Science and Health

“ One nation rises to supreme power in the world, while another declines, and, in a brief space of time, the sovereign people change, transmitting, like racers, the lamp of life to some other that is to succeed them.
"There is one Science of Medicine which is concerned with the inspection of health equally in all times, present, past and future." ”

“ If the science of being was familiar to them as the edicts of the schools, blessings numberless would flow from such high sources. In every case of disease, or of health, to heal the one or preserve the other, the science of Life is all that is necessary. ”

“ The immediate object of physiological experiment is, then, not to make out new practical methods of treating disease, but rather to attain to a more complete and sound understanding of those general laws which govern the actions of the living body in health—laws which must ever form the only firm basis of the knowledge of disease, and the only sure guide to judicious modes of treatment. ”

“ Above all, she should realize the multiplicity of causes which science more and more clearly recognizes in their single result. She should learn both by precept and by experience that for a single fact such as disease or health there are always many causes, so that any one who points confidently to a single cause, such as cold, fatigue, bacteria, or worry as a sufficient explanation of a person's disease, is almost certain to be wrong. ”

“ Hygiene.—But I fancy you ask me, Is there any hope that in the future evolution, and with it adjustment to environment, will carry man so far that an ideal state of health will be the lot of all? [159] This is what hygiene promises. Is it a vain hope? If we look at what older sciences have done for man we find much to encourage us. In astronomy, by the aid of mathematics, we can calculate with certitude the date of future eclipses. In many other sciences we can make accurate predictions and accomplish results of the greatest importance. Indeed, science has become almost our only authority. ”

“ This is just one little instance of the good that comes from reading Science and Health.
T. W. H.
Opinions of the Press
This is, perhaps, the most remarkable book on health, in some respects, which has appeared in this country. The author evidently discards physiology, hygiene, mesmerism, magnetism, and every form of medication, bathing, dieting, etc., — all go by the board; no medicine, manipulation, or external applications are permitted; everything is done through the mind. ”

“ Sanitary science includes the sum total of the knowledge of those principles and processes necessary to maintain personal and public health. It is an inductive science and therefore depends upon observation and verification in determining the general laws and truths of health and the relation between cause and effect in public and personal health. ”

“ After a careful examination of my discovery in 1866, that Mind governs all, not partially but supremely, I submitted my metaphysical system of treating disease to the broadest practical tests. Since then this system has gradually gained ground; and it has proved itself, whenever scientifically employed, to be the most effective curative agent in medical practice.
All science is natural, but all science is not physical. The Science of Soul is no more supernatural than the science of numbers; but departing from the realm of the physical, as it must, some may deny it the name of Science. ”

“ And it has been well said that "science has nothing to offer more inviting in speculation than the laws of vitality, the variations of those laws in the two sexes at different ages, and the influence of civilization, occupation, locality, seasons, and other physical agencies, either in generating diseases or in improving the public health." ”

“ The soil of disease is mortal mind, and you have a crop abundant or scanty, according to the seedlings in that soil, by whomsoever placed there.
Anatomy, physiology, treatises on health, — sustained by what is termed material law, — are the husbandmen of sickness and disease. It is proverbial that as long as you read medical works you will be sick. ”

“ In this lecture, I shall not attempt to teach you to become your own physicians, for when the barriers of health are once broken down, and disease has established itself, it requires the deepest attention, and an accurate acquaintance with the extensive science of medicine, to combat it; to attain this knowledge demands the labour of years. ”

“ But health and disease also claim the attention of the scientist, and not merely of the physician, in so far as an account of their causes is concerned. The extent to which these two differ and investigate diverse provinces must not escape us, since facts show that their inquiries are, at least to a certain extent, conterminous. For physicians of culture and refinement make some mention of natural science, and claim to derive their principles from it, while the most accomplished investigators into nature generally push their studies so far as to conclude with an account of medical principles. ”

“ Workers in almost every branch of pure science have contributed to the progress,—the physicist, the meteorologist, the chemist, and by no means the least, the biologist. Indeed, with the more recent investigations, the culture tube of the biologist has almost revolutionized medicine and all that pertains to it.
Sanitary science seeks to accomplish two ends; it purposes to prevent disease and to promote public health. If it seeks to prevent disease, after the fashion of the oft-quoted cook-book, it must first secure the disease, or what276 is essentially the same thing, know what causes it. ”

“ The chief ground upon which I venture to recommend that the teaching of elementary physiology should form an essential part of any organised course of instruction in matters pertaining to domestic economy, is, that a knowledge of even the elements of this subject supplies those conceptions of the constitution and mode of action of the living body, and of the nature of health and disease, which prepare the mind to receive instruction from sanitary science. ”

“ Health fortified by such conditions as the organism depends upon for its fabrication and maintenance opposes itself to all exciting causes of disease by the relative integrity, strength and vigor of all the organs and functions of the body. ”

“ For physiology is the study of natural conditions, and must first be studied by physicians, inasmuch as what is normal is healthy, and the rule for its own rightness, as well as for every abnormal deviation therefrom. But when deviations from health, or any abnormal conditions are defined by the light of healthy structures, then pathology, the science of disease, becomes intelligible. Then also from a knowledge of pathology the practice and art of healing, and numberless new methods of treatment, will naturally spring. ”

