Natural cause

“ If such cases could be observed, and their phenomena connected with physiological disturbances, we might see our way clear to speak with great confidence of a natural view of the world, determined by organic conditions and expressing the natural adjustment of the organism to its conditions of life. ”

“ Again; if an animal in a permanent condition, neither waxing nor wasting, may be taken as the normal state in which the functions of life measure time, in order that we may consider growth as an effect, to be referred to food as cause; we may, for other purposes, consider, as the normal condition, an animal waxing and then wasting, according to the usual law of animal life: and we must take this, the healthy progress of an animal, as our normal condition, if we have to consider causes which produce disease. ”

“ In short, we are all, though in different degrees, the subjects of a variety of subtle influences, which, more or less, neutralize each other, and many of which, therefore, we never observe; and frequently when we do observe the effects, we have neither time nor capacity for tracing the cause; and when in more susceptible organisms such effects are manifested, we content ourselves with referring the phenomena to disease or imposture. ”

“ There are four natures out of which the body is compacted, earth and fire and water and air, and the unnatural excess or defect of these, or the change of any of them from its own natural place into another, or—since there are more kinds than one of fire and of the other elements—the assumption by any of these of a wrong kind, or any similar irregularity, produces disorders and diseases ”

“ I affirm it; and say moreover, that as she is the onely Physicianess, so she is also the onely Destroyeress and Murtheress of all particular Creatures, and their particular lives; for she dissolves and transforms as well as she frames and creates; and acts according to her pleasure, either for the increase or decrease, augmentation or destruction, sickness or health, life or death of Particular Creatures. But concerning Diseases, your Authors opinion is, That a Disease is as Natural as Health. ”

“ It is clear that when the disturbing action, the cause of disease, works upon the fundamental element, the same causes will produce fundamentally similar effects; when, on the contrary, this action is exercised upon the acquired and special element of each race, the same causes will produce different effects. ”

“ But what is this natural definition of health? I can only conceive that health should be defined in natural terms as the normal state of an organism; for undoubtedly disease is also a natural product. To say that health is what is preserved by evolution, and what itself tends to preserve, in the struggle for existence, the organism which possesses it, comes to the same thing: for the point of evolution is that it pretends to give a causal explanation of why some forms of life are normal and others are abnormal; it explains the origin of species. ”

“ Nor ought it to be forgotten, that cultivation and artificial habits may have blunted the natural susceptibility of our organs, and in some instances changed and depraved their functions: certain qualities for instance are so strongly connected with each other by the chain of association, that by presenting only one to the mind, the other links follow in succession. ”

“ But if we come to consider that the original primeval conditions give us our best conception of the normal processes of nature and are comparable to the normal health of an organism, it puts the subject in another light. A pathological condition is, of course, a state in a natural process, as is also any disturbance [Pg 27] of the normal order of nature by man, and each should be studied scientifically. But the science of pathology has developed best as a study of the disturbances of normal processes and is interpreted primarily in terms of the normal ”

“ Again, in his work on "Man's Place in Nature," he expresses himself much to the same effect: "A true physical cause is admitted to be such only on one condition, that it shall account for all the phenomena which come within the range of its operation. ”

“ Thus, to the other causes of degeneration in animal life and structure, we may append that which takes origin from the extreme or excessive development of one function over another. Physiological development in one direction, overstepping the natural and ordinary limits, runs concurrently with destruction of life's equilibrium, and naturally tends to produce degeneration and simplification of other organs and other duties of life. ”

“ Disease, therefore, is not a life beyond Nature’s realm (vita præter naturam) , as the early physicians used to say, but a natural life under conditions which produce illness and threaten the body with danger. Just in the same manner, cultivated organic forms are not artificial works of man, but natural productions which have arisen under the influence of peculiar conditions of life. ”

“ CURE. In this lecture I shall treat of external disorders, which may take their origin either from injuries, or from internal acrimony of habit; for whatever disturbs the animal œconomy, prevents the natural order of the fibres, and those again when in disorder, corrupt the fluids. ”

“ In order to take this calm attitude toward disease as a natural phenomenon and attempt to explain it, it may be necessary to move backward toward simpler problems from man to the higher animals, from these to lower types, from the complex processes of the human machine to the physical and chemical phenomena of the inorganic world. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Thus the natural history of doubt, viewed as a chapter of human history, like the chapter of physiology which studies a disease, will point indirectly to the cure, or at least to the mode of avoiding the causes which induce the disease ”

“ It is generally believed, that where there are particular and specific diseases, there also may be found appropriate and specific remedies; the discoveries of chemistry, it is not improbable, may in some respects have retarded the progress of natural medicine. ”

