Natural Hygiene

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Hygienic Review

Vol. XXVII September, 1965 No. 1

What Was Incurability?

Herbert M. Shelton

What is meant when a patient is told that his disease is incurable? Some

diseases are said to be incurable and some patients are declared to be

incurable. There are those who declare that, while there are no

incurable diseases, there are incurable cases. What, then, is an

incurable disease and what is an incurable patient? I do not find any

clear-cut replies to these questions and I note that practitioners of

all schools do not hesitate to treat " diseases " and patients that are

declared to be incurable. At the same time researches are carried on in

efforts to discover cures for the incurable diseases.

For those of us who do not believe that any so-called disease is curable

or that there is any such thing as a cure, the whole concept of

curability and incurability is wrong. We regard all the effort devoted

to administering cures as wasted effort. Curing disease is a form of

voodooism that should be outgrown by enlightened and civilized peoples.

There should be a search for causes and an effort made to correct or

remove these, but no effort should be made to cure disease.

Now it is a generally known fact, one that no intelligent medical man

will deny, that many thousands of patients who had been told by their

physicians that they were incurable, have recovered health after

deserting medicine and seeking cure through other channels. Many

thousands of so-called incurables gained health through the application

of Water-Cure processes; many more did so through the efforts of the

Ling Movement-Cure; many thousands have regained health, after being

told by their physicians that they were hopelessly incurable, by

recourse to Christian Science, the same thing may be said of the great

armies of hopeless invalids who regained health after turning to Mechano

- Therapy, Osteopathy, Chiropractic, Physical Culture (Physcultopathy),

Naprapathy, Neuropathy, Naturopathy, the Emanuel Movement, the Unity

School of Christianity, herbalism, radiesthesis, acupuncture,

ultrasonics, and a host of other methods and systems.

Mass experiences of this kind, having occurred under the very noses of

medical men, and not without their knowledge, should long ago have

completely upset the medical ideas regarding the curability and

incurability of disease. If they declare a disease to be incurable and

cases do recover under Christian Science or under Water-Cure or if a

patient is told that he cannot be cured and he gets well under

chiropractic, should not the medical man re-examine both his theories

and his practices?

It is safe to say that more than eighty per cent of the patients going

to these other schools for care or treatment or prayer, have given

medical physicians weeks, months and years of opportunity to restore

them to health. Great numbers of them have been pronounced incurable.

They do not all get well when they go to these other practitioners and

they patronize first a chiropractor, then a naturopath or a Christian

Scientists, but a sufficient number of them are either greatly improved

or recover health that they supply these other practitioners with enough

case histories of success to keep them in practice and in popular favor.

To be assured, by one or more scientific physicians that you are

hopelessly incurable, to go through a medical clinic and be informed

that there " is no cure " for your disease, to have the verdict of a

consultation of physicians handed to you in the word, incurable, to be

treated for years with drugs and surgery and grow progressively worse,

and then to turn to some form of " quackery " and recover health, is to

upset your faith in science.

Now, I believe that these medical men are right in their judgements of

the incurability of these cases. I believe that everyone of them would

die of their " disease, " as told they will by their physicians, should

they remain under medical care. The people have no sort of conception,

nor have physicians much better conception of the health-destroying

effects of drugs. Every dose of every drug administered to a patient is

not only disease producing in its own right, but it depresses the

healing operations that are always going on in the sick organism. When

the drugging is discontinued, when the body is relieved of this

intolerable burden, it can do for itself much that it fails to do while

being poisoned.

One thing all of these various schools have in common is their rejection

of drugs. They do not remove causes, they do not cure disease, they do

not make an intelligent effort to supply the physiological needs of the

body or supply healthful conditions, but they do eschew drugs. There is

no drug in a Christian Science prayer, there is no drug in a

chiropractic thrust, these is no drug in a water application, the

mechano-therapist does not have any drugs in his manipulative

procedures, the New Thought practitioner administers no drugs in her

metaphysical formulas.

Now there have also been numerous instances of recovery in incurable

cases in which nothing, other than the abandonment of drugging, was

done. When drugs are abandoned, whether the patient turns to some other

and ineffective mode of treatment or merely resigns himself to the

seeming inevitable, a most prolific cause of chronic disease and organic

impairment is removed. The strength of the body's self-healing efforts

is graphically illustrated in those many instances in which they succeed

in restoring health in spite of the use of drugs. Should we, then, be

surprised that they are frequently successful in more advanced cases,

when drugs are abandoned? Incurability is often nothing more than

chronic drug poisoning.

Incurability is often due entirely to the fact that the original and

sustaining causes of the disease (to which drug poisoning is merely an

addition) are not corrected or removed. As the other schools of

" healing " also fail to remove causes, we have every reason to think that

more incurables would recover than do, were these original causes

removed coincident with the cessation of drugging; No case should be

classed as incurable until, after the full correction of all causes, it

fails of recovery.

Another reason for failure of recovery is the failure to provide the

sick organism with adequacies of the primordial requisites of organic

existence. If the drugs are discontinued and nothing is done other than

chiropractic adjustments or Christian Science jollying, and the

physiological needs of life are neglected, many will fail of recovery

who might speedily recover were these Hygienic requirements fully and

adequately met. As none of the schools of " healing " make an effort to

meet all these needs of life, it must be certain that many incurables

are sacrificed to this neglect.

No practitioner, of whatever school of so-called healing, who ignores

cause, provides only inadequately and haphazardly for the physiological

wants of the sick organism, and contents himself with throwing

monkey-wrenches into the vital machinery, can have any adequate

conception of the marvelous efficiency of the body's self-healing

abilities when operating under favorable or healthful conditions. To

take only a simple example, the common cold: no one who has not watched

it repeatedly can know with what greater speed and satisfaction one who

rests and fasts recovers from a cold, as contrasted with recoveries

under drugging and feeding.

There can be no doubt that there are irreversible pathologies; there are

patients who are so badly impaired that they are past vital redemption.

But there was a long stage in the disease of these before

irreversibility was reached, when they could have recovered health. We

can say of these that failure to remove causes, failure to provide

primordial requisites, and drugging and enervating palliatives have

persisted so long that an irreversible stage has been reached. Correct

means of care, even if now employed, come too late.

In the final analysis, then, it seems correct to say that incurability,

which exists far less often than popularly and professionally thought to

be the case, is almost always due to maltreatment, ignorance and simple

neglect of the most elemental needs of life. None of the schools of

so-called " healing, " can be exempt from the charge of contributing to

the production of incurability, but it must be recognized that the

drugging school is by far the worst offender in this respect. Perhaps if

correct care is inaugurated in the initial stages of disease, no such

thing as incurability would ever evolve.

This brings us to a brief consideration of the question: what and when

are the initial stages of disease? The Hygienist regards the first cold

or diarrhea or skin eruption of infancy as representing an already

established toxemia. This is the initial stage of a pathological

evolution that will culminate years later in apoplexy, Bright's disease,

heart disease, cancer, etc. The time to begin to head off the evolution

of advanced and incurable pathologies is in infancy or even before

birth. There is no time of life when it is safe to neglect its genuine

needs or to subject it to abuses.

--

Peace be with you,

Don " Quai " Eitner

" Spirit sleeps in the mineral, breathes in the vegetable, dreams in the animal

and wakes in man. "

Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses. ~Jean

Baptiste Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire

The obstacle is the path. ~Zen Proverb

--

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