Disease

“ I name these facts to show that disease has a mental origin, — that faith in rules of health or in drugs begets and fosters disease, by attracting the mind to the subject of sickness, by exciting fear of it, and by dosing the body in order to avoid it. ”

“ When we enumerate causes of disease we see among them many that under ordinary circumstances minister to life, health, and enjoyment; and I can hardly refer at all to the varying circumstances under which they become the medium of pain, disease and death. These circumstances are so various, so many of them are apt to be put in operation at the same time, and so little power have we of excluding them one after the other, so as to ascertain the exact efficiency of each, that our observation respecting their actual effects are open to much fallacy. ”

“ The habit of our day has been such as to create in us a marked pathological consciousness. The very process which, by slow degrees, has been driving disease to the wall, has produced in us a sensitiveness [44] to the idea of disease that is inimical to health. The discovery of the causes of disease has peopled the imagination, even of those who have never looked through a microscope, with an army of hostile germs to the obscuration of those superior influences which conduce to well-being, until we have become chronically nervous of the hidden perils which beset our path. ”

“ This universal and acknowledged rule is Pathology, the science which unfolds and exhibits the nature and character of disease, and "dictates the maxims of rational practice." It is the foundation and only base of rational medicine, which proceeds on the assumption that the nature and character of disease is fully known and appreciated. This knowledge is not only rational, but indispensable, in order to understand and apply the principles which ought to govern in the medication and cure of disease. ”

“ Disease arises, like other mental conditions, from association. It being a law of mortal mind that certain diseases should be regarded as contagious, this law obtains credit, through association, — calling up the fear that creates the image of disease, and its consequent manifestation in the body. ”

“ Disease may be defined as an abnormal condition of the human body, and since there is no one condition of the human body which can be satisfactorily described as normal, there is, therefore, no exact definition of disease. ”

“ In thus rejecting the nosologies of the schools, I do not wish to see them banished from the libraries of physicians. When consulted as histories of the effects of diseases only, they may still be useful. I use the term diseases, in conformity to custom, for, properly speaking, disease is much a unit as fever. It consists simply of morbid action or excitement in some part of the body. Its different seats and degrees should no more be multiplied into different diseases, than the numerous and different effects of heat and light upon our globe should be multiplied into a plurality of suns. ”

“ Disease and health, like circumstances, are rooted in thought. ”

“ In my last, I remember, I told you of your Authors opinion concerning the seat of Diseases, viz. that Diseases are properly in living bodies, and consist in the life it self; but when I consider his definition of Life, and of a Disease, I cannot conceive how they should consist together; for he describes [1] a Disease to be a real, material and substantial being, truly subsisting in a body; but life to be a meer nothing, and yet the immediate mansion of a disease, the inward subject, yea, and workman of the same; and that with the life all diseases depart into nothing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We of the Nature Cure school distinguish between healing crises and disease crises, according to the character and the tendency of the acute reaction. If an acute disease is brought about through the accumulation of morbid matter or the invasion of disease germs to such an extent that the health or the life of the organism is endangered, in other words, if the disease conditions are forcing the crises, we speak of disease crises. ”

“ Nay more, "the processes of disease aim not at the destruction of life, but at the saving of it." [6] None the less, with what might seem a splendid inconsistency, the medical profession devotes itself untiringly to the alleviation of the symptoms and to the eradication of disease. ”

“ The history of medicine, moreover, teaches us that progress consists not so much in expelling the germs of disease, or rather diseases themselves, as in accommodating them to our organism and so perhaps enriching it, in dissolving them in our blood. ”

“ I pass now to the consideration of the third class of causes which render medicine an uncertain science, viz., natural changes, arising from the tendency which exists in the system to throw off disease, appropriately called the vis medicatrix naturæ, or curative power of nature; and, in connection with this, the tendency to a definite limit, which is manifest in many diseases, as, for example, small pox, measles, hooping cough, scarlet fever, &c. ”

“ What is disease? To many people it is a definite, concrete thing which seizes one in its clutches, holds one captive or possesses one for a second time, and then if overcome releases its grip and one is free and in good health again. But disease is not an entity, even though some agents, as bacteria, are living organisms. ”

“ A fresh case of illness means the setting up of a fresh manufactory of horrible, insidious, deadly germs of disease, which, once set going in the world, cannot be recalled, and can only with difficulty be destroyed. ”

“ If we would undertake to write the history of a Disease, the very first thing needful is to frame in one’s own mind a clear conception of what the History of a Disease in a general way is, for it is from a right preliminary conception, that the right conditions will follow which a Historian as such is bound to fulfil. ”

“ Disease.
Disease, frequent, constant, and inevitable as it is, is, however, nothing but a fact outside the natural order. Its character is clearly accidental, and it interrupts the normal cycle of evolution. Medical [Pg 346] observation teaches us, on the other hand, that the health of the body reacts on that of the mind; and therefore man as a whole, moral and physical, is affected by disease. Bacon described a diseased body as a jailer to the soul, and the healthy body as a host. ”

“ These observations equally apply to all cases of scrofulous degeneration, which physicians estimate as carrying off prematurely one-sixth of the whole human family.8 Of this terrible disease, the scourge of the human race, it is sufficient to observe, that consumption is merely a form of it, and that it is, moreover, hereditary, a fact which would corroborate the opinion of its being a true blood disease. ”

