What is a Poison?

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What is a Poison?

Herbert M. Shelton Ph.d.,D.C.

Man's Pristine Way of Life

1968

Chapter XLII

What is a poison? What is a medicine? How do drugs act on the living

organism? It is vitally important that we distinguish scientifically

between food and poison, because they are confounded in the popular

mind and employed indiscriminately by physicians, it being frequently

asserted, as a justification for the employment of drugs, that "there

is poison in everything." Due to the fact that the question: what is a

poison? has not been satisfactorily settled, there is much ambiguity of

language indulged by speakers and writers who are unable to distinguish

between a poison and a Hygienic means.

Who does not know that for over 200 years physicians, chemists,

pharmacologists, etc., have sought to prove that alcohol (a

protoplasmic poison) is both poison and food, or either, according to

circumstance? Of this substance it was said: "Alcohol is like every

other chemical, whether it be a poison like strychnine or a food like

protein--that is, there is an amount below which it is not a poison,

and above which, it is a poison. Too much table salt is a poison; a

little is not." Thus, one fallacy is used to support another; in

reality, the fallacy is the same in each instance. It is the fallacy

that poisons are such by quantity and not by quality. Salt is a poison

only because we get too much of it and not because it is intrinsically

a poison, so with alcohol. Even if alcohol is partially oxidized in the

body, all evidence is still lacking that this provides the body with

any energy or usable substance or that it takes part in the useful

functions of life.

As vital structure can be evolved only out of food, air, water and

sunshine, we can distinguish between food and poison without reference

to popular opinions. Every substance in the earth has a definite

relation to the living organism; either it may be used with which to

build and maintain the organism and carry on its functions or it may

not. If it is usable, it is food; if it is not usable, it is, so far as

its relation to the organism is concerned, a poison. This principle was

early arrived at by Hygienists.

As Wm. Potter, M.D., said in an article entitled "Health Reform"

(third in a series, the Journal, June 1859): "Eat a pound of bread--it

will not injure a well person. The natural appetite craves it. The

stomach digests it, and it is assimilated and becomes a part of the

living organism. It is a food. Eat a pound of tobacco--it will kill

you. The natural appetite rejects it. It is not digested by the

stomach, nor assimilated, nor changed in the system. It is a poison. If

you drink a pound of alcohol--it will kill you or at least seriously

injure you. The natural appetite rejects it. Early navigators found

that savages at first disliked it. So do children who have never used

it; but such are scarce. It is not digested in the stomach, not made

into tissue. It is certainly a poison. A pound of tea, cooked and eaten

as food would kill any person." Thus, the distinction between usable

substances (foods) and nonusable substances (poisons) is made quite

clear.

We may now answer our question: what is a poison? Everything is poison

that cannot be assimilated by the living organism and used by it to

sustain life. Every substance that can have no place in the normal

metabolic processes of the body wastes the body's energies in resisting

and expelling it, thus inevitably inducing debility and premature

death. In other words, poisons are those substances which the living

organism cannot use, but must resist and expel.

That which cannot be appropriated to the growth and strength of tissue

is neither food nor drink, but poison. If a substance cannot be

appropriated to the development of living tissue and employed in

healthy action, it is hurtful to the structures of the body. Poisons

are such substances that are chemically incompatible with the

structures and physiologically incompatible with the functions of the

living organism. They are those substances which are not in any form or

quantity, convertible into any of the structures of the human body, nor

employed by the organism in the performance of any of its functions.

This definition is true in itself; it lets all substances take care of

themselves.

To reiterate: all things in existence are, in their relations to the

vital organism, either foods or poisons. Foods are those things which

the organism uses by appropriating them into the formation of tissue;

poisons are those things which the organism cannot use in the formation

of tissue and, hence, rejects. On the basis of this principle, we

unhesitatingly declare that all those substances (drugs) that are

employed as medicines are destructive of the structural integrity and

functional vigor of the organs and tissues of the body.

