While our methods of treating acute diseases have a sedative effect, our treatment of chronic diseases is calculated to stimulate, that is, to arouse the sluggish organism to greater activity in order to produce the acute inflammatory reactions or healing crises.
If the unity of diseases as demonstrated in a previous chapter is a fact in Nature, it must be possible to treat all chronic as well as all acute diseases by uniform methods, and the natural remedies must correspond to the primary causes of disease.
The Natural Methods of Treatment
Natural methods of treatment may be divided into two groups:
Those which the patient can apply himself, provided he has been properly instructed in their correct selection, combination and application. Those which must be applied by a competent Nature Cure physician.
To the first group belong diet (fasting), bathing and other water applications, correct breathing, general physical exercise, corrective gymnastics, air and sun baths, mental therapeutics.
To the second group belong special applications of the methods mentioned under group 1, and in addition to these hydropathy, massage, manipulation, medical treatment in the form of homeopathic medicines, nonpoisonous herb extracts and the vitochemical remedies, and most important of all, the right management of healing crises which develop under the natural treatment of chronic diseases.
Diagnosis
Correct diagnosis is the first essential to rational treatment. Every honest physician admits that the "Old School" methods of diagnosis are, to say the least, unsatisfactory and uncertain, especially in ascertaining the underlying causes of disease.
Therefore we should welcome any and all methods of diagnosis which throw more light on the causes and the nature of disease conditions in the human organism.