[Raw Food]The Nature of Disease - R.T. Trall M.D.

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The Nature of Disease

R.T. Trall M.D.

 

In a strict sense, Hygienic medication contemplates the employment, as

remedial agents, for all purposes, except surgical, of materials and

influences which have normal relations to the living system. These are:

light, air, temperature, water, food, clothing, exercise, rest, sleep,

passional influences, etc.

 

The philosophy of Hygienic medication is predicated on the primary

premise, that those things which are constitutionally adapted to the

preservation of health, are also the proper remedies for disease. It rejects

from its materia medica, all poisons all things whose presence in the vital

domain is incompatible with the 'normal play of all functions,' and which are

destructive to the living tissue. It regards disease as disordered vital

action, consequent on irregularity, excess, or defect, in the use of things

normal, or as the result of the presence of abnormal things. And these

propositions being admitted, it follows inevitably that the proper remedial

plan is to regulate the use or application of things normal, and to rid the

system of the presence of abnormal things; in other words, to restore the

normal condition.

 

As disease is occasioned by the excess or defect of things intrinsically

useful, or by the presence of things intrinsically injurious, the true

healing art insists on regulating the one and removing the other and So

relating the vital powers to all things that they can accomplish these

objectives for themselves, in the surest and safest manner possible.

 

The fundamental problems which constitute the theory or science of

Hygienic medication, and, indeed, on which all medical science must be based,

may be reduced to the following;

 

Until the advent of the Hygienic School, it has always been held and

taught (and is now so held and taught in all other schools), that in the

relation between dead and living matter, the dead acts on the living; that

disease, causes of disease, poisons, medicines, food, and all external

objects act, or " make impressions " on the living system. Diseases are

regarded as positive entities. They are said to 'attack' us; to have a

'course' of their own; to 'run through' us, to 'affect' or act upon certain

organs; to he 'seated' within us, to be 'self-limited', to 'travel' from part

to part; to become malignant, to 'assume a mild form'; 'to simulate other

diseases'; to 'change their type'; etc., all of which language is consistent

with the erroneous theory that disease is an entity, or substance existing

outside of the organic domain. But it confounds the disease itself with its

causes and its consequences.

 

The Hygienic School reverses this doctrine and thus solves the problem

which has so puzzled and perplexed the medical philosophers of all ages. It

teaches that, in the relations between dead and living matter, all action is

on the side of the vital organism, and none whatever on the part of the

external object. And in the solution of this problem it finds the rationale

of all forms of disease, and all kinds of remedies, as well as the key to the

interpretation of all the problems of medical science, and al! of the rules

and principles of the healing art.

 

The successful, or proper treatment of disease, implies a knowledge of its

nature. The investigations of 3,000 years, have not enabled physicians to

answer this question; 'What is disease?' Its nature and essence are

confessedly a mystery today. This is not the result of a want of zeal or

intelligence on the part of the medical profession. The subject has been

pursued in the wrong direction. The solution of the problem has been sought

where it does not exist. The observations of medical men have been made from

a false standpoint. Their experiences have been interpreted by erroneous

rules. The data and knowledge have been misapplied, and the world has always

had a false theory of the nature of disease. But on the theory advanced by

the Hygienic School the nature and essence of disease become serf-evident.

 

Disease is remedial action. It is a process of purification and

reparation. It is not the enemy of the vital powers, but the struggle 'of the

vital powers themselves in self-defense'. It is not a thing to be suppressed,

subdued, broken up, destroyed, conquered, 'cured' or killed, but an action to

be directed and regulated. To illustrate: when the body has been exposed to

miasmas, infections, poisons, impurities of any kind, until the system, or

some or more organs, have been dangerously obstructed, a special effort is

made by the vital powers to cleanse the system to rid itself of their

presence. This special effort -a remedial action- is the disease. If this

effort be directed to a particular organ or outlet, the disease is said to be

local, as vomiting, diarrhea, cholera, consumption, diabetes, etc. but if it

is directed more especially to the surface, or the emunctories generally,

thus seeming to involve the whole system in the remedial process, the disease

is said to be general, or fever; the particular form or kind of fever being

dependent upon the amount of impurity in the system, the absolute vigor of

the constitution, and the relative and comparative vigor of the various vital

organs and structures. Thus a strong, vigorous person, with a slight degree

of impurity or infection, would have inflammatory or entonic fever; a person

of a more gross condition of blood and fouler secretions would have the

remedial effort manifested in that form which we call typhus, or putrid

fever; while the person of a more feeble condition and less impurity, would

have the disease which is termed typhoid, slow or nervous fever; while the

person who is contaminated with some specific poison or impurity which must

of necessity he thrown off through the skin, would have some form of eruptive

fever, as measles, smallpox, etc. This exposition of the nature of fever

suggests a plan of treatment which, for a quarter of a century, and in

various parts of the world and in the hands of physicians of all schools, and

in thousands of cases, under the direction of nonprofessional persons, has

been promptly and almost invariably successful. We, of the Hygienic School,

do not regard the ordinary disease, (of which so many persons die every week,

and which numbers among its recent victims the distinguished names of Cavour,

Albert, Buckle, Hincldey, Douglas, Mitchell, Hoffman, Hawes, Summer-all of

whom, we think, have unnecessarily died in their prime) such as fevers,

pneumonia, measles, scarlatina, diphtheria, smallpox, dysentery, apoplexy,

congestion, at all dangerous in themselves; and the mortality of them under

Hygienic treatment, as I have ample data to show, is less than one in ten as

compared with the ordinary medicinal, or drug treatments. Last week 49

persons are reported as having died in the city of New York, chiefly due to

the treatment, and not to the disease, I most religiously believe. I have

treated hundreds of cases hygienically, in persons of all ages, from eight

days to eighty years, and have not yet lost the first patient.

