BLOOD IS SYSTEMATICALLY FURNISHED.
Blood is systematically furnished from the heart to all divisions of our bodies. When we go any course from the heart we will find one or more arteries leaving heart. If we go toward the head, we find caroted, cervical and vertebral arteries in pairs, large enough to supply blood abundantly for bone, brain, and muscle. That blood builds all the brain, all the bone, nerves, muscles, glands, membranes, fascia and skin. Then we see wisdom just as much in the venous system, as in the arterial. Thus the arteries supply all demands, and the veins carry away all waste material, with returning blood of veins. We find building and healthy renovation are united in a perpetual effort to construct and sustain purity. In these two are the facts and truths of life and health. If we go to any other part or organ of the body, we find just the same law of supply, arteries first, then renovation, beginning with the veins. The rule of artery and vein is universal in all living beings, and the Osteopath must know that, and abide by its rulings, or he will not succeed as a healer. Place him in open combat with fevers of winter or summer and he saves, or loses, his patients, just in proportion to his ability to sustain the artery to feed, and the veins to purify by taking away the dead substances before they ferment, in the lymphatics and cellular system. He shows just the same stupidity and ignorance of support from arteries and purity by the veins when he fails to cure erysipelas, flux, pneumonia, croup, scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, mumps, rheumatism, and on to all diseases of climate and seasons.
FATALITY OF IGNORANCE.
It is ignorance and inattention to the arteries to supply and the veins to carry away all deposits before they form tumors in lungs, abdomen or any part of the system. Thus man's ignorance of how and why the blood renovates and why tumors are formed, has allowed the knife to be found in the belts of so many doctors to-day. On this law Osteopathy has successfully stood and cured more than any school of cures, and has sustained all its diplomates financially and otherwise. I write this article on blood for the student of Osteopathy. I want him to put nature to a test of its merit, and know if it is a law equal to all demands. If not, he is very much and seriously limited when he goes into war with diseases. What is to be understood by "Disease?"[5]
When we use the word "disease," we mean anything that makes an unnatural showing in the body by pain, overgrowth of muscle; gland; organ; physical pain; numbness; heat; cold; or anything that we find not necessary to life and comfort. I have no wish to rob surgery of its useful claims, and its scientific merits to suffering man and beast. Such is not my object, but to place the Osteopath's eye of reason on the hunt of the great whys that the knife is useful at all, I am sure it comes often to remove growths and diseased flesh and bone that have gotten so by man's ignorance of a few great truths. 1st, If blood is allowed to be taken to a gland or organ, and not taken away in due time the accumulation will become bulky enough to stop the excretory nerves and cause local paralysis; then the nutrient nerves proceed to construct tumors, and on and on until there is no relief but the knife or death. Had this blood not been conveyed there, it would not be there at all, either in bulk or less quantities. Had it simply done its work and passed on we could have no material to grow such abnormal beings. If a tumefaction appears in one side, and not in the other, why so? and why is there no growth in one side the same as the other? It takes no great effort of mind to see that the veins did not receive and carry off the blood, and a growth was natural, as the condition could not do otherwise and be true to nature. Thus man's ignorance has made a condition for the knife. Had he taken the hint and let the blood pass on when its work was done, he would not have to witness the guillotine of death to his patients, whose early pains told him a renal vein or some vessel below the diaphragm was ligated by an impacted colon, or a few ribs pulling and bringing diaphragm down across vena cava and thoracic duct and causing excitement or paralysis of solar plexus, or any other nerves that pass through diaphragm with blood to and from heart and lungs.
TO FIND THE CAUSE.
How to find causes of diseases or where a hindrance is located that stops blood is a great mental worry to the Osteopath when he is called to treat a patient. The patient tells him "where he hurts," how much "he hurts," how long "he has hurt," how hot or cold he is. The doctor puts this symptom and that symptom in a column, adds them up according to the latest books on symptomatology, finally he is able to guess at some name to call the disease. Then he proceeds and treats as his pap's father heard his granny say their old family doctor treated "them sort of diseases in North Carolina." An Osteopath feels bad to have to hunt cause for diseases, and not know how to start out to find the mechanical cause. He feels that the people expect more than guessing of an Osteopath. He feels that he must put his hand on the cause and prove what he says by what he does, that he will not get off by the feeble minded trash of stale habits that go with doctors of medicine, and by his knowledge he must show his ability to go beyond the musty bread of symptomatology and water his patients made, from the cider of the ripe apples from the tree of knowledge.
MUST BE HONEST.
An Osteopath should be a clear-headed, conscientious, truth loving man, and never speak until he knows he has found and can demonstrate the truth he claims to know.