr.Hay; “To obliterate a symptom complex is not to insure recovery in any sense of the word, for the continuance of the cause is bound to again produce the same or some other manifestation of disrepair and lowered function.”.
Cruel words these.
It has been customary for the followers of Hahnemann to hide themselves behind the supposedly impregnable walls of Psora, Syphilis and Sycosis and so secure have they felt in their position that they have established their main base of operations, especially in their offensive against chronic disease, immediately behind those walls.
Each and every patient is regarded by Hahnemannians as undoubtedly cursed with more or less Psora and quite possibly with more or less syphilis or sycosis, and in some cases with all three combined. The poor devil may have to shoulder the blame sometimes for having acquired syphilis or sycotic infection, but psora is unhesitatingly laid at the very root of his ancestral tree.
Scientists must continually resist that very human tendency to trim, tailor and even to distort observed facts to fit a cherished theory or a preconceived opinion.
Without actually quarreling with the psora theory it has undoubtedly tended toward limiting and restricting the vision of many sincere homoeopathists. Hahnemannians have proceeded on the assumption that psora is inherited and therefore inbuilt, that of itself it tends “ever to increase with the years” and that it may be complicated before birth or during life with venereal disease, that the only possible cure or alleviation for this “curse” is by means of the indicated antipsoric remedies aided, when necessary, by the prescription of an antisycotic or antisyphilitic medicine in suitable potency.
If living a clean, natural, wholesome life has any significance, any merit, any value, it must hold these consistently.
If food poisoning actually occurs-and some cases are so obvious as to compel recognition and identification, not only by physicians but even by laymen-is it not reasonable to infer that there must exist all grades and shades and many different kinds of food poisoning from the most acute and violent to the most insidious and essentially chronic? If food toxins can cause acute illness, why not chronic suffering and disease as well?.
Intestinal toxemia and colonic stasis are recognized and variously combatted by many physicians of differing schools of thought, yet many of these same physicians fail to realize the importance of dietetic control either in acute or chronic disease, least of all do they sense the fact that, more than in any other one way, man is eating himself into all manner of sickness and suffering.
In conclusion, may we suggest to Dr.Hay that his therapeutic results can be greatly enhanced and the recovery process definitely accelerated by the consistent employment of the potentiated homoeopathic remedies in acute, and especially in chronic, sickness.
