The Nature of Disease
R.T. Trall M.D.
In a strict sense, Hygienic medication contemplates the employment, as
remedial agents, for all purposes, except surgical, of materials and
influences which have normal relations to the living system. These are:
light, air, temperature, water, food, clothing, exercise, rest, sleep,
passional influences, etc.
The philosophy of Hygienic medication is predicated on the primary
premise, that those things which are constitutionally adapted to the
preservation of health, are also the proper remedies for disease. It rejects
from its materia medica, all poisons all things whose presence in the vital
domain is incompatible with the 'normal play of all functions,' and which are
destructive to the living tissue. It regards disease as disordered vital
action, consequent on irregularity, excess, or defect, in the use of things
normal, or as the result of the presence of abnormal things. And these
propositions being admitted, it follows inevitably that the proper remedial
plan is to regulate the use or application of things normal, and to rid the
system of the presence of abnormal things; in other words, to restore the
normal condition.
As disease is occasioned by the excess or defect of things intrinsically
useful, or by the presence of things intrinsically injurious, the true
healing art insists on regulating the one and removing the other and So
relating the vital powers to all things that they can accomplish these
objectives for themselves, in the surest and safest manner possible.
The fundamental problems which constitute the theory or science of
Hygienic medication, and, indeed, on which all medical science must be based,
may be reduced to the following;
Until the advent of the Hygienic School, it has always been held and
taught (and is now so held and taught in all other schools), that in the
relation between dead and living matter, the dead acts on the living; that
disease, causes of disease, poisons, medicines, food, and all external
objects act, or "make impressions" on the living system. Diseases are
regarded as positive entities. They are said to 'attack' us; to have a
'course' of their own; to 'run through' us, to 'affect' or act upon certain
organs; to he 'seated' within us, to be 'self-limited', to 'travel' from part
to part; to become malignant, to 'assume a mild form'; 'to simulate other
diseases'; to 'change their type'; etc., all of which language is consistent
with the erroneous theory that disease is an entity, or substance existing
outside of the organic domain. But it confounds the disease itself with its
causes and its consequences.
The Hygienic School reverses this doctrine and thus solves the problem
which has so puzzled and perplexed the medical philosophers of all ages. It
teaches that, in the relations between dead and living matter, all action is
on the side of the vital organism, and none whatever on the part of the
external object. And in the solution of this problem it finds the rationale
of all forms of disease, and all kinds of remedies, as well as the key to the
interpretation of all the problems of medical science, and al! of the rules
and principles of the healing art.
The successful, or proper treatment of disease, implies a knowledge of its
nature. The investigations of 3,000 years, have not enabled physicians to
answer this question; 'What is disease?' Its nature and essence are
confessedly a mystery today. This is not the result of a want of zeal or
intelligence on the part of the medical profession. The subject has been
pursued in the wrong direction. The solution of the problem has been sought
where it does not exist. The observations of medical men have been made from
a false standpoint. Their experiences have been interpreted by erroneous
rules. The data and knowledge have been misapplied, and the world has always
had a false theory of the nature of disease. But on the theory advanced by
the Hygienic School the nature and essence of disease become serf-evident.
Disease is remedial action. It is a process of purification and
reparation. It is not the enemy of the vital powers, but the struggle 'of the
vital powers themselves in self-defense'. It is not a thing to be suppressed,
subdued, broken up, destroyed, conquered, 'cured' or killed, but an action to
be directed and regulated. To illustrate: when the body has been exposed to
miasmas, infections, poisons, impurities of any kind, until the system, or
some or more organs, have been dangerously obstructed, a special effort is
made by the vital powers to cleanse the system to rid itself of their
presence. This special effort -a remedial action- is the disease. If this
effort be directed to a particular organ or outlet, the disease is said to be
local, as vomiting, diarrhea, cholera, consumption, diabetes, etc. but if it
is directed more especially to the surface, or the emunctories generally,
thus seeming to involve the whole system in the remedial process, the disease
is said to be general, or fever; the particular form or kind of fever being
dependent upon the amount of impurity in the system, the absolute vigor of
the constitution, and the relative and comparative vigor of the various vital
organs and structures. Thus a strong, vigorous person, with a slight degree
of impurity or infection, would have inflammatory or entonic fever; a person
of a more gross condition of blood and fouler secretions would have the
remedial effort manifested in that form which we call typhus, or putrid
fever; while the person of a more feeble condition and less impurity, would
have the disease which is termed typhoid, slow or nervous fever; while the
person who is contaminated with some specific poison or impurity which must
of necessity he thrown off through the skin, would have some form of eruptive
fever, as measles, smallpox, etc. This exposition of the nature of fever
suggests a plan of treatment which, for a quarter of a century, and in
various parts of the world and in the hands of physicians of all schools, and
in thousands of cases, under the direction of nonprofessional persons, has
been promptly and almost invariably successful. We, of the Hygienic School,
do not regard the ordinary disease, (of which so many persons die every week,
and which numbers among its recent victims the distinguished names of Cavour,
Albert, Buckle, Hincldey, Douglas, Mitchell, Hoffman, Hawes, Summer-all of
whom, we think, have unnecessarily died in their prime) such as fevers,
pneumonia, measles, scarlatina, diphtheria, smallpox, dysentery, apoplexy,
congestion, at all dangerous in themselves; and the mortality of them under
Hygienic treatment, as I have ample data to show, is less than one in ten as
compared with the ordinary medicinal, or drug treatments. Last week 49
persons are reported as having died in the city of New York, chiefly due to
the treatment, and not to the disease, I most religiously believe. I have
treated hundreds of cases hygienically, in persons of all ages, from eight
days to eighty years, and have not yet lost the first patient.