“ Then will come the usual talk about a change in the character of disease, which has about as much meaning as that concerning “old-fashioned snow-storms.” “Epidemic constitutions” of disease mean something, no doubt; a great deal as applied to malarious affections; but that the whole type of diseases undergoes such changes that the practice must be reversed from depleting to stimulating, and vice versa, is much less likely than that methods of treatment go out of fashion and come in again. If there is any disease which claims its percentage with reasonable uniformity, it is phthisis. ”

“ In the search for causes of disease throughout the ages, this field, so fruitful in material, has been left almost unexplored. The disclosures of the early future will wonderfully change the sentiments entertained in regard to the cause of a large proportion of our diseases. ”

“ Well, said I, in the first place, I would make good health catching instead of disease. ”

“ Nowadays, all this is past, in medical science. As to the causes of disease, we know that they are facts of nature,—various, but distinguishable by diagnosis and research, and more or less capable of prevention or control or counter-action. ”

“ The rejection of a specific acrimony as the cause of each disease, has unfortunately been followed by a belief in as many specific actions as there are different forms and grades of disease, and thus perpetuated the evils of our ancient systems of medicine. However varied morbid actions may be by their causes, seats, and effects, they are all of the same nature, and the time will probably come when the whole nomenclature of morbid actions will be absorbed in the single name of disease. ”

“ If we can form and fix in our minds a clear conception of the state of health, we shall have little difficulty in comprehending what is meant by disease, which consists in some deviation from that state—some uneasy or unnatural sensation of which the patient is aware ”

“ XIII. Even as there may be, with respect to the body, a disease, a sickness, and a defect, so it is with the mind. They call that a disease where the whole body is corrupted; they call that sickness where a disease is attended with a weakness, and that a defect where the parts of the body are not well compacted together ”

“ There is great difficulty, in the case of a subject so large and complex as is disease, in giving a definition which will be accurate and comprehensive. Disease may be defined as "A change produced in living things in consequence of which they are no longer in harmony with their environment." ”

“ Now, disease is some failure of this blood-stream properly to renew itself or properly to protect itself and its various subsidiary organs. When you find yourself with a disease, you call in a doctor; and unless this doctor is a modern and progressive man, he makes the mistake of assuming that the disease is in the particular organ where it shows itself. ”

“ The presumption against this view arises not only from the fact that, in exact proportion as medical science advances, diseases are proved to be the necessary consequence of physical conditions, but also from many characteristics of unexplained disease which unequivocally prove it to be natural. ”

“ Shall we begin by taking it as a general principle—that all disease, at some period or other of its course, is more or less a reparative process, not necessarily accompanied with suffering: an effort of nature to remedy a process of poisoning or of decay, which has taken place weeks, months, sometimes years beforehand, unnoticed, the termination of the disease being then, while the antecedent process was going on, determined? ”

“ Disease occurs when the sum of vital force which tends to neutralize all causes of disturbance, (in other words, when the resistance offered by the vital force) is weaker than the acting cause of the disturbance. ”

“ As every disease we labour under is a disorder of the vital, animal, or natural functions; a thorough acquaintance with these in their found state is implied before we can pretend to understand their morbid affections, or how to remedy them. ”

“ Ever since natural medicine arose in opposition to the violence of so-called scientific medicine, every book on the subject of hygiene, once it gets past its obligatory introductions and warm ups, must address The Cause of Disease. This is a required step because we see the cause of disease and its consequent cure in a very different manner than the allopath. Instead of many causes, we see one basic reason why. ”

“ To discover the nature of an uncommon disease, or to account for an unusual symptom, puzzles his invention.—Ignorant of every true principle, from which, by a just reasoning, he might be able to deduce practical inferrences, he knows not what prognostic to make, or what plan of treatment to observe.—Unsteady and irresolute, he attempts a variety of means ”

“ But apart entirely from such conceptions, which were perfectly natural in the infancy of the race, while clearly recognizing that disease is simply a perverted state of nutrition or well-being in the body of the patient, a disturbance of balance, so to say, yet it is equally true that it has a birth, an ancestry, a life-course, and a natural termination, or death. ”

“ Diseases—how slowly we accept their teaching—how blind we are to their warning voice! The word itself is not understood. The term disease is popularly applied only to the most serious forms, such as have been named, when it is properly applicable to any condition other than the normal condition of the body—perfect ease. Acidity, heartburn, flatulence, slight pains in the head, uneasy sensations of whatever sort—so little regarded until too late—are they not dis-ease? ”

“ Why should they not have their little troubles, whims, and maladies studied and cared for? The disease which gives a title to this short notice is perhaps one of the most mysterious and vexatious to which our nature is liable ”

“ Some talk about disease as if it were a palpable thing, which is to be attacked, to be hit, to be driven out, or drawn out from its hiding place; and they suppose that there are certain remedies which are calculated to effect these different objects. ”

“ There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. 'Tis a disease that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. ”

“ We see occasionally, but only occasionally, effects from agents in the treatment of disease which seem to have their explanation in the principle, that one disease is cured by temporarily creating another similar to it. ”

“ There are, indeed, various cases, of frequent occurrence, in which the study of the remote causes of disease is as practically important as anything that can be learnt as to their history, or the effects of remedies upon them. ”

“ What is disease for one person because of a departure from his normal health might not be recognized as disease in another person of different normal vitality. Nor is it possible to assign any particular and special cause for disease since the condition recognized as disease is the result, usually, not of one but of a series of causes or circumstances more or less connected and linked together, and in many cases not obviously associated with the resulting disease. ”