The location may be in, or on any part of the system. No part is exempt; even the brain, heart, lungs, liver, stomach and bowels, bladder, kidneys, uterus, lymphatics, glands, nerves, veins, arteries, skin and all membranes are subject to swellings locally or generally, and with equal certainty they perish and shrink away. If either condition should exist death to the parts or all of the body will occur from want of nutrition. Instance, in lung fever which begins when swelling is established in lymphatics of lungs, trachea, nostrils, throat and face. At once you see the pressure on the nerve fibers compressed to such degree that they cannot operate excretories of lungs or any part of the pulmonary, system. Veins, suspended by irritation of the nerves, arteries are excited to fever heat in action with increase of tumefaction. A tumefying condition undoubtedly marks the beginning of all catarrhal diseases. Its ravages extend to the diseases of the fall and winter seasons. They are so marked on examination that the most skeptical cannot dispute or doubt the truth of this position. In fact he is already committed to a belief that there is something in the fluids that he must purify by the chemical process of drugs.
MEDICAL DOCTOR'S TREATMENT.
He looks on, and treats winter diseases with powerful purgatives, sweats, blisters, hot and cold applications with a view to remove congesting fluids. He is not very certain which team of medical power he can depend on. He hitches up many kinds of drugs hoping that a few of them may be able to carry the burden. He bridles his horses with opium, loads them down with purgative powders, and whips them through with castor oil, and for fear they will not travel fast enough he uses as a spur a delicately formed instrument known as the hypodermic syringe. He punches and prods until his horses fall exhausted. Disease and death should give him a large pension for the assistance he has rendered in their service. All is guess work whose father and mother are "Tradition and Ignorance." Ignorance of the kind that is wholly inexcusable to anyone but a medical doctor. An Osteopath who does not understand the general law of tumefaction of the whole system is not excusable from the fact that tumefaction, disease and death are so plainly written on the face of all diseases that the blind need not have eyes to see, nor the philosopher any brain to enable him to know this foundation is the highest known truth of all man's intellectual possessions. Thus by the law of tumefaction, death can and does succumb to its indomitable will. Observations without record will show any fair minded person that tumefaction does cause death in the majority of cases. But another power is equally as effective in destruction of life which is just the reverse of tumefaction. It destroys by withholding nutrition and all of the fluids; the effect is starvation, shrinkage and death. Thus you see it is equally certain in results. In the one case death ensues from an overplus of unappropriated fluids of nutrition, in the other there is no appropriation to sustain animal life and the patient dies from starvation. The same law holds good in the parts as well as in the whole body.
CHAPTER XI.
Fevers.
Be Armed With Facts—Union of Human Gases With Oxygen—Fever and Nettle-rash. Nature Constructs for a Wise Purpose—Processes of Life Must be Kept in Motion—No Satisfaction from Authors—Animal Heat—Semeiology—Symptomatology—Definition of Fever—Fevers only Effects—Result of Stoppages of Vein or Artery—Aneurisms.
BE ARMED WITH FACTS.
When we reason for causes we must begin with facts, and hold them constantly in line for action, and use, all the time. It would be good advice never to enter a contest without your saber is of the purest steel of reason. By such only can you cut your way to the magazine of truth.
As we line up to learn something of the cause of fever, we are met by heat, a living fact. Does that put the machinery of your mind in motion? If not, what will arouse your mental energy? You see that heat is not like cold. It is not a horse with eyes, head, neck, body, limbs and tail; but it is as much of a being as the horse; it is a being of heat. If cause made the horse, and cause made the heat, why not devote all energy in seeking for cause in all disturbances of life?