Ill health

“ But a vast amount of disease is preventable, and comes from causes over which we have direct control. "It is reckoned that a hundred thousand persons die annually in England of preventable diseases"—from disobedience to the laws of health, which are God's laws, and the transgression of which, wilfully, is sin. Beyond all doubt a vast amount of sickness comes from bad living, from intemperance in eating and drinking, from breathing bad air, from inhabiting ill-constructed houses. ”

“ From ill-filled lungs, which signify ill-repaired blood, arise year by year an amount not merely of disease, but of folly, temper, laziness, intemperance, madness, and, let me tell you fairly, crime—the sum of which will never be known till that great day when men shall be called to account for all deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil. ”

“ There is a growing tendency to discriminate between sickness and illness, limiting the words sick and sickness to some slight disturbance of the physical system, as nausea, and applying the words ill and illness to protracted disease and disordered health. ”

“ It is our fault, not the fault of the germs, that we allow our bodies to degenerate. The germs are our good friends and if we treat ourselves properly they will do all they can to help keep the water, the earth and the air in fit condition for our use."
Such teachings have the advantage of being true. They are helpful and healthful. The popular teachings are disease-producing. The mental depression and bodily inhibition caused by fear are injurious. Those who fear a certain kind of disease often bring this ill upon themselves, so powerful is suggestion. ”

“ All disease is the result of education, and disease can carry its ill-effects no farther than mortal mind maps out the way. The human mind, not matter, is supposed to feel, suffer, enjoy. Hence decided types of acute disease are quite as ready to yield to Truth as the less distinct type and chronic form of disease. Truth handles the most malignant contagion with perfect assurance.
Human mind produces what is termed organic disease as certainly as it produces hysteria, and it must One basis for all sickness relinquish all its errors, sicknesses, and sins. ”

“ ON BEING ILL
By VIRGINIA WOOLF CONSIDERING how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us in the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist's arm chair and confuse his 'Rinse the mouth—rinse the mouth' with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us—when we think of this and infinitely more, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature. ”

“ It may be only a slight catarrh, a touch of indigestion, trouble with the eyes, defective hearing, or some other ill. Very seldom do we meet a person of this age who is perfectly well.
Most people are taught to believe that health is something mysterious which may come to them or may pass them by, but that they have little or nothing to do with it. If they are well, they are fortunate, but if they are ill they are not to blame.
Most of them go to conventional physicians when they are ill, expecting to be cured. They take medicine or injections of serums or they are operated upon. ”

“ The sooner we realize and acknowledge that sickness, far from being the arbitrary visitation of an offended God, or the test of an unwise Providence, is the result of our own error or sin, the sooner shall we enter upon the highway of health.
Disease comes to those who attract it, to those whose minds and bodies are receptive to it, and flees from those whose strong, pure, and positive thought-sphere generates healing and life-giving currents. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Diseases of the body, if not cured, work a steady impairment of health, and bring pains and physical disabilities. If their assaults be upon nervous centres, or vital organs, the danger of paralysis or death becomes imminent. Now, as to this disease of intemperance, which is a social and moral as well as a physical disease, it is not to be concealed that it has invaded the common body of the people to an alarming degree, until, using the words of Holy Writ, "the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint." ”

“ Again, as every one who is in the body, through the changes of the times, and bad living, is subject to sickness and disease, and is in need of physicians who will restore him to his former health if he follow their injunctions ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then, if an individual is sick, why treat the body alone and administer a dose of despair to the mind? Why declare that the body is diseased, and picture this disease to the mind, rolling it under the tongue as a sweet morsel and holding it before the thought of both physician and patient? We should understand that the cause of disease obtains in the mortal human mind, and its cure comes from the immortal divine Mind. We should prevent the images of disease from taking form in thought, and we should efface the outlines of disease already formulated in the minds of mortals. ”

“ Does disease dispute the empire of Mind, dethrone it, and take the government into its own hands? Is sickness an aggressive, self-constituted material power, that copes astutely with Mind, and finally conquers it? Has God endowed matter with power to disable Mind, and chill harmony with a long, cold night of discord? ”

“ If his skin is dirty, a good scrubbing and a bit of yellow soap will put him all to rights.
What we call disease or sickness is the opposite of health, and it comes on us,—1st. By descent from our parents. It is one of the surest of all legacies; if a man's father and mother are diseased, naturally or artificially, he will have much chance to be as bad, or worse. ”

“ Everything is done with a view to cure the disease, without any regard to its cause, and the disease is considered as the infliction of some supernatural being. Therefore, in the progress of the healing art thus far, not a step is taken towards investigating the laws of health and the philosophy of disease. ”

“ Modern science teaches us that disease is not a thing, but a state. When our food is properly assimilated, the waste matter promptly excreted, and all the organs work in harmony, we are well; when any derangement of these functions occurs, we are sick. Sickness is discord, as health is concord. If we abuse or misuse any instrument, we impair its ability to produce a perfect harmony. A suffering body is simply the penalty of violated law. ”

“ Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in Guarding the door bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously. When the condition is present which you say induces disease, whether it be air, exercise, heredity, contagion, or accident, then perform your office as porter and shut out these unhealthy thoughts and fears. Exclude from mortal mind the offending errors; then the body cannot suffer from them. ”

“ To aid the memory of persons inquiring about the means of preserving health, I have elsewhere endeavoured to mark clearly, that the four things, fit air, temperature, aliment, and exercise, are all that need to be secured, and the two things violence and poisons all that need to be avoided, by men of sound constitution, that they may enjoy uninterrupted health and long life;—and consequently that the causes of all other disease than the decay from age are to be looked for in errors committed in regard to these four necessaries, or in the direct influence of these two kinds of noxious agents. ”

“ There is, however, some reason to believe that the diminution of disease and the prolongation of average human life are not necessarily or even generally accompanied by a corresponding improvement in general health. 'Acute diseases,' says an excellent judge, 'which are eminently fatal, prevail, on the contrary, in a population where the standard of health is high.... ”

“ Putting on the full armor of physiology, obeying to the letter, the so-called laws of health, statistics show, has not diminished sickness, nor increased longevity; diseases have multiplied and become more obstinate; their chronic forms more frequent; the acute more fatal and death more sudden, since man-made theories have taken the place of primitive Christianity. ”

“ Whoever is suffering from the debilitating effects of any of the multifarious acute maladies of the plains, finds instant relief, and acquires a stock of health that enables him to resist fresh attacks, under circumstances similar to those which before engendered them. ”

“ Sickness is a germ of belief, springing from a seed of thought, either your own or another's; its soil is mortal mind, and you have a crop abundant or scanty according to the seedlings in that soil, sown by yourself or others. Materia medica, physiology, treatises on health obtained and sustained by what is termed material law, sickness produced and cured by the same law, are the sowers and husbandmen of sickness and disease. ”

“ I have already told you with what care they look after their sick, so that nothing is left undone that can contribute either to their case or health; and for those who are taken with fixed and incurable diseases, they use all possible ways to cherish them and to make their lives as comfortable as possible. ”

“ The description of disease by clairvoyants and medical charlatans, those quacks in mind and quacks in matter, is the most prolific modern source of sickness. They are the principal manufacturers of disease and death; they form the image of disease in mortal mind by telling the patients they have it, and after that they work up the material into a certain fabric; then they go to work to destroy that fabric and unmake their manufactures, and their suffering dupes are satisfied to see them busy, and to pay for making them sick and trying to heal them. ”

“ Books that would rule disease out of the mind instead of impressing it more strongly on the belief, would abate sickness ten per cent. in a short period. Instruct your patient that he is not an involuntary subject of disease, but can resist it, and overcome it too, with mind that is superior to matter. To understand their God-given dominion over the body, would reassure and encourage the sick and impart healthy action to the body. Knowing their mental power, they would meet sickness as fearlessly as we encounter a swarm of insects that flee before us. ”

“ I venture to affirm that they do not heal; they only relieve, and exchange one disease for another. I classify disease as error, that nothing but Truth, or Mind, can heal, and this Mind must be divine, not human. ”

“ Exposed to contagion, having consumptive parents, being over-wrought, mentally or physically, eating too much, fasting too long, etc., you say, are dangerous to health, and you are a law to your body in the case, for the body could not suffer from these without mind, and a mind, that did not embrace these beliefs, would not suffer; the seeds of disease, germinated by circumstances, are sown in mind, not matter. Even as thoughts on other subjects are re-produced by association, so are diseases; and your belief regarding disease, and not the circumstance, is what affects your body. ”

“ Descriptions of disease, given by physicians, and advertisements of quackery, are both prolific sources of sickness. As mortal mind is the chief husbandman of error, it should be taught to do the body no harm, and to unweave its own webs.
The patient sufferer tries to be satisfied when he sees Invalid's outlook. his would-be healers busy, and his faith in their efforts is somewhat helpful to them and himself; but in Science one must understand the resuscitating law of Life. ”

“ In spite of our great advance in medical knowledge and practice and in spite of the results of an improved hygiene there remains in society at large a very great deposit of physical ill-being sometimes acute, sometimes chronic, sometimes clearly defined, sometimes vague, badly treated cases, hopeless cases and a great reach of cases which are due rather to disturbed mental and moral states than to ascertainable physical causes. ”

“ Do you know, Lucius, that sometimes diseases of the mind or body give to those afflicted by them a strength which healthy men do not possess? For, as a matter of fact, there is no such thing as good health or bad health. There are only different conditions of the organs. Having studied what are called maladies, I have come to consider them as necessary forms of life. ”

“ But — pace the doctors and all their materialistic followers — I question very much whether bodily health, the mere absence of physical disease, be nearly as indispensable a condition of happiness, as certain peculiarities of the mental and moral constitution. ”