All drugs are physiologically incompatible with the functions of the

human body. Take epsom salts as an example: when a dose of these is

taken into the stomach, there is immediate and great disturbance of

function. Fluid is poured out to dilute it and to protect the tissues

against its chemical incompatibilities, while the alimentary canal and

the abdominal muscles contract violently to expel it. It is not

conceivable that such a violent disturbance would follow the salts if

they were compatible with or in friendly relation to the vital

structures and functions.

When opium is first given, the preternatural excitement which is

followed by stupor, delirium, convulsions and, if the dose is large

enough, death, and in smaller doses, a lesser degree of the same

symptoms, it is impossible to miss the physiologic incompatibility of

the drug with the vital organism. A whole catalogue of drugs could be

listed and the same and similar disturbances of function would indicate

their physiologic incompatibility with the vital organism.

What phenomena indicate the alleged modus operandi of drugs? Pain,

agitation, disorder of body, derangement of mind, nausea, vomiting,

griping, spasms, trembling, dizziness, drunkenness, staggering,

blindness, deafness, prostration, and so on to the end of the catalogue

of abnormalities. Certainly these symptoms, feelings, effects,

phenomena, operations, or whatever else one chooses to call them, are

no part of the healthy or natural state. They are symptoms of disease,

symptoms of poisoning.

When drugs are "chemically incompatible," as are all the metalic or

mineral poisons, with the structures of the body, they corrode,

decompose and destroy some portion of some of the constituents of some

of the fluids and solids of some organ or structure. Take these

examples from among the older drugs: carbonate of potassa resulted in

ulceration and in corrosion in the stomach; an application of Spanish

fly to the skin occasioned vesication (blistering), followed by

corrosion or decomposition of the skin; tartar emetic or ipecec,

applied to the skin, destroyed the cuticle and corroded or destroyed

the true skin, leaving large scars where they were applied; calomel and

mercury in other forms produced salivation, decay of the teeth, violent

diarrhea and many other effects; sulphuric acid burned or corroded the

structures like fire. Such results prove to a positive demonstration

that drugs or apothecary stuffs are not assimilable by the living body,

that they cannot be transformed into the substances of the tissues and

that they are chemically incompatible with the structures of life.

It will now be readily seen that drugs interrupt the functional harmony

of the body, first, by their chemical incompatibility, and second, by

their non-usableness, which renders their immediate removal an object

of particular concern to the living tissues, and third, by the fact

that their very presence occasions vital resistance in direct

proportion to the difficulty of expelling them. Drugs assassinate the

human constitution.

None of the medical schools existing at the time the Hygienic System

came into being was able to make valid distinctions between drug

poisons and Hygienic means nor between food and poison. Poison is

poison and food is food and they are as distinct from each other as

life and death. They cannot be used interchangeably and any effort to

so use them must result in evil consequences. The prescription of a

physician lacks all power to convert one into the other; they remain

the same under all conditions and circumstances. Poisons are poisons by

virtue of their own elemental character. They are not poisons by virtue

of their simple relations to some individual organism.

Substances that cannot be metabolized, and this means substances that

cannot be transformed into cell substance, are of no possible use to

the living organism in either a state of health or in a state of

disease. The presence of such substances in the body can serve only as

disturbing elements. They are foreign bodies and must be expelled,

often at great expense to the organism.

Metabolism is defined as "tissue change, the sum of all the physical

and chemical processes by which living organized substance is produced

and maintained and also the transformation by which energy is made

available for use by the organism." Metabolism is the sum of the

biological processes upon which the processes of growth and repair of

the cells and tissues depend. As it is common to confine the process to

the cell, it has been said that "metabolism is the cell; the cell is

metabolism." This, however, is a mere play on words. The process of

metabolism is comprised of three activities, as follows:

The preliminary stage of taking food substances. The transformation of

these materials into cell substance. The elimination from the cell of

products resulting from cellular activities and which are not to be

retained in the cell as part of its protoplasm. From the foregoing it

may be seen that metabolism may be defined as the sum of the processes

by which nutritive materials are utilized and ultimately discarded. As

substances are discarded, they require to be replaced-hence the need

for a more or less constant supply of food materials to the cell. All

of this involves another consideration that is not commonly noted by

physiologists: namely, the kind of materials that can be metabolized.

