Valere Aude: Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration

by Louis Dechmann

I. DEGENERATION OF THE PLASMO TISSUE.

Anaemia, Chlorosis, Pernicious Anaemia.
A. Scrofulosis. B. Tuberculosis. C. Syphilis. D. Cancer.

To many who are unfamiliar with the results of modern research, and even to many physicians of the old school of medicine, the family of disease forms, as enumerated above, will look somewhat formidable. It comprises the most disastrous plagues of mankind,—plagues for which cures have been so frantically sought with such an ominous lack of results. It thus constitutes one of the most practical revelations of the biological method of research to positively proclaim that the common cause of these manifestly so different constitutional diseases is one and the same.

That this fact was not recognized long ago is the reason they have been pronounced incurable by so many physicians who, by poisoning symptoms, established only a semblance of cure, until biological study led to the recognition of the truth. It discovered that all of these constitutional diseases are essentially blood defects and degenerations, resulting in the destruction of the body tissue in general,—the necessary and logical consequence of an imperfect condition of the blood.

So there is a ray of hope for humanity breaking through the night of despair; that is, that its worst foes can be made to disappear in due time by attack directed at their common root.

Not the knife of the surgeon, not the poison of the physician of the old school, but simply harmonizing the individual life with the laws of nature, will eradicate the cause.

The tremendous importance of the subject, the wide field to be covered, makes it wellnigh impossible to treat the matter within the present limits as extensively as it should be treated. A large part of my book, "Dare To Be Healthy," of which this is but an abstract, deals exhaustively with this topic. There the reader will find the most interesting details in regard to the connection between these widely divergent forms of disease. Their nature as blood-diseases carries with it the fact that they are preeminently persistent through many generations, so that today there is but a minority of human beings in whom all tendency towards them is missing. So predisposition advances with the continuity of environment, the one point at which, at least in the case of the so-called white plague, or tuberculosis, an effort against it has been made.

The development towards the eradication of these evils has been neutralised by the overwhelming importance science has given to the theory of the bacillus as the incentive element of disease, while it is only a product of the same.

The serum and anti-toxin therapy, which in its fight against the bacillus, lost sight of the first task of medicine, that of fighting the disease, was the logical consequence thereof.

The blood liquid which consists of the plasma and red and white blood corpuscles, and is the carrier of the lymph to such parts of the body as are not fed directly by the lymphatic vessels, such as the nerves, must have a well defined chemical composition in order to fulfil its task. What we call deficiency of blood is, with the exception of traumatically inflicted losses, normal in quantity, to a great extent, but deficient in quality. This consists in the chemical composition and the proportion of nutritive salts in the serum, or in the relation and quality of the oxygen carriers, that is, the red and white corpuscles, whose task it is to remove foreign and disturbing elements from the blood.

It is obvious that deficiency in these elements may be of infinite variety and of the most far reaching consequence for the various tissues of the body, which receive their nourishment therefrom.

According to the nature of the effects which this variety in blood deficiency (dysaemia) produces, we distinguish certain groups of degenerations in the body, for which names were established at a time when the unity of these forms of disease had not yet been recognized. Thus, where dysaemia produces only general debility, we call it anaemia, which may gradually become destructive and develop into "pernicious" anaemia. When it affects girls with all kinds of disturbances in menstruation, perverting their appetite and causing a greenish color of the skin, it is called "chlorosis." If the symptoms are the destruction of the lymphatic glands, so often noticed in children said to be hereditarily affected, we speak of "Scrofulosis." When erroneous composition of the blood, produced by poor living and unsanitary environment, causes destruction of the lungs or of certain bones or tissues, the name "tuberculosis" indicates that the decaying condition of the affected tissues results in producing numerous tubercle bacilli. In the many cases in which the destruction is even more widespread, attacking the skin, bones, brain and other tissues or organs, and where the decomposing poison, if not hereditary, has entered the blood by way of sexual intercourse, the ominous word "syphilis" indicates the resulting blood disease. When the weakened tissues, which are not sufficiently fed with the elements they need for their normal existence, cannot resist the developing power of the phosphates prevalent in the blood, the much dreaded malign "cancer growths" appear.

The destructions wrought by dysaemia in these various forms, cannot be fully described in this brief abstract. They can all be reduced, arrested and forced to give place to healthy regeneration by the hygienic-dietetic healing system. In each case, however, the possibility of cure will depend entirely on the degree of decomposition which has been reached. If the trouble is from hereditary tendency it is obviously harder to fight, and a long regenerative treatment may be anticipated. If attacked at an early stage, complete restoration to health is possible in a comparatively short period.

The most careful and thorough investigation by the physician must precede any treatment. It is his task to prescribe accordingly, with the development of the disease and its gradual disappearance.

The simultaneous direct and indirect affection of various tissues, especially of the lymphatics, will necessitate more complicated application of the various nutritive compositions.