Another question sometimes asked of us is: "Do healing crises develop in every chronic disease under natural treatment?" Our answer is: If the condition of the patient is not favorable to a cure, that is, if the vitality is too low and the destruction of vital parts too far advanced, the healing crises may be proportionately delayed or may not occur at all. In such cases the disease symptoms will increase in severity and complexity and become more destructive instead of more constructive, until the final fatal crisis. The end may come quickly, or the patient may decline gradually toward the fatal termination.

Again, patients ask us: "Through how many crises shall I have to pa.s.s?" We tell them: Just as many as you need; no more, no less. So long as there is anything wrong in the system, crises will come and go; but each crisis, if successfully pa.s.sed, is another milestone on the road to perfect health.

It is intensely interesting to observe how orderly and intelligently Nature proceeds in her work of healing and repair. One problem after another is taken up and adjusted.

First of all, the digestive organs are put into better condition, because further progress depends upon proper a.s.similation and elimination. The bowels must act freely and naturally before any permanent improvement can take place. A treatment which fails to accomplish this first preliminary improvement will surely fail to produce more important results.

In this connection it is a significant fact that nearly all our patients, when they come under our care, are suffering from very stubborn constipation in spite of (or possibly on account of) lifelong drugging. Neither medicines nor operations had given them anything but temporary relief and the trouble had grown worse instead of better.

If the "Old School" methods of treatment were not successful in relieving simple constipation, what else can they be expected to cure, since the overcoming of constipation is evidently the primary necessity for any other improvement?

A system of treatment which cannot accomplish this cannot accomplish anything else. It is strange, therefore, that a school of medicine which has not succeeded, with all its vaunted knowledge and wisdom, to cure simple constipation, flatly denies that natural methods can cure cancer, epilepsy, locomotor ataxy and other so-called incurable diseases.

Our Greatest Difficulty

The greatest difficulty in our work lies in conducting our patients safely through the stormy crises periods. The first, preliminary improvement is often so marked that the patient believes himself already cured. He will say: "Doctor, I am feeling fine! There is nothing the matter with me any more! I cannot understand why I shouldn't go home and continue the natural regimen there!"

This feeling of mental elation and physical well-being is usually the sign that the first general improvement has progressed far enough to prepare the system for a healing crisis. Therefore my answer to the overconfident patient may be something like this: "Remember what I told you. The first improvement is not the cure, it is only the preparation for the real fight. Look out! In a few days you may whistle another tune."

And sure enough, usually within a few days after such a conversation the patient is down in the slough of despond. His digestive organs are in a wretched condition. He is nauseated, his tongue is coated, he is suffering from headache and from a mult.i.tude of other symptoms according to his individual condition. In fact, many of the old aches and pains which he thought already cured come up again with renewed force.

Healing crises, representing radical changes in the system, are always accompanied by physical and mental weakness, because every bit of vitality is drawn upon in these reconstructive processes. The entire organism is shaken up to its very foundation; deep-seated, chronic disease taints are being stirred up throughout the system.

The eliminative processes of the healing crises are often accompanied by great mental depression and a feeling of strong revulsion to the natural regimen and everything connected with it.

The patient thinks that, after all, Nature Cure is not for him, that he is growing worse instead of better. In proportion to the severity of the changes going on within him, he becomes disheartened and despondent. Often he exhibits all the mental and emotional symptoms of homesickness. In these critical days it requires all our powers of persuasion to keep the depressed and discouraged patient from giving up the fight and from taking something to relieve his distress. He insists that "something must be done for him," and cannot understand how he will ever get out of his "awful condition"

without some good strong medicine.

If our patients were not continually and thoroughly instructed regarding the Laws of Crises and of Periodicity and if we did not strongly advise and encourage them to persevere with the treatment, few of them would hold out during these critical periods.

This explains why so many people fail to be cured and it also explains why natural living and self-treatment often do not meet with the desired results if carried on without the instruction and guidance of a competent, experienced Nature Cure physician.

So long as the improvement continues, everything is lovely and hope soars high. But when the inevitable crises arrive, the sufferer believes that, after all, he made a mistake in taking up the natural regimen, especially so when friends and relatives do their best to destroy his confidence in the natural methods of cure by ridicule and dire prophesies of failure.

Frightened and discouraged, the patient returns to the "flesh-pots of Egypt" and to the good old pills and potions and ever afterwards he tells his friends that "he tried Nature Cure and the vegetarian diet, but it was no good."

Mother Nature remains a "book sealed with seven seals" to those who mistrust, despise and counteract her, who rely on man-made wisdom and the ever-changing theories and dogmas of the schools.

But on the other hand, every crisis conducted to a successful termination in accordance with Nature's laws becomes an inspiration to him who follows her guidance and a.s.sists her with intelligent effort and loving care.

Chapter XXII

What About The "Chronic"? It Takes So Long

"Yes, Nature Cure is all right, but it takes so long." Now and then we hear this or a similar remark. Our answer is: "No, it does not take long. It is the swiftest cure in existence."

The trouble is that, as a rule, we have to deal with none but the most advanced cases of so-called incurable diseases. People go to the Nature Cure physician only after all other methods of treatment have been tried and found of no avail.

