TOXEMIA EXPLAINED

Below is the precis of the book «Toxemia explained» by J. H. TILDEN, M. D.,an outstanding physician who explained the cause of the diseases thus showing the way for self-healing.


The study of pathology--the study of disease--has engaged the best minds in the profession always, and all research workers believe, that a more intense and minute study of the early symptoms of disease will reveal the cause. There is, however, one great reason why it cannot, and that is that all symptom-complexes--diseases--from their initiation to their ending, are effects, and the most intense study of any phase or stage of their progress will not throw any light on the cause.
Cause is constant, ever present, and always the same. Only effects, and the object on which cause acts, change, and the change is most inconstant. To illustrate: A catarrh of the stomach presents first irritation, then inflammation, then ulceration, and finally induration and cancer. Not all cases run true to form; only a small percentage evolve to ulcer, and fewer still reach the cancer stage. More exit by way of acute food-poisoning or acute indigestion than by chronic diseases.
In the early stages of this evolution there are all kinds of discomforts: more or less attacks of indigestion, frequent attacks of gastritis--sick stomach and vomiting. No two cases are alike. Nervous people suffer most, and some present all kinds of nervous symptoms--insomnia, headaches, etc. As the disease progresses, a few become pallid and develop pernicious anemia, due to gastric or intestinal ulceration and putrid protein infection; in others the first appearance of ulcer is manifested by a severe hemorrhage; others have a cachexia and a retention of food in the stomach, which is vomited every two or three days, caused by a partial closing of the pylorus. These are usually malignant cases.
To look upon any of these symptom-complexes as a distinct disease, requiring a distinct treatment, is to fall into the diagnostic maze that now bewilders the profession and renders treatment chaotic.
It should be known that the earliest stage of organic disease is purely functional, evanescent, and never autogenerted so far as the affected organ is concerned, but is invariably due to an extraneous irritation, augmented by Toxemia. When the irritation is not continuous, and toxin is eliminated as fast as developed, to the toleration point, normal functioning is resumed between the intervals of irritation and toxin excess.
For example: a simple coryza (running at the nose--cold in the head), gastritis or colonitis. At first these colds, catarrahs, or inflammations are periodic and functional; but, as the exciting cause or causes--local irritation and Toxemia--become more intense and continuous, the mucous membranes of these organs take on organic changes, which are given various names, such as irritation, inflammation, ulceration, and cancer. The pathology (organic change) may be studied until doomsday without throwing any light on the cause; for from the first irritation to the extreme ending--cachexia--which may be given the blanket term of tuberculosis, syphilis, or cancer, the whole pathologic panorama is one continuous evolution of intensifying effects.
Germs and other so-called causes may be discovered in the course of pathological development, but they are accidental, coincidental, or at most auxiliary.
The proper way to study disease is to study health and every influence favorable or not to its continuance. Disease is perverted health. Any influence that lowers nerve-energy becomes disease-producing. Disease cannot be its own cause; neither can it be its own cure, and certainly not its own prevention.
After years of wandering in the jungle of medical diagnosis--the usual guesswork of cause and effect, and the worse-than-guesswork of treatment, and becoming more confounded all the time--I resolved either to quit the profession or to find the cause of disease. When I think back over my life, and remember the struggle I had with myself in supplanting my old beliefs with the new--the thousands of times I have suspected my own sanity--I then cannot be surprised at the opposition I have met and am meeting.
My discovery of the truth that Toxemia is the cause of all so-called diseases came about slowly, step by step, with many dangerous skids.
It took a long time to develop the thought that a poisoned or injured body, when not overwhelmed by Toxemia. would speedily return to the normal, and when it did not, there was a sick habit--a derangement of some kind--that required some such contingency to bring it within sense-perception.
To illustrate: An injury to a joint is often complicated with rheumatism; the rheumatism previous to the injury was potentially in the blood.
Just what change had taken place in the organism which, under stress of injury or shock of any kind, would cause a reaction with fever I could not understand until the Toxemic Theory suggested itself to my mind, after which the cause of disease unfolded before me in an easy and natural manner. And now the theory is a proved fact.
After years of perplexing thought and "watchful waiting," I learned that all disease, of whatever nature, was of slow development; that without systemic preparation even so-called acute systemic diseases could not manifest.
In a few words: Without Toxemia there can be no disease. I knew that the waste-product of metabolism was toxic, and that the only reason why we were not poisoned by it was because it was removed from the organism as fast as produced. Then I decided that the toxin was retained in the blood, when there was a checking of elimination. Then the cause of the checking had to be determined. In time I thought out the cause. I knew that, when we had a normal nerve-energy, organic functioning was normal. Then came the thought that enervation caused a checking of elimination. The cause of all so-called diseases is found! Enervation checks elimination of the waste-products of metabolism. Retention of metabolic toxin--the first and only cause of disease!
