The human body is an accumulation of millions of separate cells, which
are the bearers of life, and which in various groups form the different
organs, the combined action of which constitutes our individual
existence.
This existence itself is the natural issue of the existence of our
predecessors, who generated the new life which will be transmitted by us
and reappear in our offspring.
In like manner all the functions of the body form an endless chain in
which not a single link must be faulty or missing, if healthy organic
life is to continue.
This accumulation of cells, however, is by no means inactive. On the
contrary, organic life is nothing but the constant dying of the old and
the reconstruction of new cells; it means that we are in a perpetual
condition of composition and consequently of decomposition throughout
our entire being, its different parts and organs.
As soon as we are able to recognize this accumulation of cells as one
individual whole and thus arrive at the idea of their absolute
interdependence, we shall get rid of the prevalent idea, that the mere
structural differences between the respective organs of the body make
them separate and independent things which may be treated irrespective
of one another in case of disease, or dealt with by different
specialists.
We arrive then at the one great question: _What is the cause of
disease?_ Not of one or other form of disease or class of diseases, but
of disease as a whole.
_There is, in fact, only one disease._
What appear to us as different disturbances of the normal condition of
our body, are only variations, in quantity or in quality, of the one
thing. It is the variation of the controlling element which performs the
necessary work of keeping the existing cells in proper condition and
replacing those which in the course of nature are destroyed. In a word,
the work of _perpetual regeneration, which is life_.