Nature Cure | Page 4

and endowed research
institutes is almost entirely along combative lines, while the individual,

progressive physician learns to work more and more along preventive
lines. The slogan of modern medical science is, "Kill the germ and cure
the disease." The usual procedure is to wait until acute or chronic
diseases have fully developed, and then, if possible, to subdue them by
means of drugs, surgical operations, and by means of the morbid
products of disease, in the form of serums, antitoxins, vaccines, etc.
The combative method fights disease with disease, poison with poison,
and germs with germs and germ products. In the language of the Good
Book, it is "Beelzebub against the Devil."
The preventive method does not wait until diseases have fully
developed and gained the ascendancy in the body, but concentrates its
best endeavors on preventing, by hygienic living and by natural
methods of treatment, the development of diseases. By these it
endeavors to put the human body in such a normal, healthy condition
that it is practically proof against infection or contagion by disease
taints and miasms, and against the inroads of germs, bacteria and
parasites.
The question is, which method is the most practical, the most
successful and most popular? Which will stand the test of "the survival
of the fittest" in the great struggle for existence?
The medical profession has good reason to be alarmed by the inroads
made in its work by irregular, unorthodox systems, schools and cults of
treating human ailments; but instead of raging at the audacious
presumption of these interlopers, would it not be better to inquire if
there is not some reason for the astonishing spread and popularity of
these therapeutic innovations?
Their success undoubtedly is based on the fact that they concentrate
their best efforts on preventive instead of combative methods of
treating disease. People are beginning to realize that it is cheaper and
more advantageous to prevent disease than to cure it. To create and
maintain continuous, buoyant good health means greater efficiency for
mental and physical work; greater capacity for the true enjoyment of
life, and the best insurance against failure and poverty. Therefore, he
who builds health is of greater value to humanity than he who allows
people to drift into disease through ignorance of Nature's laws, and then
attempts to cure them by doubtful and uncertain combative methods.
It is said that in China the physician is hired and paid by the year; that

he receives a certain stipend as long as the members of the family are in
good health, but that the salary is suspended as long as one of his
charges is ill. If some similar method of engaging and paying for
medical services were in vogue in this country the trend of medical
research and practice would soon undergo a radical change.
The diet expert, the hydropath, the physical culturist, the adjuster of the
spine, the mental healer, and Christian scientist, do not pay much
attention to the pathological conditions or to the symptoms of disease.
They regulate the diet and habits of living on a natural basis, promote
elimination, teach correct breathing and wholesome exercise, correct
the mechanical lesions of the spine, establish the right mental and
emotional attitude and, in so far as they succeed in doing this, they
build health and diminish the possibility of disease. The successful
doctor of the future will have to fall in line with the procession and do
more teaching than prescribing.
I realize that many of the statements and claims made in this volume
will seem radical and irrational to my colleagues of the regular school
of medicine. They win say that most of my teachings are contrary to the
firmly established theories of medical science. All I ask, of them is not
to judge too hastily; to observe, to think and to test, and I am certain
that they will find verified in actual experience many of the teachings
of the Nature Cure Philosophy. Medical science has had to abandon
innumerable theories and practices which at one time were as firmly
established as some of the pet theories of today.
By none of the statements made in this book do I mean to deny the
necessity of combative methods under certain circumstances. What I
wish to emphasize is that the regular school of medicine is spending too
much of its effort along combative lines and not enough along
preventive. It would be foolish to deny the necessity of surgery in
traumatism, and in abnormal conditions which require mechanical
means of adjustment or treatment.
Such necessity, for instance, will exist in certain obstetrical cases, as
long as women have not learned, or are not willing to live in such a
way as to make surgical intervention unnecessary in child-birth. The
same is true with regard