Nature Cure by Henry Lindlahr (best short books to read txt) đź“•
Their success undoubtedly is based on the fact that they concentratetheir best efforts on preventive instead of combative methods oftreating disease. People are beginning to realize that it is cheaperand more advantageous to prevent disease than to cure it. To createand maintain continuous, buoyant good health means greaterefficiency for mental and physical work; greater capacity for thetrue enjoyment of life, and the best insurance against failure andpoverty. Therefore, he who builds health is of greater value tohumanity than he who allows people to drift into disease throughignorance of Nature's laws, and then attempts to cure them bydoubtful and uncertain combative methods.
It is said that in China the physician is hired and paid by theyear; that he receives a certain stipend as long as the members ofthe family are in good health, but that the salary is suspended aslong as one of his charges is ill. If some similar method o
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The following will explain this more fully. We have learned that so-called acute diseases are Nature’s cleansing and healing efforts. All acute reactions represent increased activity of vital force, resulting in feverish and inflammatory conditions, accompanied by pain, redness, swelling, high temperature, rapid pulse, catarrhal discharges, skin eruptions, boils, ulcers, etc.
Allopathy regards these violent activities of vital force as detrimental and harmful in themselves. Anything which will inhibit the action of vital force will, in allopathic parlance, cure (?) acute diseases. As a matter of fact, nothing more effectively paralyzes vital force and impairs the vital organs than poisonous drugs and the surgeon’s knife. These, therefore, must necessarily constitute the favorite means of cure (?) of the regular school of medicine.
This school mistakes effect for cause. It fails to see that the local inflammation arising within the organism is not the disease, but merely marks the locality and the method through which Nature is trying her best to discharge the morbid encumbrances; that the acute reaction is local, but that its causes or feeders are always constitutional and must be treated constitutionally. When, under the influence of rational, natural treatment, the poisonous irritants are eliminated from blood and tissues, the local symptoms take care of themselves; it does not matter whether they manifest as pimple or cancer, as a simple cold or as consumption.
The Law of Dual Effect
Everywhere in Nature rules the great Law of Action and Reaction. All life sways back and forth between giving and receiving, between action and reaction. The very breath of life mysteriously comes and goes in rhythmical flow. So also heaves and falls in ebb and tide the bosom of Mother Earth.
In some of its aspects, this law is called the Law of Compensation, or the Law of Dual Effect. On its action depends the preservation of energy.
The Great Master expressed the ethical application of this law when he said:
“Give, and it shall be given unto you… . For with the same measure that ye mete it shall be measured to you again.”—Luke 6:38.
In the realms of physical nature, giving and receiving, action and reaction balance each other mechanically and automatically. What we gain in power we lose in speed or volume, and vice versa. This makes it possible for the mechanic, the scientist and the astronomer to predict with mathematical precision for ages in advance the results of certain activities in Nature.
The great Law of Dual Effect forms the foundation of the healing sciences. It is related to and governs every phenomenon of health, disease and cure. When I formulated the fundamental Law of Cure in the words, “Every acute disease is the result of a healing effort of Nature,” this was but another expression of the great Law of Action and Reaction. What we commonly call crisis, acute reaction or acute disease is in reality Nature’s attempt to establish health.
Applied to the physical activity of the body, the Law of Compensation may be expressed as follows: “Every agent affecting the human organism produces two effects: a first, apparent, temporary effect, and a second, lasting effect. The secondary, lasting effect is always contrary to the primary, transient effect.”
For instance: The first and temporary effect of cold water applied to the skin consists in sending the blood to the interior; but in order to compensate for the local depletion, Nature responds by sending greater quantities of blood back to the surface, resulting in increased warmth and better surface circulation.
The first effect of a hot bath is to draw the blood to the surface; but the secondary effect sends the blood back to the interior, leaving the surface bloodless and chilled.
Stimulants, as we shall see later on, produce their deceptive effects by burning up the reserve stores of vital energy in the organism. This is inevitably followed by weakness and exhaustion in exact proportion to the previous excitation.
The primary effect of relaxation and sleep is weakness, numbness and death-like stupor; the secondary effect, however, is an increase of vitality.
The Law of Dual Effect governs all drug action. The first, temporary, violent effect of poisonous drugs, when given in physiological doses, is usually due to Nature’s efforts to overcome and eliminate these substances. The secondary, lasting effect is due to the retention of the drug poisons in the system and their action on the organism.
In theory and practice, allopathy considers the first effect only and ignores the lasting aftereffects of drugs and surgical operations. It administers remedies whose first effect is contrary to the disease condition. Therefore, in accordance with the Law of Action and Reaction, the secondary, lasting effect of such remedies must be similar to or like the disease condition.
Common, everyday experience should teach us that this is so, for laxatives and cathartics always tend to produce chronic constipation.
The secondary effect of stimulants and tonics of any kind is increased weakness, and their continued use often results in complete exhaustion and paralysis of mental and physical powers.
Headache powders, pain killers, opiates, sedatives and hypnotics may paralyze brain and nerves into temporary insensibility; but, if due to constitutional causes, the pain, nervousness and insomnia will always return with redoubled force. If taken habitually, these agents invariably tend to create heart disease and paralysis, and ultimately develop the patient into a dope fiend.
