The Unity of Normal and Abnormal Processes

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The Unity of

Normal and Abnormal Processes

Vol. XXXIV March, 1973 No. 8

The Unity of Normal and Abnormal Processes

Herbert M. Shelton

Most of the early Hygienists held to the principle of the unity of

disease. Jennings and Nichols were perhaps the most outspoken in

affirming this principle. Jennings was not the first to suggest that

the seeming multiplicity of diseases represents a unity. Dr.

Rush, who was Surgeon General of the Continental Armies during the

Revolutionary War, stressed the importance of the principle.

, founder of the medical system known as Physio-medicalism made

the principle a fundamental part of his system. Dr. Dickson, of

England, founder of the medical system known as Chrono-thermalism,

published his book The Unity of Disease in 1838. He later defended this

theory in his book, Fallacies of the Faculty. The allopathic medical

profession rejected the principle of unity of disease and adhered to

the notion that there are many diseases. When I was a student the

textbooks listed 407 diseases, but the process of fragmentation was

already under way and today many thousands of diseases are listed.

Today, when the effort is being made with more or less success to

interpret all natural phenomena as parts of one pattern, or as

expressions of one universal form of progress, the medical profession

still clings to its dualisms about health and disease and to its old

belief that there are hundreds of diseases. They refuse to recognize

the single underlying phenomenon of which their many diseases are but

varied and evanescent expressions.

Life, health, disease are ultimately to be interpreted as different

aspects of an underlying process. It is our own shortsightedness that

blurs for us the wholeness and unity of life. The terms and expressions

of contemporary medical literature which we have inherited from the

past carry implicit assumptions regarding the general nature of

disease, and one of our main tasks is to show where they are invalid.

Man is not always sick despite the fact that he lives in a sea of

extraneous causes that are said to cause disease. Indeed, these

extraneous causes fail more often than they succeed. Yet we know that

disease is always a potential in man. Abnormal though it is, it is just

as natural as health. In fact, if we can ever escape from our dualisms

of thought we will recognize that health and disease are but two phases

of the same living processes. We will discover that there is no

distinct line of demarkation between health and disease and that they

are not so unlike as we now believe. We will readily understand that

disease is a manifestation of life itself and that there is a

fundamental unity in all of life's manifestationsnormal or abnormal.

The principle of continuity and unity becomes a guide to the correct

organization of pathological knowledge, which is already vast, in

conformity with the laws of nature. This principle provides for a major

and all important reorientation which eliminates the prejudices and

false views that have hitherto obscured our vision and made it

impossible for us to see the woods for the trees. The change of

position thus produced transforms the interrelations of everything so

that a simple order is revealed.

Change is as constant in pathology as in all other departments of

existence, yet the change is not arbitrary; each change develops

continuously out of the preceding developmentearlier and later

developments do not confront each other as the senseless juxtaposition

of one chaos beside another, but are linked by similarities which

pervade all change. The meaningful order which underlies the

progressive changes seen in pathological evolution is realized in the

continuity of the sequence of change.

Fundamentally, there are but few pathological changes, both of

structure and function, that can occur in even the most complex

organism. Great and complex variations in the appearance of these

fundamental changes are possible, due to the many differentiations of

tissues and to the wide variety of functions subserved by them. The

basic pathology (atrophy) in atrophy of the liver and atrophy of the

pancreas is the same, but the complex of systemic changes of functional

aberrations that is based on this atrophy varies as the functions of

the two organs vary. Basically, the "special pathology" in the lungs in

pneumonia and that in the kidneys in acute nephritis, is the same.

Differentiating symptoms and changes relate to the differences of

structure and function of the two organs. Inflammation of the stomach

may check the secretion of gastric juice and inflammation of the

pancreas may check the secretion of insulin, but in both cases the

fundamental change is the checking of secretion. The kind of secretion

that will be checked will depend upon the kind of secretion turned out

by the inflamed organ. Duly considered, this simply means that the many

different so-called diseases are not different diseases. They are but

different locations and different stages in one and the same process.

The diagnoses and classifications of diseases listed in medical

textbooks are all illusions that grow out of the medical man's notions

that the symptom-complexes, though richly variable even for the same

so-called disease, represent entities instead of being symptomatic of

an underlying substratum common to all symptom-complexes. The same

unity of the body is preserved in disease as in health. We deal with a

sick whole, not merely a sick part. Just as in physiology the whole

widely extended state of function is a unit, so in pathology the whole

widely extended state of processes that constitute the remedial process

is a unity.

When there is irritation of the nose, throat, sinuses, and elsewhere,

this represents a systemic condition, not a series of local infections.

Should any part of the digestive tract from the mouth to the anus

become inflamed the name given the "disease" will correspond to the

part involved, and the state of the inflammation will be: first

irritation or inflammation, then ulceration, then induration and

cancer. All pathologic change is named in keeping with the part

involved. Inflammation of the stomach is called gastritis; when

ulceration develops out of inflammation, it is called gastric ulcer;

when the ulceration takes on induration (hardening), it is called

gastric cancer; if the development involves the pyloris, it is named

pyloric cancer. If the inflammation extends to the duodenum, it is

called duodenitis; if the duodenum ulcerates, it is called duodenal

ulcer; if induration follows, it is duodenal cancer.