Metabolism refers to the changes that foods undergo in being

appropriated and used by the body. It involves the actual incorporation

of food materials into the substances of the cell. It is a large part

of the process by which we live and grow and develop.

Substances which are not adapted to the normal processes of metabolism,

whether introduced into the body from the outside or generated within

the organism itself, are not usable by the body and nvaribly prove to

be harmful. A sane method of caring for the sick will not attempt to

force the body to utilize substances that are not subject to its

metabolic processes.

The metabolism of the human organism is radically different from that

of the plant. Whereas plants can appropriate and utilize elements from

the soil, the animal organism is unable to do so. As a matter of fact,

the animal organism will not tolerate the presence of soil elements in

inorganic form, but resists and expels them to the limit of its

capacity. Iron, for example, can be assimilated by the animal organism

only as it comes to us in the organic combinations found in food.

Otherwise, it is a poison. Although for many decades drug preparations

containing iron have been fed to anemic patients in large amounts, no

cases of anemia have ever been remedied by this type of drugging. It is

stated by a writer in the Scientific American, May 1966, that: "At

least 12 children a year in the U.S. die of eating the sugar-coated

iron-containing pills (ferrous sulphate) that their mothers may be

taking for anemia. In Britain this raiding of the medicine cabinet for

ferrous sulphate tablets accounts for about 10 per cent of all the

fatal poisonings of children. In South Africa, the Bantu, who drink a

beer made in iron vessels and thus ingest 50 to 100 milligrams of iron

daily, commonly suffer from many ailments partly induced by iron,

including cirrhosis of the liver, by the time they reach middle age."

These are merely a few examples of many evidences that iron is a poison

when taken in inorganic, hence, non-metabolizable form. What is true of

iron is equally true of sulphur, phosphorus, iodine, calcium and other

minerals that form normal constituents of the living body.

Pharmacologists and biochemists have developed the habit of talking of

the metabolism of drugs. For example, one man says that some

"apparently normal individuals" have impaired ability to metabolize

"certain chemical agents" and suggests that this may be due to

"inherent defects in their cellular metabolism." Pharmacologists speak

of the "concentration of the metabolite," meaning an end-product of

drug metabolism. They speak of drug metabolites in the same way that

physiologists speak of the metabolites that are the normal end-products

of the metabolism of food. They also speak of the "capacity to

metabolize the drugs," and of "drug-enzymes" that exist in the

microsomes.

Some drugs are said to have "variable rates of metabolism" and it is

said that "each person seems to have his own pattern of metabolism for

these drugs" and that "the consequences of individual differences in

drug metabolism are exaggerated in long-term therapy and may account

for the variable time of onset for side effects." The pharmacologists

have developed the habit of speaking of "drug-metabolizing enzymes" and

of saying that "the importance of the drug-metabolizing enzymes in drug

therapy is demonstrated by the prolonged action and high toxicity of

many drugs in new-born infants, whose microsomal enzyme systems are not

developed during their very early days of life." This simply means that

because infants are "ill-equipped to metabolize drugs," they have less

power to defend themselves than do adults.

It is becoming quite a habit among physicians and pharmacologists to

talk learnedly of the metabolism of drugs when what they are talking

about is not metabolism at all, but the mere chemical changes that

drugs undergo in the organism as the body defends itself against them

or prepares them for excretion. They speak not only of drug metabolites

and of the body's capacity to metabolize drugs, just as though drugs

were handled by the living organism in the same way as food is handled,

but they speak of drugs that are slowly metabolized and of those that

are quickly metabolized and of variability in the ability of different

animals and of different individuals to metabolize drugs.

