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Preface
Introduction to Toxemia
Toxemia Explained
Enervation Is General
Poise
The Causes of Enervation
Retrospection
But it appears to be unlikely that in the present state of medicine there would be any great dissimilarity in the proportions of diagnosed and undiagnosed eases in many series of investigation such as we have made. The proportion depends, not on the skill or training of individual practitioners, but on the unsatisfactory state of all medical knowledge. The similarity of the statistical records from the institute and from private practice goes far to support this view. In spite of the additional time given at the institute to the examination of cases which are undiagnosable in general practice, and the assistance given by the special departments--clinical groups--in their investigation, they remain profoundly obscure, although we know that it is from among them that there will gradually emerge the cases of advanced organic disease and the end-results which form so large a proportion of the inmates of hospital wards. And the tragedy is that many of them suffer from no serious disabilities, and might, but for our ignorance, be checked on their downward course.
Isn't this about as sharp a criticism
of medical inefficiency as Tilden has ever made?
This brings vividly to mind the statement,
made only a short time ago, by Dr. Cabot, of Boston, that he himself was mistaken
in his diagnoses about fifty per cent of the time--that he had proved it by post-mortems.
Such a statement as this, coming from a man of his standing, means much. To me it
means that diagnosis is a meaningless term; for, as used, it means discovering what
pathological effects--what changes--have been brought about by an undiscovered cause.
Diagnosis means, in a few words, discovering effects which, when found, throw no
light whatever on cause.
Again I quote Mackenzie: "The
knowledge of disease is so incomplete that we do not yet even know what steps should
be taken to advance our knowledge." This being true, there is little excuse
for laws to shut out or prevent cults from practicing less harmful palliations. How
many reputable physicians have the honesty of Sir James Mackenzie ?
In spite of Mackenzie's high and worthy
ambitions, he could not get away from the profession's stereotyped thinking. The
early symptoms of disease he declared held the secret of their cause, and he believed
an intense study of them would give the facts. But functional derangements are of
the same nature and from the same universal cause that ends in all organic so-called
diseases. All so-called diseases are, from beginning to end, the same evolutionary
process.
The study of pathology--the study of
disease--has engaged the best minds in the profession always, and it surely appears
that the last word must have been spoken on the subject; but the great Englishman
believed, as all research workers believe, that a more intense and minute study of
the early symptoms of disease will reveal the cause. There is, however, one great
reason why it cannot, and that is that all symptom-complexes--diseases--from their
initiation to their ending, are effects, and the most intense study of any phase
or stage of their progress will not throw any light on the cause.
Cause is constant, ever present, and
always the same. Only effects, and the object on which cause acts, change, and the
change is most inconstant. To illustrate: A catarrh of the stomach presents first
irritation, then inflammation, then ulceration, and finally induration and cancer.
Not all cases run true to form; only a small percentage evolve to ulcer, and fewer
still reach the cancer stage. More exit by way of acute food-poisoning or acute indigestion
than by chronic diseases.
In the early stages of this evolution
there are all kinds of discomforts: more or less attacks of indigestion, frequent
attacks of gastritis--sick stomach and vomiting. No two cases are alike. Nervous
people suffer most, and some present all kinds of nervous symptoms--insomnia, headaches,
etc. Women have painful menstruation and hysterical symptoms--some are morose and
others have epilepsy. As the more chronic symptoms appear, those of the lymphatic
temperament do not suffer so much. As the disease progresses, a few become pallid
and develop pernicious anemia, due to gastric or intestinal ulceration and putrid
protein infection; in others the first appearance of ulcer is manifested by a severe
hemorrhage; others have a cachexia and a retention of food in the stomach, which
is vomited every two or three days, caused by a partial closing of the pylorus. These
are usually malignant cases.
To look upon any of these symptom-complexes
as a distinct disease, requiring a distinct treatment, is to fall into the diagnostic
maze that now bewilders the profession and renders treatment chaotic.
It should be known to all discerning
physicians that the earliest stage of organic disease is purely functional, evanescent,
and never autogenerted so far as the affected organ is concerned, but is invariably
due to an extraneous irritation (stimulation, if you please), augmented by Toxemia.
When the irritation is not continuous, and toxin is eliminated as fast as developed,
to the toleration point, normal functioning is resumed between the intervals of irritation
and toxin excess.
For example: a simple coryza (running
at the nose--cold in the head), gastritis or colonitis. At first these colds, catarrahs,
or inflammations are periodic and functional; but, as the exciting cause or causes--local
irritation and Toxemia--become more intense and continuous, the mucous membranes
of these organs take on organic changes, which are given various names, such as irritation,
inflammation, ulceration, and cancer. The pathology (organic change) may be studied
until doomsday without throwing any light on the cause; for from the first irritation
to the extreme ending--cachexia--which may be given the blanket term of tuberculosis,
syphilis, or cancer, the whole pathologic panorama is one continuous evolution of
intensifying effects.
