Toxemia

“ The degenerated body makes less violent efforts to cleanse, efforts that aren"t as uncomfortable. The negative side of this is that instead of creating acute discomfort in peripheral systems, the toxemia goes to more vital organs where it hastens the formation of life-threatening conditions.
There is a very normal and typical progress for each person"s fatal illness. Their ultimate disease starts out in childhood or adolescence as acute inflammations of skin-like organs, viral or bacterial infections of the same. ”

“ If these secondary eliminations are suppressed with drugs (either from the medical doctor or with over the counter remedies) , if the eating or lifestyle habits that created the toxemia are not changed, or if the toxic load increases beyond the limits of this technique, the body then begins to store toxins in fat or muscle tissues or the joint cavities, overburdens the kidneys, creates cysts, fibroids, and benign tumors to store those toxins. If toxic overload continues over a longer time the body will eventually have to permit damages to vital tissues, and life-threatening conditions develop. ”

“ Hygienic doctors always stress that disease is remedial effort. Illness comes from the body's best attempt to lighten its toxic load without immediately threatening its survival. The body always does the very best it can to remedy toxemia given its circumstances, and it should be commended for these efforts regardless of how uncomfortable they might be to the person inhabiting the body. Symptoms of secondary elimination are actually a positive thing because they are the body's efforts to lessen a dangerously toxic condition. ”

“ The best approach of all focuses on reducing the self-generated level of toxemia, cleansing to remove deposits of old toxemia, rebuilding the organs of elimination and digestion to prevent the formation of new toxemia, and then, to alleviate the current symptoms and make it easier for the patient to be patient while their body heals, the healer raises artificially and temporarily the vital force with vitamins, massage, acupressure, etc. ”

“ Toxemia also comes about from following the wrongheaded recommendations of allopathic-inspired nutritional texts and licensed dietitians. For example, people believe they should eat one food from each of the four so-called basic food groups at each meal, thinking they are doing the right thing for their health by having four colors of food on every plate, when they really aren't. What they have actually done is force their bodies to attempt the digestion of indigestible food combinations, and the resulting indigestion creates massive doses of toxins. ”

“ Septicemia may be defined as an acute febrile affection, characterized by marked nervous, cutaneous and visceral manifestations, and due to the introduction into the system of bacteria and their toxins from an infected wound. It applies to diseases which present poisons in the blood that are of parasitic origin, the parasite itself being either present or absent in the blood. Septicemia, in strong contrast to the definition of toxemia, would include diseases arising from the invasion of the tissues and fluids of the body by animal or vegetable parasites or their poisonous products. ”

“ This same scenario, when viewed from a hygienist's perspective, is that almost all acute and many chronic conditions are simply the body's attempt to handle a crisis of toxemia. For two reasons the current crisis will probably go away by itself. The positive reason is that the toxic overload will be resolved: the person changes their dietary habits or the stressor that temporarily lowered their vital force and produced enervation is removed, then digestion improves and the level of self-generated toxins is reduced. ”

“ Disease is brought about by obstructions and inhibitions of vital processes.... The basis is chronic auto-intoxication from food poisoning. It is brought about by abusing the body in many ways ... by living wrongly in whatever way.... Bad habits of living enervate—weaken—the body, and in consequence elimination is impaired.... The inability of the organism to rid itself of waste products brings on auto-toxemia. ”

“ In one clinic where this method has been adopted the frequency of all kinds of toxemia, I am told, has notably diminished, and serious types are not permitted to develop. Similar results should be obtained in private practice when patients place themselves under medical supervision at the beginning of pregnancy. Under these favorable circumstances symptoms of autointoxication probably occur not oftener than once in every hundred pregnancies, but nine out of ten of them, being promptly recognized, yield readily to relatively simple treatment. ”

“ The presence of toxins in an organ of secondary elimination is frequently the cause of infection. Sinuses and lungs, inflamed by secondary eliminations, are attacked by viruses or bacteria; infectious diseases of the skin result from pushing toxins out of the skin. More generalized infections also result from toxemia; in this case the immune system has become compromised and the body is overwhelmed by an organism that it normally should be able to resist easily. The wise cure of infections is not to use antibiotics to suppress the bacteria while simultaneously whipping the immune system ”

“ I am not one of those who believe that intestinal auto-toxemia is a very serious condition which produces dire results, but I know very well that absorption in any quantity of residual materials from the intestinal tract that were meant to be excreted will produce langour and sluggishness. ”

“ When the patient’s condition is so desperate that pregnancy is terminated, with the hope of saving her life, ether or nitrous oxide gas, or both, is used as an anesthetic rather than chloroform, which of itself tends to produce a liver necrosis.
Pre-eclamptic Toxemia is the most common of all the toxemias of pregnancy, occurring several times in every hundred pregnancies. It develops more frequently among women who are pregnant for the first time than among those who have borne children, and one attack usually confers an immunity against a recurrence. ”

“ However, if the physician can do something that will do no harm but raises the vital force and/or lowers the level of toxemia, this doctor will have a genuine cure rate higher than either of the two techniques. Why does raising the vital force help? Because it reduces enervation, improves the digestion, lowers the creation of new toxins and improves the function of the organs of elimination, also reducing the toxic overload that is causing the complaint. ”

