If we understand the nature of the phenomena with which we are dealing - we can both understand the urgent need to remove the causes of the suffering of the sick man and the need for time for him to evolve into a state of health.
Dr. Herbert Shelton:
THE TIME FACTOR IN RECOVERY
One of the most trying problems of the Hygienist, in dealing with the sick, and this is particularly true of chronic sufferers, is the demand for speedy results. Everybody wants to get well in a hurry. It is not unusual for sufferers to demand recovery in a week to two weeks.
Why not? Have they not been led to believe that if there is anything
wrong, the removal of an organ or part, an operation that requires but a
few minutes to an hour or more, and a few days in the hospital, and
they will he as good as new? Have they not been taught to be content
with mere palliation of symptoms, a thing that may be achieved in
many instances in a few minutes? Will not an Alka-Seltzer relieve
stomach distress in a very short time; or will not an aspirin relieve a headache in a few minutes?
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QUICK RELIEF WORSE THAN ILLNESS
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Quick relief, even if only temporary, is what is so generally demanded.
It is generally true that these means of providing the speedy results
produce an aftermath of troubles of their own that are often worse than
the troubles they are given to relieve. Certainly they never, not in a
single instance nor in a single trouble, remove any of the causes that
are producing and maintaining, even intensifying the trouble. They
constitute symptomatic treatment and doubtful palliation, and produce cumulative side-effects.
Why do we expect to get well in a hurry of a condition that requires a
life-time for its development? Perhaps one is fifty years of age and has
had a chronic disease since the age of thirty-five, the condition
slowly becoming worse during this time, despite (or because of) the
faithful employment of the commonly administered means of
palliation. Before the disease became apparent at the age of
thirty-five, there was a long antecedent series of developments that led
up to the disease. It is literally true that the disease had its
initial beginnings with the first cold, colic, diarrhea or hives of
infancy.
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WHY SUCH RESISTANCE TO NEW HABITS?
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This man has given the methods of cure a full fifteen years of time in which to restore health, but if he turns to Hygiene
he wants to get well over night! Not only is he in a hurry, hut he
wants to achieve his recovery with as little disturbance of his
accustomed routine and as little change in his habits of living as
possible. He may be willing to change his diet (temporarily, of course),
but why should he give up smoking? He may be willing to fast, at least
he may he willing to miss a few meals, but why should he rest? He has
no insurmountable objection to a temporary abandonment of coffee, but
why should he exercise? He actually enjoys sunbathing, but why should he
not be permitted to overeat?
Certainly the man whose condition has required a life-time for its evolution will require the employment of all of the means of Hygiene
to reorganize and re-constitute his organism. So long as even one of
the causes that have contributed to the evolution of his trouble is
permitted to remain a part of his daily life, and this cause may be one
of omission as well as one of commission, it will contribute to the
progressive development of trouble. All causes of weakness,
impurity and suffering are to be removed from the life of the
individual, else recovery will be retarded and full recovery prevented.
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RECOVERY IS THE REVERSE OF DISEASE EVOLUTION.
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It is essential that we recognize the fact that recovery of health is an
evolution in reverse and that it requires time to be completed. What we
term disease is an evolution out of wrong ways of life; recovery of
health is an evolution out of correct ways of living. As it takes time
to evolve disease, so it requires time to erase the abnormal changes
that have taken place in the tissues of the body and to evolve normal
tissue to replace the abnormal tissue.
We can watch the evolution of pathology in the drinker, as he progresses
from the so-called moderate drinker to the habitual and so-called
excessive drinker with the progressive weakening of the functions of his
body and the slow evolution of liver sclerosis, delirium tremens and
insanity.
Is it to be thought that the effects of ten to twenty years of drinking can be erased in a few days
or even in a few weeks, and full health, with its integrity of
structure and vigor of function, restored so quickly? If this could be
done, then, certainly the evils of alcoholism were not as great as we
are accustomed to think.
