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 pa.s.sages, 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 enc.u.mbrances, 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 pract.i.tioners 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 ant.i.toxins. 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 acc.u.mulation 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, deaf-ness, 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 was practically impossible.

These people invariably recalled that they had been infested with parasites at some previous time, and that strong antiseptics, mercurial salves, or other means of suppression had been applied.

We prescribe for the removal of lice only cold water and the comb.

Even antiseptic soaps should be avoided.

The Results of Suppression of Children's Diseases

Sycotic eruptions on the heads and bodies of infants, also called milk scurf, if suppressed by salves, cream, unsalted b.u.t.ter or merely by warm bathing, are often followed by ch.o.r.ea (St. Vitus'

dance), epilepsy, a scrofulous const.i.tution and in later life by tuberculosis.

Measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, spinal meningitis and other febrile diseases of childhood, if properly treated by natural methods, are curative or at least corrective in their effects on the system, and represent well-defined, orderly natural processes for the elimination of inherited or acquired disease taints, drug poisons, etc. But if arrested or suppressed before they have run their natural course, before Nature has had time to reestablish normal conditions, then the abnormal condition becomes fixed and permanent (chronic).

In addition to this, the poisons and serums employed to arrest the disease process very often affect vital parts and organs permanently, causing the gradual deterioration of cells and tissues, and paving the way for tuberculosis, chronic affection of the kidneys, cancer, etc., in later years.

These self-evident facts, which can be verified by any unprejudiced observer, account for the "mysterious sequelae" of drug-and serum-treated acute diseases, which never occur where natural methods of healing have been correctly employed. Some of these chronic aftereffects are deafness, blindness, heart and kidney diseases, nervous affections, idiocy, infantile paralysis, etc.

These are merely a few ordinary examples of the results of suppression. They could be multiplied a hundred fold, yet medical science a.s.sures us that the causes of cancer and other malignant diseases are unknown.

Good Nature Cure Doctrine from an Allopathic Authority

The following utterances of the late Dr. Nicholas Senin strongly confirm our claims as to the nature and cure of disease. Coming from the lips of a celebrated surgeon and physician, these statements should carry some weight with those who, being unable to reason for themselves, worship at the feet of "authority." The quotations referred to are taken from the report of an interview granted by the doctor to Chicago newspaper representatives on his return from his trip around the world.

[Chicago American, August 5th, 1906.]

GERMS PLANTED BY TIGHT LACING

Over-Feeding and Over-Dressing Given as Causes of Cancer

"Dr. Nicholas Senn brought back from Africa, from whence he returned to Chicago yesterday, confirmations of his belief that cancer is a 'civilized' disease.

"Dr. Senn spent from $2,000 to $3,000 worth of time--at the cash value per hour of his time on his first day at home for four months, telling a half dozen newspaper men more than all the world, except himself and a score of specialists like him, know about the fearful disease. He summed up his own learning in the statement that the disease is still incurable except by the knife in its incipient stages and that the best preventive is clean, plain living.

"His investigations of the natives of Africa served to strengthen his conviction that cancer is a product of civilization, 'like apoplexy and scores of other exotic ailments,' Dr. Senn said. He could not find or hear of a case of cancer among the 'Hamites,' as he termed them. And from the fact that he found the disease, to be an unknown one to the Esquimaux of Greenland, he is a.s.sured that climate has nothing whatever to do with it. Climate did not cause it, and climate will not cure it."

Cancer Caused by Over-Living

"'The nearer the human race approaches the animals in habits and particularly in the matter of diet and dress, the freer it is from cancer,' he said. 'Cancer comes from over-feeding and over-living.

"'Drinking, gourmandizing, unnatural habits of women, like lacing, all those things help to plant the seeds of cancer in the child.

"'And as we have not learned to cure it the best thing to do is to prevent it when we can. If children were brought up in simplicity by natural mothers; then, if care should be taken to prevent hypernutrition, there would be much less danger from cancer. Cancer itself is an over-fed thing--tissue that never matures, for if I could mature the cells I could cure the disease. The thing for people to do who fear they may have inherited it, is to live simply--there are many cases among people with a tendency to obesity to one among those of a scanty habit of living--and particularly to remove all sources of irritation, like bad teeth, tobacco, and clothes that chafe.'"

Studies African Race

"Besides his hobby, as he calls it, Dr. Senn studied the African generally in his voyage along the East Coast of that continent.

"'It was a fine trip,' he said, 'with so many things to learn.

Ethnologically I am certain Africans are of common stock. The negro is a negro wherever you find him. From Kaffir to Bushman and pygmy they are all Hamites.

"'They are mostly a fine people physically, lean and tall, except the dwarfs. There is little tendency toward obesity; they have no apoplexy, no distended veins as we have in civilization. Hence their freedom from cancer. They live naturally, and are vegetarians mostly, while the Northern Esquimaux are meat-eaters, but both races eat naturally to sustain life, hence their immunity from that disease. It is where eating is made an art that cancer is most prevalent.

"'They are free from many other diseases that pester us also.

Tuberculosis is hardly known, and only along the coast, where it has been taken by the whites. The real curse of the coast country is malaria. It is bad all up and down the East sh.o.r.e. I kept away from it myself by taking five grains of quinine and the juice of a lemon once a day on an empty stomach. That is a good remedy for malaria, for in all my running around I have never had it."

(Editor's Note.--Dr. Senn died January 2, 1908. The papers stated after his death, that the doctor had never been well since the return from his long voyage, that his heart and nervous system had been seriously affected by the alt.i.tudes of the Andes and of other mountains. We wonder whether the "high alt.i.tudes" or the "five grains of quinine daily" were to blame for the celebrated physician's heart disease and death.)

Suppression, the Cause of Chronic Diseases

Dr. Senn was right. If men and women lived more naturally, the majority of diseases would disappear.

The primary cause of disease is violation of Nature's Laws.