Nature Cure | Page 6

it confusing to average people and gets
them to believe that health reformers are all at sea, and what is good for
one is not good for another, or, in common language, "what is one
man's meat is another's poison."
Now, I know it is natural, and doubtless best, that there should be a
difference of opinion on any question, but at the same time, if any
movement is to be crowned with great success, there should be some
underlying principles upon which all should agree, and these should be
pressed to the forefront, so as to attract and hold the attention of the
people, in place of the divergent details upon which they disagree. If
these fundamental laws and principles are thoroughly studied and well
defined, it may be found that they would explain the discrepancies
between the different theories, and that under certain conditions, one
plan is best, and that under different conditions another plan is more
applicable, etc. The pushing of these fundamental principles to the front
would also tend to correct errors into which the different theorists have
fallen, and would certainly tend to make the different theories more
homogeneous and more easily understood by people in general, than at
present.
In my opinion, the general fundamental principles of life and health are
what people need to understand more than anything else. Without this,
most of the details will be meaningless or at least confusing dogmas. I
don't mean by these fundamental principles the details of anatomy, or,
for that matter, the details of anything else, but the general rules
governing life and death, so that people may know which way they, are
tending, and may understand the many illusions with which life and
death, as well as all else in nature are beset.
Yours truly,
WILLIAM LOUDEN
Louden Mfg. Co.,
Fairfield, Iowa.

The present volume and others of the "Nature Cure Series" which are to

follow are an attempt to answer Mr. Louden's inquiry and to formulate
and elucidate the fundamental laws of health, disease and cure for
which he and many others have been vainly seeking. Who among you
at some time or another, has not thought and felt like Mr. Louden and
in doubt and perplexity voiced Pilate's query,
What Is Truth?
The exact information and rational method of teaching which Mr.
Louden is seeking, has heretofore been wanting in health-culture
literature.
Many, indeed, stand ready and willing to show the way to physical,
mental and moral perfection. Hundreds, yes, thousands, of different
cults, isms, teachers, books and periodicals treat of these subjects, but
their teachings are so manifold, so contradictory and confusing, that
one becomes bewildered amid the ever increasing testimony. As is
often the case in the study of complicated subjects, the more one reads
and the more one hears, the less one knows. I believe that no one has
described more strikingly this state of general perplexity than Mr.
Louden in his excellent letter.
Nevertheless, these simple fundamental laws and principles really exist.
They must exist, because everything in Nature, including the processes
of health, of disease and cure, of birth, of life and death, are subject to
law and order.
Allopathy, or Old School Medical Science, admits that it does not
know these fundamental principles; that it reasons, not from underlying
causes, but from external symptoms and personal experiences. It is,
therefore, self-confessedly full of doubts, errors and confusion; in short,
empirical--and necessarily, a failure.
Many teachers of Nature Cure, Hygiene and Health cults have stumbled
accidentally upon some of the natural laws and true methods of healing,
but have failed to grasp and to formulate the broad underlying
principles. For this reason they are often partly right and partly wrong
and very apt to overdo certain methods to the neglect of others just as
effective and essential, or even more so.
I shall endeavor in these volumes to formulate and elucidate some of
the fundamental laws and principles underlying the phenomena of life
and death, health, disease and cure, and shall try to ascertain in the light
of these laws how much of truth and how much of error, how much of

usefulness and how much of harmfulness there may be contained in the
various theories and systems of living and of healing.
Nature Owe an Exact Science
One of the reasons why Nature Cure is not more popular with the
medical profession and the public is that it is too simple. The average
mind is more impressed by the involved and mysterious than by the
simple and common-sense.
However, it remains a fact that "exact science" reduces complexity and
confusion to simplicity and clearness. Science becomes exact science
only when the underlying laws which correlate and unify its scattered
facts and theories have been discovered.
These simple laws