We are told that recent studies suggest that enzymes which metabolize

drugs are not the usual enzymes of intermediary metabolism. Rather, it

is speculated that they are the results of evolutionary developments

that had to take place before animals could migrate from water onto the

land in order that the organism could protect itself from a multitude

of fat-soluble compounds which it would receive in its food. We are

also informed that, in general, drugs are not metabolized by processes

acting on substances normally present in the body and that usually they

are not even metabolized in the organ where they are supposed to act.

Instead, so we are told, their action is terminated by specialized

microsynes which have a predilection for fat-soluble compounds. It is

customary to go further in this discussion of drug metabolism and speak

not only of the metabolism of drugs, but of their tissue distribution.

For example, they talk of the tissue distribution of thalidomide.

Distribution is the action of distributing, apportioning, arranging or

disposing. To distribute is to divide among a number, a portion; share;

make a distribution; to classify or arrange; to separate, as from a

collection.

Within the broad meaning of this definition, drugs are not distributed.

It is true that they are carried by the blood to various tissuesbut

they are not apportioned; they are not allocated. They are not divided

among the tissues; they are not shared by the tissues. As the tissues

have no need for them, can make no use of them and must reject and

expel them and, as they are poisonous to every tissue in the body, they

have to be met with resistance. To speak of the mere carrying of toxic

substances by the blood stream throughout the body as their

distribution is to misuse the term and to mislead the unwary reader.

That drugs undergo chemical changes in the body, in the digestive

tract, in the blood stream, in the liver and elsewhere, as the body

seeks to protect itself from them, that is, as it seeks to lessen their

toxicity and to render them more easily excreted, has long been known.

But this is a far cry from the biochemical process by which food

substances are metabolized. Drugs do not, as a consequence of these

changes, become cell constituants and they are not used in performing

the functions of life. They provide the body with no energy. There is

nothing in the changes that drugs undergo in the body that contribute

to tissue change or that help to build and maintain organized substance

or that provides energy for the use of the organism. The drugs are

simply "detoxified," altered and expelled. They never become part of

the body's tissues; they are never used in performing any of the

functions of the body; they form no part of any of the body's

functional results. Drugs are not, in other words, metabolized in the

body and all efforts to confuse the changes they undergo in the body,

as the body seeks to protect itself from their chemical union with its

tissues, with the metabolic processes by which foods are assimilated

and disassimilated, can only lead to greater confusion.

It would be proper to speak of drug changes as metabolism if the cell

could actually incorporate drugs into their substance as integral parts

of their protoplasm and make use of them in the same way they do food

substance. Inasmuch as this transformation of drug substance into

living protoplasm is not possible, but as drug substance must be

expelled as foreign material, it is not proper to talk of the chemical

changes that may take place in the drugs while in the body as

metabolism. If they could be metabolized, they would be classed as

foods and not as medicines.

It is not enough to understand the normal relations of various

substances to living organisms as a whole, for many organisms can

metabolize substances that other organisms cannot make the slightest

use of. Soil is food for plants, but is useless to animals. The tobacco

leaf is food for certain forms of insect life; it is a virulent poison

to man. Belladonna is poison to man, but is food for the rabbit. We

need, most of all, to understand what has a normal relation to man. If

certain types of organisms flourish in sunless caves, this is no clue

to the needs of man.

It is so appropriate to judge of things in their relations to life by

their effects, rather than by their names, that it is a matter of

wonder to us that the principle has been so long overlooked. A

substance is not beneficial or injurious because of its name, but

because of its effects on the living structure. Without reference to

its name, a substance is to be regarded as good or bad in its relation

to the living organism in exact ratio to the beneficial or injurious

effects it produces. All things must be measured by the same standard

and accepted or condemned under the same rule.