If the process of purification is facilitated by a proper regulation of
the surrounding influences by furnishing the system with precisely what of
air, temperature, water, foods, rest, etc. it can use under the
circumstances, and by the careful avoidance of all injurious things, patients
would very rarely die of any form of fever, acute inflammation, for bowel
complaint known to the nosologies. Many of the graduates of the Hygienic
School have treated for years, all forms of fever incident to our country,
without losing a patient, and that, too, when deaths of the same disease were
frequent all around them, under the ordinary treatment.
But I do not propose to base the claims of our system to public confidence
and patronage on experience; for experience is only convincing or valuable,
according to the rule by which it is explained; all experience may be
delusive.
I rest its claims solely on its scientific truthfulness.
No subject has been more studied by medical men than that of the rationale
of the action of medicines; yet, to this day, medical books and schools, as
well as the teachers of today, confess that the whole subject is a profound
mystery. The relations of remedies to diseases, or to the healthy organs and
structures, are confessedly unknown, and are regarded by many as wholly
outside the pale of human comprehension. We know that medicines do act, but
how they act is entirely unknown.
The Hygienic philosophy reduces this mysterious problem to a simple
truism, by reference to the primary premise the law of relation between
organic and inorganic matter. Medicines do not act at all. Dead matter, I
repeat, does not act on living matter. Drugs are dead inorganic, inert
substances, and have no relation to the living system, save that of inertia,
the same as a stick or stone. They do not act. They are acted upon. The
living thing is active, and the dead thing is passive. This is the law of all
the universe, in relation to every thing which, it contains. It applies to
the drug in the human stomach, the poison in the blood, the elements around,
as well as to the medicine in the apothecary shop, the stone on the ground,
the food in the field, or the granary and the water of the spring.
The employment of drug medicines and the classifications of the materia
medica, are predicated on the assumption, that different drugs or medicines,
act on different organs or structures, in virtue of certain inherent,
special, selective affinities, which they, the drugs have and exercise for
the said organs and structures.
The Hygienic School declares the exact contrary to be true. It teaches
that living matter is active, and dead matter passive, in their relation to
each other, always and under all circumstances. There is no affinity, and can
be none between drugs, medicines, or poisons, and living structures. To
illustrate: ipecac; antimony, lobelia, occasions vomiting; and salts, castor
oil, jalap, etc. purging. The popular system accounts for these effects by
referring them to the action of the drug on the stomach, on the bowels, as
its 'inherent affinity' may 'elect' or 'select' one place or the other on
which to 'make an impression'. The Hygienic School explains the effects by
referring them to the action of the vital powers in expelling the drug, by
the process of vomiting, the purging, as it can best get rid of them under
the circumstances.
Opium, alcohol, tobacco, etc. are said to have a special affinity for the
brain and the effect stimulation or intoxication is said to be due to their
specific or selective affinity for an action on the brain and nervous system.
The Hygienic School teaches that stimulation and intoxication are processes
precisely similar to those of fever and inflammation, and the result is,
vital expenditure, and vital waste, instead of accumulation supply of vital
power. The stimulation and intoxication, so far from being attributable to
the special action of alcohol, etc. on the brain, are the commotions of the
vital organs expelling them as poisons from the organic domain. In this
struggle, this defensive war, which is nothing more or less than disease, or
remedial action the brain is deprived of its usual supply of blood and
nervous energy, the consequences of which is, disorder, imbecility, or
suspension of the mental function.
These conflicting theories lead to diametrically opposite methods for
treating disease, and as one of them must, of necessity, be wrong, the people
have an interest as great as the issue of life and death, in knowing which is
right.
The doctrine entertained and taught by all medical schools, except the
Hygienic is that disease and the "vis medicatrix naturae" are antagonistic
principles. The Hygienic School reverses this doctrine also. 'The disease' is
the vis medicatrix naturae. They are identical and the same. The
life-force-vitality and the disease, are not enemies at war with each other,
each seeking the other's destruction. But, on the contrary 'both are the
selfsame vital powers in an effort to expel from the system injurious things
and to repair the damages which their presence has occasioned. If this be the
true theory of the 'vis medicatris naturae', that practice which aims to
destroy the disease by means of potent drug medicines, can be nothing more or
less than a war on the human constitution.
The difference between health and disease is simply this: health is normal
action while disease is abnormal action. In other words, health is the action
of the vital powers in building up and replenishing the organic structures;
or, in still plainer speech the conversion of the elements of food into
elements of the bodily tissues; and disease is the action of the same vital
powers in defending the organism against injurious or abnormal agencies and
conditions. Health and disease are in the organic domain precisely what peace
and war are among nations. One is productive industry and the other is
destructive, but leads to remedial action. Health is the vis con-servatrix
naturae and disease is the vis medica-trix naturae. One is order, the other
is disorder.
Extracted from a discourse delivered by Dr. Trail on 25th March, 1863
before the Finance Committee of the New York Senate, in Albany, New York.
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