 

If the process of purification is facilitated by a proper regulation of

the surrounding influences by furnishing the system with precisely what of

air, temperature, water, foods, rest, etc. it can use under the

circumstances, and by the careful avoidance of all injurious things, patients

would very rarely die of any form of fever, acute inflammation, for bowel

complaint known to the nosologies. Many of the graduates of the Hygienic

School have treated for years, all forms of fever incident to our country,

without losing a patient, and that, too, when deaths of the same disease were

frequent all around them, under the ordinary treatment.

 

But I do not propose to base the claims of our system to public confidence

and patronage on experience; for experience is only convincing or valuable,

according to the rule by which it is explained; all experience may be

delusive.

 

I rest its claims solely on its scientific truthfulness.

 

No subject has been more studied by medical men than that of the rationale

of the action of medicines; yet, to this day, medical books and schools, as

well as the teachers of today, confess that the whole subject is a profound

mystery. The relations of remedies to diseases, or to the healthy organs and

structures, are confessedly unknown, and are regarded by many as wholly

outside the pale of human comprehension. We know that medicines do act, but

how they act is entirely unknown.

 

The Hygienic philosophy reduces this mysterious problem to a simple

truism, by reference to the primary premise the law of relation between

organic and inorganic matter. Medicines do not act at all. Dead matter, I

repeat, does not act on living matter. Drugs are dead inorganic, inert

substances, and have no relation to the living system, save that of inertia,

the same as a stick or stone. They do not act. They are acted upon. The

living thing is active, and the dead thing is passive. This is the law of all

the universe, in relation to every thing which, it contains. It applies to

the drug in the human stomach, the poison in the blood, the elements around,

as well as to the medicine in the apothecary shop, the stone on the ground,

the food in the field, or the granary and the water of the spring.

 

The employment of drug medicines and the classifications of the materia

medica, are predicated on the assumption, that different drugs or medicines,

act on different organs or structures, in virtue of certain inherent,

special, selective affinities, which they, the drugs have and exercise for

the said organs and structures.

 

The Hygienic School declares the exact contrary to be true. It teaches

that living matter is active, and dead matter passive, in their relation to

each other, always and under all circumstances. There is no affinity, and can

be none between drugs, medicines, or poisons, and living structures. To

illustrate: ipecac; antimony, lobelia, occasions vomiting; and salts, castor

oil, jalap, etc. purging. The popular system accounts for these effects by

referring them to the action of the drug on the stomach, on the bowels, as

its 'inherent affinity' may 'elect' or 'select' one place or the other on

which to 'make an impression'. The Hygienic School explains the effects by

referring them to the action of the vital powers in expelling the drug, by

the process of vomiting, the purging, as it can best get rid of them under

the circumstances.

 

Opium, alcohol, tobacco, etc. are said to have a special affinity for the

brain and the effect stimulation or intoxication is said to be due to their

specific or selective affinity for an action on the brain and nervous system.

The Hygienic School teaches that stimulation and intoxication are processes

precisely similar to those of fever and inflammation, and the result is,

vital expenditure, and vital waste, instead of accumulation supply of vital

power. The stimulation and intoxication, so far from being attributable to

the special action of alcohol, etc. on the brain, are the commotions of the

vital organs expelling them as poisons from the organic domain. In this

struggle, this defensive war, which is nothing more or less than disease, or

remedial action the brain is deprived of its usual supply of blood and

nervous energy, the consequences of which is, disorder, imbecility, or

suspension of the mental function.

 

These conflicting theories lead to diametrically opposite methods for

treating disease, and as one of them must, of necessity, be wrong, the people

have an interest as great as the issue of life and death, in knowing which is

right.

 

The doctrine entertained and taught by all medical schools, except the

Hygienic is that disease and the " vis medicatrix naturae " are antagonistic

principles. The Hygienic School reverses this doctrine also. 'The disease' is

the vis medicatrix naturae. They are identical and the same. The

life-force-vitality and the disease, are not enemies at war with each other,

each seeking the other's destruction. But, on the contrary 'both are the

selfsame vital powers in an effort to expel from the system injurious things

and to repair the damages which their presence has occasioned. If this be the

true theory of the 'vis medicatris naturae', that practice which aims to

destroy the disease by means of potent drug medicines, can be nothing more or

less than a war on the human constitution.

 

The difference between health and disease is simply this: health is normal

action while disease is abnormal action. In other words, health is the action

of the vital powers in building up and replenishing the organic structures;

or, in still plainer speech the conversion of the elements of food into

elements of the bodily tissues; and disease is the action of the same vital

powers in defending the organism against injurious or abnormal agencies and

conditions. Health and disease are in the organic domain precisely what peace

and war are among nations. One is productive industry and the other is

destructive, but leads to remedial action. Health is the vis con-servatrix

naturae and disease is the vis medica-trix naturae. One is order, the other

is disorder.

 

Extracted from a discourse delivered by Dr. Trail on 25th March, 1863

before the Finance Committee of the New York Senate, in Albany, New York.