As long as there remains a particle of faith in the medicine bottle, the knife or the metaphysical formula of the mind healer, people prefer these easy methods, which require no effort on their part, to the Nature Cure treatment, which necessitates personal exertion, self-control, the changing or giving up of cherished habits. This, however, is what most of us evade as long as we can. "Exercise, the cold blitzguss, no red meat, no coffee?--I'd rather die!"

Afraid of Cold Water

The most-dreaded terror on the threshold seems to be cold water.

Undoubtedly, it has kept away thousands from Nature Cure and thereby from the only possible cure for their chronic ailments. If we could achieve equally good results without our heroic methods of treatment, the sidewalks leading to our inst.i.tution would be crowded with people clamoring for admission.

After all, this foolish fear is entirely groundless. Cold water is no more to be dreaded than the bogey man. It is one of our fundamental principles of treatment never to do anything that is painful to the patient. We always "temper the wind to the shorn lamb," the coldness of the water and the force of the manipulations to the sensitiveness and endurance of the subject. Beginning with mild, alternately warm and cool sprays, which are pleasant and agreeable to everyone, we gradually increase the force and lower the temperature until the patient is so inured to cold water that the blitzguss becomes a delightful and pleasurable sensation, a positive luxury.

It is amusing to watch the gradual change in the att.i.tude of our patients toward the cold-water treatment. In some instances we have had to spend hours in earnest persuasion before we could induce a particularly sensitive person to try the first mild spray. A few weeks later if, perchance, something interfered with the cold water applications, the patient would indignantly refuse to take the other treatment if there was to be no cold water.

There is certainly no finer tonic than cold water, no more exhilarating sensation than that produced by the artistic application of alternating douches and the blitz.

The real cause of this cold-water scare, we believe, is to be found in the boasting of the veterans. When, with protruding chest and chin in air, they brag to the newcomers or to their friends about their heroism and the coolness with which they allow the cold-water hose to be turned on them, the listener shudders and exclaims: "This cold water may be all right for you, but it would never do for me."

No doubt, it is this bravado of the initiated that keeps many a novice from the first plunge into the mysteries of Nature Cure. If these timid ones only knew what they miss!

Business Versus Cure

From a business point of view it would, perhaps, be better to omit the cold water altogether. It would certainly be much less trouble; but then, the rugged honesty of Father Kneipp, the champion of the cold-water treatment branch of German Nature Cure, has descended upon his followers and compels them to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, to make use of everything that is likely to be of benefit to the patient and to effect a real and lasting cure.

Our friends, the osteopaths, have only a pitying smile for our arduous labors. They ask: "Why fool with cold water and drive patients away, when pleasant manipulations bring the business?" If we query in return: "Do your pleasant manipulations cure obstinate chronic ailments?" They answer: "We do not expect to cure them. The effort involves too much labor and spoils the reputation of our work. Not one in a hundred chronics has the patience and perseverance to be cured. Besides, if a patient comes too long to the office for treatment he drives others away."

Some of the most successful osteopaths in this city make it a rule not to treat a patient longer than six weeks or two months.

In a number of cases this may be sufficient to produce marked primary improvement, but it is not enough to launch the patient into a healing crisis and, therefore, does not produce a real cure because it does not remove the underlying causes of the disease. If, after a while, the latent chronic condition again manifests in external symptoms, the patient returns for another course of treatment; he was "cured" so quickly before and thinks he will be helped again.

In justice to the osteopaths it must be said that we are not referring to those chronic diseases which are directly caused by lesions of the spine or other bony structures. If such dislocations or subluxations be the sole cause of the trouble, their correction by manipulative treatment may produce a cure within a few weeks.

But notwithstanding the teachings of orthodox osteopathy, the majority of chronic ailments have their origin in other causes. In most cases, the existing spinal lesions are themselves the result of other primary disease conditions which must be removed before the bony lesions will remain corrected.

The mode of treatment depends upon the object that is to be accomplished. If it is to make the patient feel better with the least possible expenditure of time, money, personal effort and self-control on his part, and the least amount of exertion on the part of the physician or healer, then osteopathic manipulations or meta-physical formulas may be in order. But if the object is to cure actually and permanently a deep-seated chronic disease, all the methods of the natural treatment, intelligently combined and adapted to the individual case, will be required in order to accomplish results.

Pull the Roots

Cutting off their heads does not kill the weeds. The first sign of improvement in the treatment of a chronic disease does not mean a cure.

Diagnosis from the Eye, borne out by everyday practical experience, reveals the fact that symptomatic manifestations of disease are due to underlying const.i.tutional causes; that the chronic symptoms are Nature's feeble and ineffectual efforts to eliminate from the system scrofulous, psoric or syphilitic taints and the disease products resulting from food and drug poisoning, or to overcome the destructive effects of surgical mutilations.

An abatement of symptoms is, therefore, not always the sign of a real and permanent cure. The latter depends entirely on the elimination of the hereditary and acquired const.i.tutional taints and poisons.

When, under the influence of natural living and methods of treatment, the body of the chronic becomes sufficiently purified and strengthened, a period of marked improvement may set in. All disease symptoms gradually abate, the patient gains in strength, both physically and mentally, and he feels as though there was nothing the matter with him any more.

But the eyes tell a different story. They show that the underlying const.i.tutional taints have not been fully eliminated--the weeds have not been pulled up by the roots.

This can be accomplished only by healing crises, by Nature's cleansing and healing activities in the form of inflammatory and feverish processes; anything short of this is merely preliminary improvement, "training for the fight," but not the cure.