This aspect of hygienic medicine makes it different than almost all the others, even most other holistic methods.  Hygiene is the only system that does not interpose the assumed healing power of a doctor between the patient and wellness.  When I was younger and less experienced I thought that the main reason traditional medical practice did not stress the body’s own healing power and represented the doctor as a necessary intervention was for profit.  But after practicing for over twenty years I now understand that the last thing most people want to hear is that their own habits, especially their eating patterns and food choices, are responsible for their disease and that their cure is to only be accomplished through dietary reform, which means unremittingly applied self-discipline.

One of the hardest things to ask of a person is to change a habit.  The reason that Ama doctors have most of the patients is they’re giving the patients exactly what they want, which is to be allowed to continue in their unconscious irresponsibility.

The Cause Of Disease

Ever since natural medicine arose in opposition to the violence of so-called scientific medicine, every book on the subject of hygiene, once it gets past its obligatory introductions and warm ups, must address The Cause of Disease.  This is a required step because we see the cause of disease and its consequent cure in a very different manner than the allopath.  Instead of many causes, we see one basic reason why.  Instead of many unrelated cures, we have basically one approach to fix all ills that can be fixed.

A beautiful fifty cent word that means a system for explaining something is paradigm, pronounced para-dime.  I am fond of this word because it admits the possibility of many differing yet equally true explanations for the same reality.  Of all available paradigms, Natural Hygiene suits me best and has been the one I’ve used for most of my career.

The Natural Hygienist’s paradigm for the cause of both degenerative and infectious disease is called the Theory of Toxemia, or “self-poisoning.”

Before explaining this theory it will help many readers if I digress a brief moment about the nature and validity of alternative paradigms.  Not too many decades ago, scientists thought that reality was a singular, real, perpetual—­that Natural Law existed much as a tree or a rock existed.  In physics, for example, the mechanics of Newton were considered capital “T” True, the only possible paradigm.  Any other view, not being True, was False.  There was capital “N” natural capital “L” law.

More recently, great uncertainty has entered science; it has become indisputable that a theory or explanation of reality is only true only to the degree it seems to work; conflicting or various explanations can all work, all can be “true.”  At least, this uncertainty has overtaken the hard, physical sciences.  It has not yet done so with medicine.  The Ama is convinced (or is working hard to convince everyone else) that its paradigm, the allopathic approach, is Truth, is scientific, and therefore, anything else is Falsehood, is irresponsibility, is a crime against the sick.