Recompense for obedience to natural law, and punishment for its
violation, are the invariable order of the universe, and are nowhere so
effectively and emphatically demonstrated as in the cause and cure of
the condition called disease.
There are certain laws which, if obeyed, will build the human body to
its highest efficiency of energy, vitality and strength; but in order to
obey these laws, one must know them, and in order to know them one must
pass through the long and arduous mill of experience, or else learn from
one who has done so.
Pain is a warning that something is wrong with the human mechanism, and
he who tries to silence this signal with medicine will be punished for
two wrongs instead of one. Nature tolerates no trifling, no deception;
her laws are inexorable, her penalties inevitable.
[Sidenote: Treating symptoms instead of causes]
Multitudes of people are convinced that there is _something wrong_ with
their eating. Instead of food giving them the highest degree of mental
and physical strength, which it should do, it actually produces ills
and bodily disorders; moreover, not knowing the cause, people have
no conception of a remedy other than drugs. It is amazing when one
thinks how man, for two thousand years, has treated disease. Instead of
studying causes and endeavoring to remove them, he has treated symptoms
and symptoms only. It is generally known that the practise of medicine
consists in treating symptoms rather than causes. For example, nearly
all headaches--one of our common afflictions--are caused indirectly
by impaired digestion, faulty secretion and excretion, yet the drug
stores and Materia Medica (the Bible of the profession), are laden
with "headache cures," all of which act only upon the symptoms. The
whole system of drugging people when they are sick is merely a method
of quieting the signals--of killing or paralyzing the messengers. Most
drugs, taken into the human body, are merely diminutive explosives, the
effect of which is destructive. They are like a lash cruelly applied to
a willing servant who lags from sheer exhaustion.
[Sidenote: "Ease" and "Dis-ease"]
Since symptoms are really the language of Nature, if we learn to
interpret them, we need never err in diagnosis, and consequently never
err in getting directly at the causes, as we must do in order to
"cure." A drug that could _cure_ a disorder caused by wrong feeding
would perform a miracle. _It would reverse one of the fixed laws of the
universe. It would produce an effect without a cause._ Nature works
along the lines of least resistance, and points out with unerring
certainty the best, the cheapest, and the easiest way to live. Health
was originally called "ease." People who did not have health were in
disgrace or "dis-eased."