It is stupid for physicians and pharmaceutical chemists to speak of the

physiological effects of toxic substances. Their effects are always

pathologic and experiments to determine their pathological effects are

understandable.

It is not difficult to demonstrate that drugs that are poisonous to man

are also poisonous to animals; that if a dose is large enough it will

kill the animal if it will kill man. Chloral will hypnotize a rabbit or

a pigeon; bromide or potassium will render the pigeon stupid; alcohol

will do the same for birds; strychnia will induce spasms, coma,

paralysis; chloroform will anesthetize a gold fish--but what has all

this production of disease in animals to do with curing the sick? That

poisons will sicken and kill both men and animals is well known. We

want something that will restore health.

There is a large element of stupidity in the belief that when it is

demonstrated that drugs will produce disease (coma, paralysis,

narcosis, etc.) and death in animals, this demonstrates that they are

valuable in the treatment of sick human beings. We must learn to

respect that which saves life, not that which destroys it. Anything

that finds its way into the organism or that evolves within the

organism that is unusable and must, therefore, be expelled may

necessitate greater than usual or modified vital actions for its

removal-this is disease.

It was demonstrated by Hygienists more than a century and a quarter ago

that the living organism seeks to repel or expel anything that is

harmful to its constitution. This is to say, it rejects and expels

anything that it cannot transform into living structure. Whatever is

not a normal constituent of the fluids and tissues of the body is

foreign to the organic constitution and must be resisted and expelled.

As we will learn later, the actions of resistance and expulsion that

follow the ingestion of a drug are mistaken for the actions of the

drug; whereas, the drug is just as inert and passive in the body as in

the bottle on the druggist's shelf. Perhaps now we can answer the

question: what is a medicine? The body wants and can make use of only

such substances as it can assimilate and use as food. There are no

substances that can be so used in disease that cannot be used in

health. This is to say, anything that is to be used remediably must

bear a normal or physiological relation to the living organism and must

be useful and needed in a state of health. When the public learns the

truth, it will see the absurdity of talking about the physiological

influence of drugs on the human body and will understand that no drug

can have a physiological effect or influence, but that its influence is

always and invariably pathological and that no man who understands the

nature of disease or the so-called modus operandi of drugs will ever

apply the term physiological to any disease-causing substance. Then the

public will abandon the nonsensical and frankly contradictory facts of

the medical profession and the practices built thereon.

Can a logical reason be provided why a person should swallow or permit

to be sent into his blood and tissues by injection, a nauseous, noxious

substance because he is sick? No such reason has ever been given; if it

can be done, is it not high time somebody did it? It is everywhere

admitted that drugs are poisons, that they are always poisons to

persons in health. All of us are very careful to exclude them from our

food and drink; we are well aware that if we take them into the body

while we are well, we will become sick as a consequence. What person

would dare to take an ordinary dose of penicillin, streptomycin or

cortisone while in health? Yet, let him become sick and he swallows

them, not only without fear, but as the essential condition of safety

and recovery. It should be obvious that there is a terrible delusion

abroad on this subject.

W. T. Vail, M.D., writing in the Journal (October 1858) asks how could

one in wisdom and goodness "invite you to embrace and press to the very

bosom of your life, the most deadly enemies of your being?"

He thought that "a demon might take upon himself to persuade you that

the fair and innocent look of some poisonous element, so disorganizing

in its nature that a simple drop placed upon the tip of your tongue

should destroy your life in a few moments, might, under form of certain

reductions and combinations, in consequence of some delusive temporary

effects, be good for you to introduce into the life currents of your

bodies, there to be diffused in contact with all the delicate tissues

and minute fibers of your wondrous composition . . . ;" but he thought

it difficult to conceive of an intelligent and philantropic man doing

this.