While we tend to think of so-called diseases as local affections, the

entire body is always involved in the process. This is not to give

utterance to the stupid prevalent notion that every "local disorder"

deranges all the functions of the body; rather, it is meant to express

the idea that the whole organism is involved in every remedial process.

In the case of a diarrhea, for instance, it is a disturbance only in

relation to a larger and otherwise unitary whole which it interrupts.

There is no thought of derangement, but of redirection. The central and

basic powers of life are those engaged in nutrition, including those of

digestion, respiration, circulation, assimilation, excretion, and

reproduction. The normal performance of these functions is health. When

any or many of these powers are much modified to meet abnormal

conditions, the modification is disease. The modification is

protective, reparative, expulsive, remedial. All such modifications are

in the service of life, not in the service of death. These

modifications are integral to life, not foreign agents at work in the

body. Disease is a vital process, not an entity.

A local disease is an impossibility. Every so-called local disease is

but the local manifestation of a general condition. Every local

pathological manifestation is an expression of a systemic pathological

condition. This is so because the body is a unit. Local diseases,

so-called, are the local expressions of general states. For the

successful care of the sick, therefore, it is not sufficient to confine

our attention to the organ or part affectedwe must care for the whole

organism. When indigestion produces irritation of the stomach lining,

inflammation, or gastritis develops. When irritation occurs to the

point of irritation it becomes a point of toxemic crisis. The

hairsplitting seen in differential diagnosis is made necessary by a

lack of knowledge of cause. It is a compensation for ignorance, an

effort to appear scientific when there is no science.

When we know that the processes and elements of disease are the same as

the processes and elements of health, is it probable, nay, is it

possible that disease, any disease should have no order in its seeming

disorder, that diseases should present no unity in their seeming

multiplicity, should suffer no explanation by the discovery of some

central and sublime law of mutual connection? If all organs of the body

are governed by the same laws why such a multiplicity of diseases as

are recognized by so-called medical science? Each organ has its own

peculiar histology (tissue or structure peculiarity) and each has its

own peculiar function to perform. Every organ of the body, and this

includes the brain, is under the same physiological and pathological

laws. By the co-operating principles of causation and differentiation

do we derive the many so-called diseases out of a common source. The

many so-called diseases of the medical nosology are but

symptom-complexes of a constitutional toxemic state; they are the

effects of accumulated waste products of metabolism.

Every inflammation has symptoms all its own, yet all inflammations are

basically the same. Although the symptoms of tonsillitis differ greatly

from those of acute gastritis, the inflammation is identical in the two

organs; although the symptoms of pneumonia are greatly different from

those of hepatitis, the inflammation in the liver is the same as the

inflammation in the lungs. The dissimilarity of these so-called

diseases is due to the varying functions of the organs inflamed and to

the differences in histologieal (tissue) structure of these different

organs. Why do professional pathologists, trained also in histology and

physiology, continue to view inflammation in many different parts of

the body and imagine that each inflammation is a specific disease?

The shades of differences existing in the different so-called disease

are apparent because of the different tissues involved. It is our

confirmed opinion that too much attention is given to minute

pathological distinctions and too great value is placed upon these.

Every part of the body, when irritated, gives rise to its own

symptom-complex, or what is known as a special disease. The brain and

nervous system have their own complexes; the liver, kidneys, lungs,

etc., each has its own complex. Singling out one or more of the

pronounced symptom-complexes that make up the composite of the sick

man's symptoms, diseases, complications, etc., all of which arise out

of the one and only efficient cause-toxemiaand specializing in its

treatment, is an important procedure in what is known as "modern

scientific medicine."

Congestion and inflammation may develop simultaneously in different

organs; or, what is more frequently the case, one organ may become

congested and inflamed; and, as time passes and the general health of

the individual declines, one after another of several structures may

be-come congested or inflamed. It is in this manner, in part, that

complications always develop in longstanding chronic castes. As the

chronic disease continues due to the persistence and intensification of

the cause of the disease, one after another of the organs of the body

is brought into the pathological field; the complications become more

numerous. Thus, it is true that many complications are due to the

persistence and increase of cause. The sick man sets out, at the

beginning of his suffering with dyspepsia. After ten or twenty years he

finds that he has disease of the throat and lungs, bowels, liver,

kidneys, heart and perhaps of the spine. If the individual is a woman

she probably finds that she also has one or more "female diseases."

All so-called diseases are but varying symptom-complexes growing out of

a common cause. True, there are many causes, but if they are carefully

studied, it will be found that they are all auxiliary to one universal,

efficient cause-toxemia. Disease-inducing habits are responsible for

many symptoms. Many complexes of symptoms are given distinctive names

and listed as specific diseases. The regular profession labels almost

every symptom inducted by bad habits as a separate diseaseunless they

decide to call them "syphilis." Add to the symptoms induced by bad

habits, those induced by drug poisoning, and you have about all the

symptoms that man presents when he is sick.

Herbert M. Shelton

-- 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. ~Baptiste Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire

The obstacle is the path. ~Zen Proverb