The evolution of pathology out of any type of habitual or chronic
poisoning, whether tobacco poisoning, drug poisoning, or a general and
persistent toxic state of the body arising out of lowered functioning
power (enervation) resulting from an enervating way of life, is not
unlike the evolution of delirium tremens out of alcoholism. Likewise,
the road back, when the pathology has arisen from some of these other
causes, is a slow and gradual one.
In all pathologies, as they continue to evolve, a stage is reached
sooner or later, from which there is no turning back. This is the stage of irreversibility. When this stage is reached there is no longer any hope of recovery of health.
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DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "CURE" AND HEALING?
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The reader, versed only in the popular and classic ideas about health,
disease and healing, will, perhaps, ask: what is the difference between
being cured and recovering health? A cure is the
application of something exotic (a drug or a treatment) which, by virtue
of its own power restores the sick man or woman to health. There is no such thing.
Recovery is the restoration of health by means of the operation of forces intrinsic to the organism. This is the only force known that is capable of restoring health. Healing is a biological process, not an art.
Let us take the common cold. It is estimated that the 190 million people
in the United States have an average of four colds each during the
year. Some of these people have fewer than four colds, some have more
than four. Now, it is acknowledged that there is no known cure for the cold. There is no drug, no serum, no vaccine, no form of treatment that will cure a cold. People treat themselves with all kinds of alleged remedies, but these do not cure the cold. Almost everybody one meets has one or more cold cures, but none of them are genuine.
Yet, it is a matter of common observation that everybody who has a cold
recovers; sometimes in a very few days, in some instances in three to
four weeks. Not so many months ago a prominent physician said that if
one who has a cold is treated, he gets well in two weeks, and if he is
not treated, he gets well in fourteen days. The important fact about
these recoveries is that these sufferers get well, but they are not cured for no cure is
known. Recovery is said to be spontaneous. It is the result of lawful
and orderly processes that take place in the body of the sick person.
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SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY IN ACUTE DISEASE
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Diseases that get well in this manner are said to be self-limited. This
simply means that they are brought to an end in a more or less definite
time by the organism itself and not by treatment. They are all
spontaneous recoveries. These spontaneous recoveries are the things on which all the alleged cures ride to glory.
It will not escape the attention of the reader that the self-limited
diseases are all acute; that the chronic diseases tend to run on for
years and to grow progressively worse and that for these, there are no cures. Almost anything seems to cure the self-limited diseases, nothing seems to work when the disease is not self-limited.
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NOT SICKNESSES, BUT SICK PERSONS RECOVER
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If we understand that it is the sick person that recovers and not the
disease, we will understand that there is a vast difference between
treating disease (the popular delusional practice) and caring for a sick
person. In the first case, the efforts are directed at controlling,
suppressing, palliating and destroying symptoms and local pathologies;
in the second instance, the efforts are directed at removing the causes
that have impaired the body and at trying to supply the body with its
physiological needs. There is no effort made to cure the disease,
as it is well understood that healing is a biological process and that
no man can either duplicate or imitate the process. There is no
treatment of disease for the reason that there is no disease, per se, to treat.
Apart from the living organism, disease has no existence. Fever,
inflammation, pain, discomfort, vertigo, nausea, vomiting, griping,
purging, coughing, sneezing, etc., etc., that are considered symptoms of
disease, are all actions of the sick organism. They are vital phenomena and do not require treatment.
To suppress diarrhea is to cause the retention in the bowels of the very
objectionable materials the diarrhea is designed to expel; to suppress a
cough leaves the obstructing and irritating materials in the
respiratory passages. This is not intelligent treatment.
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TRUE RECOVERY IN TWO+ YEARS
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If we understand the nature of the phenomena with which we are dealing
and its causes and if we realize that time is required for the causes
that are operating to impair the organism in which to evolve their
effects, we can both understand the urgent need to remove the causes of the suffering of the sick man and the need for time for him to evolve into a state of health. The average chronic sufferer cannot expect to evolve into full health in less than two years and many will require more time than this. A few will require less time.
Knowing this, we can, with patience and determination, launch ourselves
into a way of life out of which good health evolves - and stick to it
until we have achieved the desired results - and then stick to it to the
end, that we may maintain our gains.
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