Medical science is founded on a false premise--namely, that disease is caused by extraneous influences, and that drugs are something that cures or palliates discomfort. The whole structure of medicine is built around the idea that there is an object--disease--that can be cured when the right drug--remedy, cure--is foun.The cause and cure of disease is and has been a medley of guesswork and speculation which has confounded the best and most industrious medical minds in every generation.
Today, as never before, the brightest minds in the profession are delving into research work, endeavoring to find the efficient cause of disease. But they are doomed to disappointment; for they fail at their beginning. Why? Because all the work that has ever been done in searching for cause has been along the line of critical study and examination of effects; and certainly reasoning minds cannot believe that an effect can be its own cause. No one believes in spontaneous generation. The remnant of this belief was annihilated by Pasteur's discovery of germs as the cause of fermentation--a discovery so profound that it created a frenzy in the medical world; and, as in every epidemic of frenzy, mental poise was lost. The importance of the germ as a primary or efficient cause of disease was accepted nolens volens, willy nilly. Everyone was swept off his feet. As in all sudden gushes in change of belief, it was dangerous not to agree with the mob spirit; hence opposing or conservative voices were suppressed or ostracized.
According to the Toxin Philosophy, every so-called disease is a crisis of Toxemia; which means that toxin has accumulated in the blood above the toleration-point, and the crisis, the so-called disease--call it cold, "flu," pneumonia, headache, or typhoid fever--is a vicarious elimination. Nature is endeavoring to rid the body of toxin. Any treatment that obstructs this effort at elimination baffles nature in her effort at self-curing.
Drugs, feeding, fear, and keeping at work prevent elimination. A cold is driven into chronic catarrh; "flu" may be forced to take on an infected state; pneumonia may end fatally if secretions are checked by drugs. Every so-called disease is a complex of symptoms signifying a crisis of Toxemia--nature's house-cleaning. And she--nature--can succeed admirably if not interfered with by venders of poison, who are endeavoring to destroy an imaginary entity lurking somewhere in the system, which is mightily increased and intensified by the venders' cures or amelioratives.
When Doctor Nature is allowed full control-- all acute so-called diseases can be cured; and the patient will stay cured if he will practice self-control concerning the enervating habits that brought on his crises of Toxemia. Where this is carried out faithfully, so-called chronic diseases will never be built.
Cancer, tuberculosis, Bright's disease, and all chronic diseases were once innocent colds "ameliorated," and which returned and were "ameliorated" again and again; each time accompanied by a greater constitutional enervation, and a greater constitutional toleration for toxin-poisoning, requiring a greater requisition of mucous membrane through which to eliminate the toxin.
Research is being carried on vigorously in an attempt to find the cause of disease; the conception of disease being that it is individual. Here is where investigators meet their Waterloo. All the so-called diseases are increasing symptom complexes due to repeated crises of Toxemia. They have no independent existence. As soon as Toxemia is controlled, they disappear, unless an organ has been forced by innumerable crises to degenerate. Even organic change, when the organ is not destroyed, will be overcome by correcting the life and getting rid of the cause--crises of Toxemia.
Few realize man's possibilities if his handicaps are removed--handicaps which are old beliefs and herd-instincts.
The Toxemic Philosophy is founded on the truth that there is no such thing as cure. In this it differs from all the so-called curing systems. Every pretense or promise of cure, in all lines of therapeutics, is false. This cannot be grasped by all minds until time for thinking has allowed the idea to soak in. Convention and superstition have the floor, and they are unwilling to sit down and listen to the other side. Many learn slowly, others not at all, and still others are put to sleep mentally by truth.
It should not be forgotten that unobstructed free drainage from wounds, ulcers, canals, ducts, keep them aseptic (non-poisonous). The deadly germ on the hands, lips, drinking-cups, hanging-straps of street cars--in fact, found anywhere and everywhere--is not deadly until it gets mixed up with man's deadly dirty, filthy physical and mental habits. The deadly germ must be mixed with retained, pent-up waste-products before it becomes metamorphosed into its deadly toxic state. The dog or other animal licks it out of his wound. When the "deadly germ" is osculated into the mouth, and from there into the stomach, it is digested. The normal secretions of the body, on the outside as well as on the inside of the body, are more than enough to get away with all the "deadly germs" allotted to each person.
Normal persons are deadly to all germs and parasites peculiar to the human habitat.
Those who preach fear of germs today are the mental offspring of those who have preached fear of God, devil, hell, and heaven in the past. They do not know that the fear which they inculcate is more to be dreaded than the object of their warning. Fear does a thousand times more harm than any other one cause of Toxemia.
The medical world has been looking for a remedy to cure disease, notwithstanding the obvious fact that nature needs no remedy--she needs only an opportunity to exercise her own prerogative of self-healing.