“ Among the conditions of the environment, of hygiene and of health, which can be managed for the whole of a population, we should designate first the normal conditions which tend to assure the normal development or performance of the organs, such as pure air, nutritious and sufficient food, proper clothing, healthy houses, the adjustment of the work to the strength, etc. ”

“ Modern science has turned its forces upon this question of maintaining at its highest potentiality the ability of the body to resist disease. All the habits of the human race have been investigated in the light of this idea, and some have been found to be wise and others to be unwise. ”

“ A physician of the old school remarks, with great gravity, “We know that mind affects the body somewhat, and advise our patients to be hopeful, cheerful, and take as little medicine as possible; but the mind cannot cure or affect organic difficulties.” The logic is lame that facts contradict. We have cured through metaphysics what is termed organic disease as readily as the purely functional. ”

“ If Pathology be to disease what Physiology is to health, it appears reasonable to conclude, that in any given structure or organ, the laws of the former will be as fixed and significant as those of the latter; and that the peculiar characters of any structure or organ may be as certainly recognized in the phenomena of disease as in the phenomena of health. ”

“ I have set forth Christian Science, and its application to the treatment of disease, only as I have discovered them. I have demonstrated the effects of Truth on the health, longevity, and morals of men, through Mind, I have found nothing in ancient or in modern systems, on which to found my own, except the teachings and demonstrations of our great Master, and the lives of prophets and apostles. ”

“ Man may be born with a predisposition to disease, but not with disease itself.
Our health depends entirely upon the conditions of our life.
In cases of predisposition to disease, therefore, as well as in disease itself, according to the principles of hygiene, we must employ only the hygienic and dietetic methods of treatment.
Is the medical science of the day, then, totally incompetent? You may well ask.—Have the patient studies and researches of nearly two thousand four hundred years, since the days of Hippocrates, been all in vain? ”

“ A metaphysician who understands and adheres strictly to the rules of our system, and rests his demonstration on its great basis, Truth, and the results of Truth on disease, is the only one safe to employ in the most difficult and dangerous cases. Mind will as far outstrip medicine in the cure of disease as in the cure of sin. The more excellent way is science in every instance; and medicine is not a science, it is speculative and void. ”

“ Old and New Ideas Concerning Health Protection.—No science has made greater progress during the past hundred years than the science of preventive medicine. In early times all diseases were looked upon as due to the same cause, namely, the anger of the gods for some misdoing on the part of the individual or the community. ”

“ Race hygiene or eugenics, which has been mentioned as the third and most important branch of hygiene, aims to conserve the health of future generations, through the action of those now living. Hygiene (individual and public) teaches us how to create for ourselves healthful conditions of living, but on every side we see evidences of the fact that we cannot entirely control conditions of health through hygiene only. Not all maladies by any means can be attributed to unnatural or unhygienic conditions of living. ”

“ We should prevent the images of disease from taking form in thought, and we should efface the outlines of disease already formulated in mortal mind.
When there are fewer doctors, and less thought is Novel diseases. given to sanitary subjects, there will be better constitutions and less disease. ”

“ Under the circumstances it may well be a matter for surprise that we have been so slow to perceive that the right performance of these duties demands a preliminary study of the art of preserving health and promoting progress, and we marvel at the placid spirit of content which has sanctioned the conversion into a stronghold of empiricism, the very place where a sound knowledge of progressive sanitary science is of primary importance. ”

“ To understand the nature of disease we must understand health, and the understanding of the healthy body means the having a knowledge of its structure and of the way in which its manifold actions are performed, which is what is technically termed human anatomy and human physiology. The physiologist again must needs possess an acquaintance with physics and chemistry, inasmuch as physiology is, to a great extent, applied physics and chemistry. ”

“ From my personal experience I am led to believe that the Science by which she not only heals sickness, but explains the way to keep well, is deserving the earnest attention of the community. Her cures are not the result of medicine, spiritualism, or mesmerism, but the application of a Principle that she understands. ”

“ Most forms, or stages of disease that the body manifests, is remedied on this scientific mental basis; we have tested this in too many instances to doubt it. When medicine is taken and the sick recover, faith and not the medicine, has done this, whereas the almost universal belief is that medicine, or laws of health heal the sick ”

“ You all know to what extent a knowledge of it is indispensable in order to define the conditions of animal and vegetable production, and to assure the normal development of living beings. You all know the importance of hygiene in society for securing the health of men and then of animals, and even of plants. ”

“ And if this is so, what is to be said of the publicist, who, undertaking to preserve the health and heal the diseases of an organism vastly more complicated than the human body, seeks guidance, not from the safe, however limited, inductions based on careful observation and experience, but puts his faith in long chains of deduction from abstract ethical assumptions, hardly any link of which can be tested experimentally? ”

“ The lay public must be taught to appreciate and encourage the devoted men who are patiently toiling in laboratory and clinic, frequently at the risk of their own health or life, to discover the secrets of disease and thereby conserve both health and life in others. ”

“ The first is to demonstrate clearly to the public mind that modern scientific medicine arose from the experimental or research method, that it was only when experimental observation of the laws of health and disease, in animals and man, commenced on an organized and broadcast basis that medicine and surgery leaped forward and the remarkable achievements of the past fifty years began. Also that it is only by the organization and endowment of medical research that future discovery and advancement are possible. ”