In the following chapters I shall endeavor to show that all the different forms, phases and phenomena of disease arising within the human organism, provided they are not caused by accident or external conditions unfavorable to the existence of human life, can be attributed to one or more of three primary causes (as outlined in Tables I and II).  When we succeed in proving that all disease originates from a few simple causes, it will not seem so strange and improbable that all disease can be cured by a few simple, natural methods of living and of treatment.  If Nature Cure can accomplish this, it establishes its right to be classed with the exact sciences.

The Three Primary Causes of Disease

We shall now consider the three primary causes of disease one by one.

Lowered Vitality

There is a well-defined limit to the running of a watch.  When the wound spring has spent its force, the mechanism stops.

So also the living forms of vegetable, animal and human life seem to be wound by Nature to run a certain length of time, in accordance with the laws governing their growth and development.  Even the healthiest of animals living in the most congenial surroundings in the freedom of Nature do not much exceed their allotted span of life, nor do they fall much below it.  As a rule, the longer the period between birth and maturity, the longer the life of the animal.

All the different families of mammalia, when living in freedom, live closely up to the life period allotted to them by Nature.  Man is the only exception.  It is claimed that according to the laws of longevity his average length of life should be considerably over one hundred years, while according to life insurance statistics, the average is at present [1913] thirty-seven years.  This shows an immense discrepancy between the possible and the actual longevity of man.

Even this brief span of life means little else than weakness, physical and mental suffering and degeneracy for the majority of mankind.  Visiting physicians of the public schools in our large cities report that seventy-five percent of all school children show defective health in some way.  Diagnosis from the Eye proves that the remaining twenty-five percent are also more or less affected by hereditary and acquired disease conditions.  Christian Science says, “There is no disease.”  Nature’s records in the iris of the eye say there is no perfect health.

These established facts of greatly impaired longevity and universal abnormality of the human race would of themselves indicate that there is something radically wrong somewhere in the life habits of man, and that there is ample reason for the great health-reform movement which was started about the middle of the last century by the pioneers of Nature Cure in Germany, and which has since swept, under many different forms and guises, all portions of the civilized world.

When people in general grow better acquainted with the laws underlying prenatal and postnatal child culture, natural living and the natural treatment of diseases, human beings will approach much more closely the normal in health, strength, beauty and longevity.  Then will arise a true aristocracy, not of morbid, venous blue blood, but pulsating with the rich red blood of health.