Cold and catarrh cures (?), such as quinine, coal-tar products, etc., suppress Nature’s efforts to eliminate waste and morbid matter through the mucous linings of the respiratory tract, and drive the disease matter back into the lungs, thus breeding pneumonia, chronic catarrhs, asthma and consumption.
Mercury, iodine and all other alteratives, by suppression of external elimination, create internal chronic diseases of the most dreadful types, such as locomotor ataxy, paresis, etc.
So the recital might be continued all through orthodox materia medica. Each drug breeds new disease symptoms which are in their turn cured (?) by other poisons, until the insane asylum or merciful death rings down the curtain on the tragedy of a ruined life.
The teaching and practice of homeopathy, as explained in Chapter Twenty-Six, is fully in harmony with the Law of Action and Reaction. Acting upon the basic principle of homeopathy: Similia similibus curantur, or like cures like, it administers remedies whose first, temporary effect is similar to the disease conditions. In accordance with the Law of Dual Effect, then, the secondary effect of these remedies must be contrary to the disease conditions, that is, curative.
Suppression Versus Elimination
My claim that the conventional treatment of acute diseases is suppressive and not curative will probably be denied by my medical colleagues. They will maintain that their methods also are calculated to eliminate morbid matter and disease germs from the system.
But what are the facts in actual practice? Is it not true that preparations of mercury, lead, zinc and other powerful poisons are constantly used to suppress skin eruptions, boils, abscesses, etc., instead of allowing Nature to rid the system through these skin diseases of scrofulous, venereal and psoric taints?
Some time ago Dr. Wiley, the former Government Chemist, published the ingredients of a number of popular remedies for colds, coughs and catarrh. Every one of them contained some powerful opiate or astringent. These poisonous drugs relieve the cough and the catarrhal conditions by paralyzing the eliminative activity of the membranous linings of the nasal passages, the bronchi and lungs, the digestive and genitourinary organs; but in doing so, they throw back into the system the morbid matter which Nature is trying to get rid of, and add drug poisons to disease poisons.
Equally harmful is suppression by means of the surgeon’s knife. It may be a quicker and apparently more effective process to remove the inflamed appendix or the diseased tonsils than to cure them by building up the blood and inducing elimination of systemic poisons by natural methods. But operative treatment is not eliminative. It does not remove from the system the original cause of the inflammation or deterioration of tissues and organs, but it does remove the outlet which Nature had established for the escape of morbid materials.
These morbid encumbrances, forcibly retained in the body, weaken and destroy other parts and organs, or affect the general health of the patient.
My own observations during nearly fifteen years of practical experience, confirmed by many other conscientious observers among Nature Cure practitioners as well as physicians of other schools and of allopathy itself, prove positively that the average length of life after a major operation, performed on important, vital parts and organs, is less than ten years, and that after such an operation the general health of the patient is in the great majority of cases not as good as before.
In the following paragraphs are mentioned some very common instances of suppression and some of their usual chronic aftereffects (sequelae).
Diarrhea is suppressed with laudanum and other opiates, which paralyze the peristaltic action of the bowels and, if repeated, soon produce chronic constipation. Gonorrheal discharges and syphilitic ulcers are checked and suppressed by local injections, cauterization and by prescriptions containing mercury, iodine and other poisonous alternatives which effectually prevent Nature’s efforts to eliminate the venereal poisons from the system.
Gonorrheal discharges and syphilitic ulcers are checked and supressed by local injections, cauterizatin, and by prescriptions containing mercury, iodine, and other poisonous alternatives which effectually prevent Nature’s efforts to elminate the venereal poisons from the system.
All feverish diseases are more or less interfered with or suppressed by antiseptics, antipyretics, serums and antitoxins. The best books on Materia Medica and the professors in the colleges teach that these remedies lower the fever because they are “protoplasmic poisons”; because they paralyze the red and white blood corpuscles, benumb heart action and respiration, and depress all vital functions.
Nervousness, sleeplessness and pain are suppressed by sedatives, opiates and hypnotics. Every one of the drugs used for such purposes is a powerful poison which paralyzes brain and nerve action, in that way interfering with Nature’s healing efforts and frequently preventing the consummation of beneficial healing crises.
Epileptic attacks and other forms of convulsions are suppressed, but never cured, by bromides which benumb and paralyze the brain and nerve centers. All that these sedatives accomplish is to produce in the course of time idiocy and the different forms of paralysis and premature senility.
However, is he not considered the best doctor who can most promptly produce these and many similar deceptive results through artificial inhibition or stimulation by means of the most virulent poisons found on earth?
Dandruff and falling hair are caused by the elimination of systemic poisons through the scalp. The thing to do, therefore, is not to suppress this elimination and thereby cause the accumulation of poisons in the brain, but to stop the manufacture of poison in the body and to promote its removal through the natural channels.
Dandruff cures and hair tonics contain glycerine, poisonous antiseptics and stimulants which are absorbed by scalp and brain, causing dizziness, headaches, loss of memory, neurasthenia, deafness, weakness of sight, etc.
Head lice and similar parasites peculiar to other parts of the body live on scrofulous and psoriotic taints. When these are consumed, the lice depart as they came, no one knows whence or whither.
This is confirmed by the fact that these noxious pests do not remain with all people who have been exposed to them, but only with those whose internal or external filth conditions furnish the parasites with the means of subsistence.
In a number of instances we have seen “healing crises” take the form of lice. At that time the patients were living in the most clean surroundings, taking different forms of water treatment every day and infection
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