Metabolism is the function of the body which most constantly requires attention.  So, therefore, it is always through the blood that we must assist nature in the process of counterbalancing and rectifying or healing abnormal conditions.

It follows then, that, despite the apparent variety in constitutional diseases, they are all practically the same.  They are all disturbances of metabolism through some irregularity in the quantitative or qualitative condition of the blood.

Professor Jacob Moleschott, the great physiologist, has crystallized this truth in the immortal words:  “One of the principal questions to be always asked of the physician is this:  How may good healthy and active blood be obtained?  View the question as we may, we shall be forced to acknowledge openly and explicitly or guardedly and indirectly that our volition, our sensations, our strength, and our pro-creative powers are dependent upon our blood and our blood upon our nutrition.”

If such unity exists, why then the great difference in the human organs?  How is it that a bone in its stonelike hardness is essentially the same as the exquisitely sensitive eye?

This is owing to the adaptive property of the cells, in the course of their enormous accumulation, to different functions, which, again, depends upon the varied arrangement of the constituent elements.  These elements all find lodgement in the blood, and are carried by it in necessary quantities to the points where they are needed to assist the organs in replacing consumed matter.

The difficulty found in grasping this idea of unity has led to the most momentous errors in modern medical science.

One result has been the undue attention paid to the study of anatomy, insomuch that the different organs are regarded as wholly distinct groups of cells.  This is convenient from a descriptive standpoint, but it tends too much to draw attention away from the source of life, and of health.  Only by noting the common characteristics of the cell accumulations termed organs, are we enabled to supply the necessary elements that may be lacking.  And thus we arrive at the subject of the chemical analysis of the human body and its various organs, a subject that has been badly neglected throughout the centuries.

It has been determined that the entire human body consists of a certain number of chemical elements, appearing in different aggregations in different parts.  These aggregations repeating themselves in the various organs.

Twelve principal aggregations of chemical elements have been established and designated by the term tissues.

This fact led to the discovery of the truth that in the process of healing attention must be given, not to the various organs, but to the various tissues.

These tissues are dependent directly upon the condition and contents of the blood, whose office it is to nourish them and which exhibits the wonderful property of conveying to each tissue its selective regenerative materials, provided of course, that these elements are present at the time in the blood.