A few years ago a sick doctor offered dollars for a cure for cancer. If he had known the cause of disease, instead of being scientifically educated, he would not have died believing in the possibility of a cure, after nature had passed her eternal fiat of unfitness in his case. Cancer is the culmination of years of abuse of nutrition, and years of Toxemia from faulty elimination. Forcing the bowels to move is an old and conventional method of so-called elimination which gets rid of the accumulation in the bowels, causing an extra amount of water to be thrown out by the kidneys and bowels; but this forcing measure adds to enervation by its overstimulation, and further inhibits elimination proper--elimination of waste-products in the blood, the source of all disease-producing toxins. The most powerful eliminant is a fast. In other words, give nature rest, and she needs no so-called cures. Rest means: poise mind and body, and fast. Nature then works without handicaps, unless fear is created by all the old fear-mongers, professional and lay, sending to the patient the warning: "It is dangerous to fast; you may never live through it." These wiseacres do not know that there is a vast difference between fasting and starving.
Here is a hint for those kill-joys who are afraid to allow their patients to fast: You know, or think you do, that people who are forced to stay in bed from injury never do well, and this is especially true of old people. Why? Because they are overfed.
Without nerve-energy the functions of the various organs of the body cannot be carried on. Secretions are necessary for preparing the building-up material to take the place of worn-out tissue. The worn-out tissue must be removed--eliminated--from the blood as fast as it is formed, or it accumulates, and, as it is toxic, the system will be poisoned. This becomes a source of enervation.
Elimination of the waste-products of tissue-building is just as necessary as the building-up process. As these two important functions depend on each other, and as both depend on the proper amount of nerve-energy to do their work well, it behooves all people who would enjoy life and health to the full to understand in what way they may be frugal in using nerve-energy so that they may learn how to live conservatively or prudently, thereby enjoying the greatest mental and physical efficiency, and also the longest life.
"These are the times that try men's souls." If Tom Paine were here now, he would change the wording of that line to read: "These are the times that try men's nerves." Nerve-energy and good money are the commodities that are spent very rapidly these days. Chasing the dollar causes great waste of energy; and the dollar has been chased so much that it has developed wanderlust to such a degree that men enervate themselves catching up with a few, but prostrate themselves endeavoring to break them of their wander-habit. There are many ways to use up nerve-energy.
Without nerve-energy the functions of the body cannot be carried on properly. The present-day strenuousness causes enervation, which checks elimination, and the retained toxins bring on Toxemia.
Everything that acts on the body uses up energy. Cold and heat require the expenditure of nerve-energy to adjust the body to the changes.
Work with worry will soon end in flagging energy--enervation.
As no provision is made for the demand of an extra supply of energy at a given time, it is necessary, very necessary, to know how to conserve what we have and build more. It is easy to see that the so-called science of medicine, as practiced, is an ally extraordinary of all the causes of enervation, and becomes a builder of disease instead of curing or ameliorating man's sufferings. Every so-called cure in its very nature causes enervation. Even the drugs used to relieve pain end in making a greater pain, and sometimes kill. The drugs to relieve cough in pneumonia sometimes kill the patient. Removing stone from the gall-bladder does not cure the cause, and more stones form.
Rest from habits that enervate is the only way to put nature in line for curing. Sleep and rest of body and mind are necessary to keep a sufficient supply of energy.
Enervation per se is not disease. Weakness, lost power, is not disease; but, by causing a flagging of the elimination of tissue-waste, which is toxic, the blood becomes charged with toxin, and this we call Toxemia--poison in the blood. This is disease, and when the toxin accumulates beyond the toleration-point, a crisis takes place; which means that the poison is being eliminated. This we call disease, but it is not. The only disease is Toxemia, and what we call diseases are the symptoms produced by a forced vicarious elimination of toxin through the mucous membrane.
When the elimination takes place through the mucous membrane of the nose, it is called a cold--catarrh of the nose; and where these crises are repeated for years, the mucous membrane thickens and ulcerates, and the bones enlarge, closing the passage, etc. At this stage hay-fever or hay-asthma develops. When the throat and tonsils, or any of the respiratory passages, become the seat of the crises of Toxemia, we have croup, tonsilitis, pharyngitis, laryngitis, bronchitis, asthma, pneumonia, etc. What is in a name? All are symptoms of the expulsion of toxin from the blood at the different points named, and are essentially of the same character and evolving from the one cause namely, Toxemia--crises of Toxemia.
This description can be extended to every organ of the body; for any organ that is enervated below the average standard from stress of habit, from work or worry, from injury, or from whatever cause, may become the location of crises of Toxemia.
All diseases are the same fundamentally.
The cause travels back to Toxemia, caused by enervation, which checked elimination; and enervating habits of body and mind are the primary causes of lost resistance enervation.
Every chronic disease starts with Toxemia and a toxemic crisis. The crises are repeated until organic changes take place. The chain of symptoms range from cold or catarrh to Bright's disease, tuberculosis, cancer, syphilis, ataxia, and other so-called diseases; all, from beginning to end, symptoms of the cumulative effects of crises of Toxemia.