Those who have studied the previous chapters carefully will readily comprehend these facts.  They will know that acute and subacute conditions represent Nature’s cleansing and healing efforts, and that local suppression by drug or knife only serves to turn Nature’s corrective and purifying activities into chronic disease.

The highest art of the true physician is to preserve and to restore, not to mutilate or destroy.

Chapter XIX

Chronic Diseases

The “Old School” of medical science defines acute diseases as those which run a brief and more or less violent course and chronic diseases as those which run a protracted course and have a tendency to recur.

Nature Cure attaches a broader and more significant meaning to these terms.  This will have become apparent from our discussion of the causes, the progressive development and the purpose of acute diseases in the preceding pages.

From the Nature Cure viewpoint, the chronic condition is the latent, constitutional disease encumbrance, whereas acute disease represents Nature’s efforts to rectify abnormal conditions, to overcome and eliminate hereditary or acquired morbid taints and systemic poisons and to reestablish normal structure and functions.

To use an illustration:  In a case of permanent or recurrent itchy psoriasis, the “Old School” physician would look upon the itchy skin eruption as the chronic disease, while we should see in the external eczema an attempt of the healing forces of Nature to remove from the system the inner, latent hereditary or acquired psora, which constitutes the real chronic disease.

It stands to reason that the exterior eruptions should not be suppressed by any means whatever, but that the only true and really effective method of treatment consists in eliminating from the organism the inner, latent psoric taint.  After this is accomplished, the external “skin disease” will disappear of its own accord.

As another illustration of the radical difference in our respective points of view, let us take hemorrhoids (piles).  The regular physician considers the local hemorrhoidal enlargements in themselves the chronic disease, while the Nature Cure practitioner looks upon hemorrhoids as Nature’s effort to rid the system of certain morbid encumbrances and poisons which have accumulated as a result of sluggish circulation, chronic constipation, defective elimination through kidneys, lungs, and skin and from many other causes.

These constitutional abnormalities, which are the real chronic disease, have to be treated and corrected.  After this has been done, the hemorrhoidal enlargements and discharges will take care of themselves.

It is, therefore, absolutely irrational, and frequently followed by the most serious consequences, to surgically remove the piles or to suppress the hemorrhoidal discharges and thereby to drive these concentrated poison extracts back into the system.