HEALTH AND DIS-EASE DEFINED
Health is that condition of the human body in which the functions or activities work together in perfect harmony. Any serious interference with this condition we call dis-ease. Dis-ease, therefore, in its final analysis, is merely the expression of violated natural law.
Three fundamental laws of life
The harmonious working of the life-processes in the human body depends upon three things—(1) nutrition; (2) motion and (3) oxidation. Nutrition is the principal factor that controls the action of the living cells, for, if the body is kept up to its one hundred per cent of energy it will demand a certain amount of motion or exercise, and this will enforce the proper breathing (oxidation). We can see, therefore, that nutrition is the physical basis of all activities of life.
By nutrition as here used I mean to include all chemical substances that may be supplied for the use of the body-cells, also the sum total of all chemical substances in solution in the circulating fluid or blood-plasma which bathes the body-cells.
The phenomenon of death caused by self-poisoning
The stoppage of the heart beat causes the nutritive fluids of the body to cease circulating. The cells are then no longer supplied with nutritive material, and the poisons which they are constantly throwing off accumulate, cell activity ceases, and the phenomenon we call death ensues. Suffocation acts in a very similar manner—oxygen ceases to be supplied to the blood; carbon dioxid accumulates; the vital fluids cease to flow, and death is the result.
Dis-ease has been defined to be an absence of harmonious activity in the body. It may result from the inactivity of some particular function. A stomach which secretes no hydrochloric acid is abnormal or dis-eased. Again, a dis-ease may be due to an overdevelopment of some function, because the man whose stomach secretes more hydrochloric acid than digestion requires is as truly dis-eased as is the man whose stomach secretes too little.
Dis-ease is partial death