Germs and other so-called causes may
be discovered in the course of pathological development, but they are accidental,
coincidental, or at most auxiliary--or, to use the vernacular of law, obiter dicta.
The proper way to study disease is
to study health and every influence favorable or not to its continuance. Disease
is perverted health. Any influence that lowers nerve-energy becomes disease-producing.
Disease cannot be its own cause; neither can it be its own cure, and certainly not
its own prevention.
After years of wandering in the jungle
of medical diagnosis--the usual guesswork of cause and effect, and the worse-than-guesswork
of treatment, and becoming more confounded all the time--I resolved either to quit
the profession or to find the cause of disease. To do this, it was necessary to exile
myself from doctors and medical conventions; for I could not think for myself while
listening to the babblings of babeldom. I took the advice found in Matt. 6:6. According
to prevailing opinion, unless a doctor spends much time in medical societies and
in the society of other doctors, takes postgraduate work, travels, etc., he cannot
keep abreast of advancement.
This opinion would be true if the sciences
of medicine were fitted to a truthful etiology (efficient cause) of disease. But,
since they are founded on no cause, or at most speculative and spectacular causes,
as unstable as the sands of the sea, the doctor who cannot brook the bewilderment
of vacillation is compelled to hide away from the voices of mistaken pedants and
knowing blatherskites until stabilized. By that time ostracism will have overtaken
him, and his fate, metaphorically speaking, will be that of the son of Zacharias.
An honest search after truth too often,
if not always, leads to the rack, stake, cross, or the blessed privilege of recanting;
but the victim, by this time, decides as did the divine Jew: "Not my will, but
shine, be done;" or, as Patrick Henry declared: "Give me liberty or give
me death!" The dying words of another great Irishman is the wish, no doubt,
of every lover of freedom and truth:
That no man write my epitaph; for, as no man who knows my motives dares now vindicate them. let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me rest in peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, and my memory in oblivion, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not until then, let my epitaph be written. (Emmet).
The truth is larger than any man, and,
until it is established, the memory of its advocate is not important. In the last
analysis, is not the truth the only immortality? Man is an incident. If he discovers
a truth, it benefits all who accept it. Truth too often must pray to be delivered
from its friends.
I must acknowledge that I have not
been very courteous to indifferent convention; and the truth I have discovered has
suffered thereby. It has always appeared to me that the attention of fallacy-mongers
cannot be attracted except by the use of a club or shillalah; and possibly my style
of presenting my facts has caused too great a shock, and the desired effect has been
lost in the reaction.
That I have discovered the true cause
of disease cannot be successfully disputed. This being true, my earnestness in presenting
this great truth is justifiable.
When I think back over my life, and
remember the struggle I had with myself in supplanting my old beliefs with the new--the
thousands of times I have suspected my own sanity--I then cannot be surprised at
the opposition I have met and am meeting.
My discovery of the truth that Toxemia
is the cause of all so-called diseases came about slowly, step by step, with many
dangerous skids.
At first I believed that enervation
must be the general cause of disease; then I decided that simple enervation is not
disease, that disease must be due to poison, and that poison, to be the general cause
of disease, must be autogenerated; and if disease is due to an autogenerated poison.
what is the cause of that autogeneration? I dallied long in endeavoring to trace
disease back to poison taken into the system, such as food eaten after putrescence
had begun, or from poisoning due to the development of putrescence after ingestion.
In time I decided that poisoning per se is not disease. I observed where poisoning
did not kill; some cases reacted and were soon in full health, while others remained
in a state of semi-invalidism. I found the same thing true of injuries and mental
shock. It took a long time to develop the thought that a poisoned or injured body,
when not overwhelmed by Toxemia. would speedily return to the normal, and when it
did not, there was a sick habit--a derangement of some kind--that required some such
contingency to bring it within sense-perception.
To illustrate: An injury to a joint
is often complicated with rheumatism; the rheumatism previous to the injury was potentially
in the blood.
Just what change had taken place in
the organism which, under stress of injury or shock of any kind, would cause a reaction
with fever I could not understand until the Toxemic Theory suggested itself to my
mind, after which the cause of disease unfolded before me in an easy and natural
manner. And now the theory is a proved fact.
After years of perplexing thought and
"watchful waiting," I learned that all disease, of whatever nature, was
of slow development; that without systemic preparation even so-called acute systemic
diseases could not manifest.
In a few words: Without Toxemia there
can be no disease. I knew that the waste-product of metabolism was toxic, and that
the only reason why we were not poisoned by it was because it was removed from the
organism as fast as produced. Then I decided that the toxin was retained in the blood,
when there was a checking of elimination. Then the cause of the checking had to be
determined. In time I thought out the cause. I knew that, when we had a normal nerve-energy,
organic functioning was normal. Then came the thought that enervation caused a checking
of elimination. Eureka! The cause of all so-called diseases is found! Enervation
checks elimination of the waste-products of metabolism. Retention of metabolic toxin--the
first and only cause of disease!
Those who would be freed from the bondage
of medical superstition should study "Toxemia Explained."