The lungs are supposed to eliminate only carbon dioxide gas; not self-generated toxic substances.  The large intestine is supposed to pass only insoluble food solids (and some nasty stuff dumped into the small intestine by the liver).  Skin eliminates in the form of sweat (which contains mineral salts) to cool the body, but the skin is not supposed to move toxins outside the system.  But when toxins are flowed out through secondary organs of elimination these areas become inflamed, irritated, weakened.  The results can be skin irritations, sinusitis or a whole host of other “itises” depending on the area involved, bacterial or viral infections, asthma.  When excess toxemia is deposited instead of eliminated, the results can be arthritis if toxins are stored in joints, rheumatism if in muscle tissues, cysts and benign tumors.  And if toxins weaken the body’s immune response, cancer.

The liver and the kidneys, the two heroic organs of detoxification, are the most important ones; these jointly act as filters to purify the blood.  Hygienists pay a lot of attention to these organs, the liver especially.

In an ideal world, the liver and kidneys would keep up with their job for 80 years or more before even beginning to tire.  In this ideal world, the food would of course, be very nutritious and free of pesticide residues, the air and water would be pure, people would not denature their food and turn it into junk.  In this perfect world everyone would get moderate exercise into old age, and live virtually without stress.  In this utopian vision, the average healthy productive life span would approach a century, entirely without using food supplements or vitamins.  In this world doctors would have next to no work other than repairing traumatic injuries, because everyone would be healthy.  But this is not the way it is.

In our less-than-ideal world virtually everything we eat is denatured, processed, fried, salted, sweetened, preserved; thus more stress is placed on the liver and kidneys than nature designed them to handle.  Except for a few highly fortunate individuals blessed with an incredible genetic endowment that permits them to live to age 99 on moose meat, well-larded white flour biscuits, coffee with evaporated milk and sugar, brandy and cigarettes (we’ve all heard of someone like this), most peoples’ liver and kidneys begin to break down prematurely.  Thus doctoring has become a financially rewarding profession.

Most people overburden their organs of elimination by eating whatever they feel like eating whenever they feel like it.  Or, they irresponsibly eat whatever is served to them by a mother, wife, institution or cook because doing so is easy or expected.  Eating is a very habitual and unconscious activity; frequently we continue to eat as adults whatever our mother fed us as a child.  I consider it unsurprising that when people develop the very same disease conditions as their parents. they wrongly assume the cause is genetic inheritance, when actually it was just because they were putting their feet under the same table as their parents.