Masking the Symptoms

Masking the Symptoms

"Doctors should be called "symptomologists" "


MASKING THE SYMPTOMS

When a man becomes ill, he calls a physician, takes the drugs the latter prescribes, and gets well or not, as the case may be, and neither he nor the physician knows why he did the one or the other. Certainly the prescription of the physician has nothing to do with his recovery. His prescription has been aimed at masking symptoms and not at cause. He hurls his shot and shell at the "attacking" force with due courage and vigor and the only thing he destroys is the patient.

CANNOT PREDICT

The physician has no idea, previous to any one visit, how he will find his patient, and when he finds a change in symptoms, it has no meaning to him. When a physician prescribes for a patient and leaves him he has no more idea than the man in the moon in what condition he will find his patient upon his next call. The very best of them cannot tell whether or not "complications" will develop in a given case. They are never certain that their patient will improve and cannot be sure that he will not grow worse. When the physician finds a change of symptoms in his patient, he cannot tell whether this change is due to food, drugs, fear, excitement caused by visitors, improper nursing, or to something else. He is likely to conclude that it is a "peculiarity of the disease" or an "unusual development." Every first-class physician knows that "modern medicine" cannot predict anything. Yet, if they had a true science, if they knew real causes and had a valid plan of care, they would be able to predict - prognose - with something like precision, the outcome of the diseases in the patients they treat. Their very masking of symptoms with drugs stand in their own light and prevents them from knowing the true conditions of their patients.

HOW ARE DISEASES NAMED?

What is disease? We apply this term to a group of abnormal signs and symptoms. We group these symptoms into vaguely defined symptom complexes give the complexes names and then go after them with hammer and tongs. Stereotyped treatment is the rule under this way of regarding disease. Quinine for malaria anti-toxin for diphtheria, arsenic for "syphilis", digitalis for the heart, operation for appendicitis, morphine for cancer, the anti histamines for colds. In not one instance do we seek to find, understand and remove cause.

MEASLES

Let us look at measles, which is defined as a "catarrhal fever, a typical enanthom," (eruption on the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, throat, occasionally bronchus and gastro-intestinal mucous membrane). "The internal enanthema (eruption) is to be expected, or suspected, when the exanthema (external eruption) fails to show up.

All of the symptomatology of measles, carefully compiled by the makers of medical text-books, as well as of all other so-called diseases, has very little meaning for the physicians of the various schools of so-called healing. What does it mean? It means that all of the eruptive fevers - all of the so-called diseases of the mucous membranes, those of the nose and lips, those involving the throat and lungs, and ending with pneumonia, and all of those that involve the outer skin - are but different forms of elimination of pent-up by-products of metabolism. They are processes of vicarious or compensatory excretion.

ACUTE DISEASE = DAMAGE REPAIR

Exaltation of function - rapid heart action, rapid breathing, diarrhea, increased temperature, etc., etc.- as seen in the various so-called acute diseases, represents efforts of the body to eliminate toxins and repair damages. In this respect, exaltation of function is desirable and beneficial under certain conditions. Such exalted function indicates a wrong somewhere and this wrong should be searched for and righted without depressing or weakening the sum of the vital energy.

THE COMMON COLD

A cold is a catarrhal disease, a "catarrhal fever," and is a process of vicarious elimination. Contrary to popular belief, a cold is not something that we "catch," but it represents a process of getting rid of something we have slowly accumulated. What does cold weather have to do with the cause of colds? People "catch" colds as often in warm weather as in cold weather. An increase in temperature may precipitate a cold as often as will a decrease in temperature. They have colds as often in dry as in wet weather. Men have colds as often as women, although they dress heavier. Indeed, men have more catarrh than women, because they dress more warmly, dissipate more and eat more.

TOXEMIA

Back of every catarrh is a toxemic state. Catarrh is impossible in the absence of toxemia. Toxemia is produced by anything and everything that enervates the body. Enervation inhibits (checks) excretion (elimination) permitting the accumulation of uneliminated waste. The accumulation of body waste - end-products of metabolism - produces toxemia.

Toxemia is the universal, basic cause of all so-called disease. Adventitious complicating causes may be super-added to toxemia. By checked elimination is not meant constipation, but checked excretion through all of the excretory organs of the body. Toxemia is not caused by constipation and is not removed by laxatives, enemas and colonic irrigations. Nor will the use of kidney medicines increase elimination through the kidneys. None of the so-called blood-purifiers can be of any value in remedying toxemia.

The ultimate cause of mankind's many so-called diseases lies in the enervating habits of mind and body practiced almost universally. Because this is so, the ultimate remedy for our diseases is a correction of the habits of life.

IF NO ATTENTION TO CAUSE - NEW PROBLEMS

Today, as in the past, when a man becomes ill - he takes a pill from a box, potion from a bottle, gets an injection of a poison from a hypodermic syringe, or has an organ removed. No attention is given to cause. His life is not changed, his habits are not corrected, and in a short time he is sick again. Neither the physician nor the patient is able to trace a connection between the two so-called diseases. So-called health is again restored and the incident passes from memory.

Again, within a short time, another illness (which is as much of a surprise as were the prior two illnesses) develops and still no thought is devoted to its connection with the two preceding illnesses. So long as the real nature of disease and real source of cause are not understood, this will continue to be true.

TOXEMIC CRISIS = STEAM SAFETY VALVE

The medical axiom that "all diseases tend to recovery" is much overworked, and by no school more than by the old school or self-styled "regulars." Why? Because the primary cause, the universal cause of disease - toxemia - is not known. The many diseases which the medical tongue so flippantly describes as functional derangements that "tend to recovery," are simply crises in toxemic saturation. In their alleged "self-recovery" in spite of "cures", palliations, and the "chief function of the physician to guard against complications," there is no recovery at all.

Like the escape of excess steam through the safety-valve of an engine, the steam pressure is lowered for the time being; but unless the cause of toxemic saturation is removed, crises will recur time after time, as the toxemia continues to in-crease, and the "curing" has to be done over and over again.
This requires that the wisest of physicians must be constantly busying himself "guarding against complications" - complications that he is almost always responsible for building.