Disease is the remedial effort of Nature to throw off such obstructions--a process of purification and regeneration--and its symptoms should be assisted and regulated rather than resisted and suppressed.
"Doctors prescribe--but only Nature cures," is an ancient axiom, but it faithfully represents the "_vis medicatrix naturae_."
The question has recently been publicly propounded "Is sickness criminal?" Very certainly, disease is the outcome of personal neglect, in past or present; but the nature of the question is a sign significant that the laity are awakening to the truth that the healing power of nature rests wholly in the generation and conservation of latent reserve energy.
As regards the influenza controversy the Official verdict is, as we have seen, that the Regular Medical Profession as a whole, has failed in its endeavor to fathom the mystery and is at present "_really and truly helpless_." Let us therefore, seek the cause of this disastrous failure and strive to solve the problem along other lines.
If so poor be the harvest, what of the soil? is the natural enquiry. And it must be generally admitted that this spectacular failure lies in the superficial teaching of the medical schools--its search for causes in the mature, and "specialized," anatomical organs in place of the fundamental physiological, chemical and embryonic causes from which, in their appointed order those various organs are evolved;--first the brain and nervous system, afterwards the tissues and the bones. Thus, unversed in the deeper phases of causation, men are hurried unprepared into ranks of a noble profession to struggle as best they may, through lack of deeper knowledge, with the serious symptoms of disease--at first by rote but later, are tempted to tamper empirically with its issues.
It has been said by a great scientific authority that, in order to thoroughly comprehend and cure any form of disease it is necessary, in the first place, to mentally map out and visualize the course of its growth and to follow it backward, step by step, to its source before it is possible to formulate curative treatment adapted to its cause and phases.
To commence then at the initial stage, let us bring upon the scene one of the greatest chemists of the age: Justus von Liebig, the discoverer of "The Law of the Minimum," which is this: That of the sixteen known constituents of the blood essential to the healthy growth and maintenance of the organs and tissues of the body, the absence of any proportional ingredient, however small, will cause degeneration in the organism and interfere with the proper functioning of one or more of the activities concerned.