The practice of poisoning a person because he is ill is based on

erroneous notions of the essential nature of disease. In all the

teachings of the medical schools, disease is regarded as something

foreign to the system, as an attacking entity, and poisons are

administered to war upon, drive out or destroy the enemy. But, as the

truth is the exact contrary to this ancient notion, all poisoning

practice is exactly wrong; it is nothing more nor less than a blind war

upon the human constitution. When the great, grand, glorious and

revolutionary truth that disease is remedial action, that it is the

action of the living system itself instead of a foreign something

making war upon the body, is generally understood, then the whole

poisoning practice will be viewed with disgust and horror.

It is the general opinion that men die of disease and that they are

sometimes saved from dying by taking poisons. There is no evidence that

these are the facts. There is no valid authority for saying that

disease is a crippler, a destroyer, a killer. No one has any evidence

that poison is a savior. There is no evidence to controvert, but much

to sustain the opinion that poison is always destructive to man and

that disease is a conservative effort of the living organism to free

itself of poison. It is by no means certain that anyone ever died of

disease. There is strong reason, however, to think that all who have

not died of violence or exhaustion have died of poisoning and that all

who have died of exhaustion did so prematurely by being robbed of life

by poisons.

Can organic function be restored and organic structure be repaired by

means and measures that are destructive of structure and subversive of

function? Can the exhausting narcotics and deadly chemical poisons of

physicians, choking and irritating the bodies of the sick, the pungent,

smarting compounds, the caustics, corrosives, stupefyers, the

bowel-rasping, stomach-emptying, blood-poisoning, brain-disordering

medley of poisons that dose the sick into a state of lethargy,

muttering delirium and phrenetic excitement be expected to restore the

sick to health? Let the truthful answer be: these things are all health

destroying and too many deaths from slow poisoning are passed off as

deaths from disease. Viewed in this light, the administration of drugs

is seen to be a crime.

There is no mystery in this. It is not difficult to understand why

poisons do not save us from suffering and death. The mystery lies in

the fact that, after the truth is demonstrated, the mass of mankind go

on to their destruction nevertheless. When one considers the immense

masses of poisons that are merchandized in the drug trade, some of it

so toxic that a small drop of it will kill an ordinary pig in a matter

of minutes, one cannot help but think that human life is shortened

under the drugging practice. It is a bit foolish to think that all of

this poison can be diluted and swallowed at intervals in such a way as

to promote health instead of impairing and destroying life.

Drugs never have a remedial influence, but their administration is

always and necessarily attended by a loss of constitutional power. To

bring disorganizing poisons into contact with the living tissues of the

body is to damage and destroy, not to build and renew. The fact that

these poisons are prescribed by a physician does not alter their

relationship to the tissues nor render them adaptable to the purposes

of life. Prof. Paine said in the latter half of the nineteenth

century, after admitting that all drugs are poisons: "In a remedial

sense, however, we do not know them as poisons, but as among the

choicest blessings bestowed upon man." How actually absurd!

However good and benevolent the motive that leads to the administration

of poisons as medicines, it cannot alter their actual qualities, nor

mitigate their hurtful, even deadly, effects on the powers of life. If

they are poisons before they enter the living system, they must of

necessity be poisons after they enter. As soon as the people fully

understand the intrinsically poisonous character of all drugs, they

will convict the medical profession of manslaughter and destroy their

fame as healers and their character as useful citizens.

Medical men cling to their implanted fixations which were developed in

advance of all experimental verification and before the development of

biologic, physiologic and pathologic knowledge. The only relation which

a true interpretation of facts shows drugs to have to the human

organism is that of poison and no amount of falsification of nature can

make this relation any different. What recent discoveries in physiology

have been made which show that drugs (poisons) have the same relations

to the human organism as foods? Medical authors neglect to give us even

a brief account of such discoveries. The relation of all drugs to the

living organism, even in those cases in which they may be useful, as in

anesthesia, is always anti-vital. It may be thought that so-called

sleeping drugs serve some good purpose, but it should be known that

stupefaction is not slumber. The barbiturate physician might as well

benumb his patient by a blow on the head.