“ Thus we have in the Ens Astrale a field in which exist the causes of numerous kinds of diseases; the thorough understanding of which requires a still deeper penetration into the secrets of nature and a higher conception of its constitution than is at present presented by the natural sciences of this day. ”

“ But we have learned from our daily experience that in the physical world He is pleased to employ the agency of secondary causes; and when we know that for many ages a certain effect has been uniformly produced by a certain cause, and not otherwise, then if we again see the effect, we infer the cause. ”

“ But, with living bodies as now constituted, it has, at any rate as proximate cause, a twofold source. It may be due to the direct effect of external forces, or it may be caused by the energy stored up in the organism in growth. ”

“ In all organs, then, both their natural effects and their disorders and maladies plainly take place on analogous lines, some so clearly and manifestly as to need no demonstration, and others less plainly, although not entirely unrecognizable to those who are willing to pay attention. ”

“ It is difficult to believe, at any rate where physical laws are concerned, that the earlier part of the process which is the cause can make any difference to the effect, so long as the later part of the process which is the cause remains unchanged. Suppose, for example, that a man dies of arsenic poisoning, we say that his taking arsenic was the cause of death. ”

“ Finally, notwithstanding the difficulties I have mentioned, enough subservience to a fixed type on the part of pathological new formations has been observed, especially in cases where the new growth and its cause have been limited and simple, to warrant the assertion that pathological evolution in this respect is analogous with physiological development. ”

“ The innumerable external influences which disturb the natural condition of our organs, or the balance of the functions which they perform, as, for example, excess or privation of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat ”

“ In this work new theories, some revolutionary in the extreme, are advanced as to the nature of disease, the action of drugs and stimulants, the germ theory, the quantity of food necessary to sustain life, of cancer, insanity, pain, fatigue, sleep, death, the causation and maintenance of bodily heat and of human vitality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The logical connection between this purely scientific doctrine of disease, or pathology, and ordinary biology, is easily traced. Living matter is characterized by its innate tendency to exhibit a definite series of the morphological and physiological phenomena which constitute organization and life. Given a certain range of conditions, and these phenomena remain the same, within narrow limits, for each kind of living thing. ”

“ The physician who considers every different affection of the different systems in the body, or every [147] affection of different parts of the same system, as distinct diseases, when they arise from one cause, resembles the Indian or African savage, who considers water, dew, ice, frost, and snow, as distinct essences ”

“ All such changes of structure, whether extremely slight or strongly marked, which appear among many individuals living together, may be considered as the in definite effects of the conditions of life on each individual organism, in nearly the same manner as the chill effects different men in an in definite manner, according to their state of body or constitution, causing coughs or colds, rheumatism, or inflammation of various organs. ”

“ This force is influenced and modified in its action, when exercised in the regulation of nutrition, growth, and reproduction of tissues, by the passions and emotions of the mind. All the secretions and functions of the body are more or less susceptible of being accelerated, retarded or modified by the psychical relations of mind and matter. ”

“ Hence the difficulty of determining, under what class of diseases parturition should be arranged, consists in there being two kinds of diseased actions comprehended under one word; which have each their different proximate cause.
In Sect. XXXIX. 8. 4. and in Class II. 1. 1. 1. we have endeavoured to give names to four links of animal causation, which conveniently apply to the classification of diseases; thus in common nictitation, or winking with the eyes without our attention to it, the increased irritation is the proximate cause; the stimulus of the air on the dry cornea is the remote cause ”

“ What a mysterious arrangement of the ultimate particles of matter must there be, by which the vital force remains apparently inactive for many years, and yet when the conditions arise favourable to its manifestation, as it were by an extraordinary fiat, life appears. ”

“ THE HUMAN BODY
The world is compounded of the five elements,—earth, water, air, fire, and ether. So too is our body. It is a sort of miniature world. Hence the body stands in need of all the elements in due proportion,—pure earth, pure water, pure fire or sunlight, pure air, and open space. When any one of these falls short of its due proportion, illness is caused in the body. ”

“ Now without any knowledge of anatomy, or the animal economy, persons of the medical profession, by drawing inferences from mixed facts, might suppose, that a fire was kindled throughout the body to warm and cherish it, which, if in excess, might set our juices into fermentation, and thus produce partial or general disorder; they might suppose, that there were elements in the body, which ought to be combined in definite proportions, and that different diseases might result from the excess or deficiency of one or other of these elements. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ From this standpoint pathology is of the utmost importance in the study of organic life. The pathological being the normal out of place, the abnormal being the normal under special conditions, pathology that deals with the abnormal gives us a deep insight into the general laws of normal physiological activity. ”

“ To return, therefore, to the main proposition, namely, that organic diseases are naturally designed for, and do in fact accomplish, the prolongation of life, it will be observed that I have purposely omitted from consideration those other and more simple kinds of derangement which we call functional diseases. ”