Functional disorders yield readily to the various forms of metaphysical treatment.  Remove such patients from the weakening and destructive effects of poisonous drugs and of surgical operations, supplant fear and worry by courage and faith, and the results often seem miraculous to those who do not understand the power of the purifying and stimulating influence of clean living and of the right mental attitude.

In diseases of the organic type, however, good results are not so easily achieved.  A body affected by organic disease resembles a watch whose mechanism has been injured and partly destroyed by rust and corrosive acids.  If such be the case, cleaning and oiling alone will not be sufficient to put the timepiece in good working order.  The watchmaker has to replace the damaged parts.

This is easy enough in the case of the watch, but it is not so easily accomplished in the human body.  Besides, in many instances the corroding acids are the very medicines which were given to cure the disease and the injury and destruction of vital parts and organs is only too often the direct or indirect result of surgical operations.

The watchmaker may remove those parts of the watch which are suffering from organic trouble, and replace them by new ones.  This the surgeon cannot do.  He can extirpate, but he cannot replace.  Operative treatment leaves the organism forever after in a mutilated and therefore unbalanced condition, and often prevents and frustrates Nature’s cleansing and healing crises.

The Limitations of Metaphysical Healing

In the writings of metaphysical healers we often meet the assertion that they can cure organic diseases as easily and quickly as functional ailments.  If they understood better the difference between functional and organic disorders as explained in the foregoing pages, they would not make such deceptive and extravagant claims.  They would then realize the natural limitations of meta-physical healing.

I do not underestimate the great value of mental, metaphysical and spiritual healing methods.  Of these I shall speak more fully in subsequent chapters.  But I do claim that we can and should aid Nature’s healing efforts not only by the right mental attitude and the prayer of faith, but also by natural living and many different methods of physical treatment.

Mental attitude alone will not clean the watch.  To concentrate on the work of housecleaning without using broom, soap and water is not sufficient.  Reason and common sense teach us that the removal of physical, material encumbrances can be, to say the least, accelerated by the use of physical or physiological agents.  Anyone who has observed or himself experienced the efficacy of natural diet, cold-water treatment, massage and osteopathy in dealing with the morbid accumulations in the system will never again underestimate the practical value of these “brooms.”

In our study of the nature and purpose of acute diseases we have found that Nature tries to purify the system from its morbid encumbrances through inflammatory, febrile processes (acute diseases) and that these cleansing efforts of Nature are generally prevented, checked and suppressed by allopathic methods of medical and surgical treatment, and thus changed into chronic disease conditions.