It is not true that substances which are poisonous in health become

innoxious in disease. Nothing changes its relations to the human

organism when it is well or sick. If it is a poison, it is so once and

always--under all possible circumstances. If it will corrode the

tissues of a well person, it will corrode the tissues of a sick man.

The unceasing clash of the organism with these unassimilable substances

gives rise to pathologies galore. The body must maintain a state of

perpetual vigilance against poisons and this reduces it to the status

of a maladept.

When poison is taken, the powers of life are excited to increased

actions to resist and expel it. This will be followed by reaction, more

or less severe, depending on the prior expenditure. The introduction of

foreign elements into the blood stream is sufficiently guarded against

by the living organism and only men of science recklessly disregard

these safeguards of internal purity and break through the defenses and

deliberately introduce foreign materials, some of them highly toxic,

into the blood. Many drugs produce no appreciable immediate damage but

are retained, as they are eliminated with difficulty, and accumulate in

the body and it is said by toxicologists of some of these that small

amounts of such drugs may be retained in the body for months and even

years.

Most people think that it is necessary to take drugs when ill; they

must take them, if not for cure, at least for relief from discomforts

and pains, so many of us once thought. But millions today are rejoicing

in better health because they have learned that there is no balm in

poison; they have been emancipated from the belief in the necessity of

drugs and have been freed from their diseases. It is possible for every

reader of this book to free himself from his slavery to drugs. The

daily consumption of drugs as mere palliatives or subterfuges, to

paralyze some aching nerve or to goad some faltering organ into renewed

(increased) activity, is a practice that cannot be justified on any

scientific ground. Today, the American public is practically pickled in

drugs. Anodynes, analgesics, antacids, laxatives, cathartics,

sedatives, soporifics, tranquilizers, for headaches, gastric distress,

constipation, emotional disturbances, sleeplessness, etc. are swallowed

by almost everybody. Indeed, drugging has become a way of life. For the

reader to free himself from his slavery to drugs, it will cost him a

little effort, a little resolution, some persevering effort, the

exercise of some faith in the powers of his own body, some transient

sacrifice; but the rewards are well worth the cost.

To call this poisoning of the life currents and the body's tissues a

rational, scientific mode of treating disease is to do violence to

human reason. Taking poison, so far from diminishing disease, always

makes more work for it to do. There is no surer means of evolving

chronic disease than that of treating acute disease with poisons. There

never can be and never ought to be any congenial relationship between

the living organism and rank, disorganizing poisons, no matter how

these are sugar coated.

Man must disabuse his mind of the fallacy that when he is ill or that

when we call drugs medicines and take them upon the directions of the

physician, that poisons are transformed from deadly foes into kindly

friends, ready to do him good in his time of need. When, with all the

gravity they can command, the professors of medicine assure us that

there is no other source under heaven whereunto we may turn when ill

with any hope of succor, than the myriads of poisons that exist

throughout the earth, we must think them to be laboring under a

delusion.

Instead of the most poisonous and deadly substances being good for us

in the days of our suffering, only the friendly and congenial

substances can be of genuine service to us. These are serviceable in

restoring health as they are serviceable in preserving health. It is

false to think that what is poisonous in one circumstance or condition

of our being is the very supporter of life in another, that what will

destroy health when we are well can be made to build it up and

establish it when we are sick. There is no more harmony between drugs

and the sick body than between drugs and the healthy body. There is

never a circumstance in which there is a genial relationship and

adaptability between drugs and the living organism.

To invalids of every age and description, who are subjects of disease,

suffering, weakness, irritability or despondency, who hope to secure a

return to the normal vigor of their organization or to realize the joys

and rich blessings of uninterrupted health through the agency of

poisonous and disorganizing substances, I address this important

question: is it logical to think that the causes of disease and death

are also the causes of health and renewed life?

-- 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