“ Before we proceed to the subject of symptoms and pathology, let me suggest these conclusions: Our disease is decreasing in frequency, as all evidence shows us. We coincidentally are increasing our aseptic technique and obstetric skill and we are continually recognizing the different types of toxemias both bacterial and chemical, more quickly, with resultant more rapid institution of treatment. ”

“ And, happily, since one attack confers an immunity, the patient who recovers from eclampsia need not fear a recurrence of the disease.
Nephritic Toxemia is a serious toxemia, sometimes complicating pregnancy, and though it may occur at any time during the period of gestation, it usually develops during the latter months. As a rule, it is simply an exacerbation and accentuation of a previously existing, chronic nephritis, of which the patient may, or may not, have been aware; though in some instances the disability of the kidneys may arise during pregnancy. ”

“ A fairly typical method of treating toxemic vomiting, and of which the nursing care forms a large part is somewhat as follows: When the vomiting is only moderately severe, the patient is put to bed and isolated from relatives and friends, because of her nervousness resulting from the toxemia. She is given an abundance of very cold, 5 per cent. lactose solution by mouth in water or lemonade; from four to six ounces being given every half hour if she is able to retain it. ”

“ Why and how does one attack of a certain disease protect against another? When a person is taken sick with one of these diseases, the cells of his body immediately begin to make a substance called antitoxin. We learned something about antitoxin when we were studying diphtheria. In diseases like scarlet fever, measles, and smallpox, in which one attack protects against another, the antitoxin that is formed in the body when you are sick stays there for a long time, in some cases as long as you live. While this antitoxin is present in the blood, the cause of the disease cannot live in the body ”

“ Secondary toxic centres often develop in the course of this disease, notably in the glands, lungs and dependent organs, the hypostatic congestion resulting from lying in one position, causing stasis of blood, death and necrosis of tissue, both of the external and internal organs. All vessels connected with the dying tissues carry toxins to other parts of the body. Suppurating glands, and phlebitis of the femoral veins are examples of this secondary infection, and are accountable for the heart failure and collapse so often fatal during the second, third and fourth weeks of typhoid, fever. ”

“ The use of cathartics, tonics, stimulants and other drugs after delivery.
It is within the power of every woman that she shall not be subject to these causes of puerperal fever.
Some late teachers claim that all child-bed fever is pyæemia, blood-poisoning, and can not be avoided. Why is it, then, that it is notably absent in those who have led a hygienic life? Why is it that those physicians who insist on preparatory treatment seldom meet with it in their practice? Others claim that the disease is contagious, and that the poison can be conveyed by physician and nurse. ”

“ In modern medicine at its best, some substance, such as the diphtheria antitoxin, that is already present in the blood in quantity sufficient under ordinary circumstances to prevent infection, is reënforced in an emergency by more of the same substance prepared in the blood of the horse. Or if that cannot be done, the next best thing is to inject some serum that by a natural reaction will stimulate the body to prepare in excess its own antitoxin or excite the phagocytes to greater exertions in overcoming their enemies. ”

“ These soluble toxins affect, stimulate, the tissues of the victim, which, being living cells, react, and the expression of their reaction is the outpouring of a chemical something, appropriately called an antitoxin which, uniting with the bacterial toxin, neutralizes it and prevents it exercising its injurious powers. The infected organism thus works out its own chemical salvation by a vital, but no less chemical, response to the poison of the infection. ”

“ When the infectious disease is the expression not of the combined effects of poison and bacteria but of the poison chiefly which enters the blood, the bacteria remaining without as in diphtheria, then the blood changes characterizing the immune state are simpler and consist in the accumulation there of antitoxins that constitute the most perfect antidote to poisons that are known. The condition of immunity produces no demonstrable change in the properties of the phagocytes through which they are better enabled to overcome the poisonous bacteria. ”

“ Now, if the cells in your body make antitoxin when you have diphtheria, it is probable that antitoxin is the very thing needed. And if you can help these cells by giving them antitoxin, ready-made, does it not seem a reasonable thing to do? People who give the name of poison to a substance which is known to have saved many lives are not worthy of attention. Anything may prove a poison if taken in excess; too much play will prove a poison, and too much work also. ”

“ While these are most common in the chronic infections and contagions, they often occur in acute typhoid fever, scarlatina, diphtheria, whooping-cough, &c. Proper blood supply and utilisation of waste is thus prevented. Organs cannot perform their function, and are predisposed to disease from disuse and from weakness of the disease-fighting phagocytes and antitoxins. From this results irregularity of organ function, which is hereditarily transmissible. The weakened vessel walls yield to strain, and thus produce local stomach, bowel, liver, gland, and kidney disorders. ”

“ Other investigators have traced typhoid and yellow fevers, diphtheria, and some other infectuous diseases to similar causes, and the study of diseases of this character has at last gained the status of a science.
Methods of cure are also becoming scientific. These minute organisms, once introduced within the body, tend to increase in number at an amazing rate, feeding on the blood and tissues, and giving off substances called toxines which in some cases are of highly poisonous character. To overcome their effect inoculation of anti-toxines is practiced. ”

“ In these days of toxin and anti-toxin—of poison in sausages, oysters, canned beef, ice cream—of anti-toxin serums (that often are more deadly than the original toxin) for the prevention and cure of tuberculosis, leprosy, pneumonia, typhoid fever, tetanus, bubonic plague, diphtheria, and the rest of the list, it requires courage to call the attention of the public to a new "toxin," even if at the same time we furnish an anti-toxin that "anti-toxicates." ”