SYSTEM OF REGENERATION

In order to bring the entire system of regeneration under review, I shall here endeavour to present in condensed form all the essential points in my teachings. The reader will thus be enabled to picture to himself his body, with its vital organs, clearly as in a mirror; he will become familiarized with its composition and twelve principal tissues, as well as with the sixteen elements of which they consist.

Man is a unit, and the human body an accumulation of millions of separate cells, which are centres of life and which, in different groupings and combinations, form the various organs that render existence possible.

This existence is the natural sequel of the existence of former human beings. They generated the life that is to be transferred by us to other living beings.

The several functions of the organism combine to form a chain of activities in which there must not be a single link missing, if life is to continue.

These activities are comprised within an accumulation of cells which are by no means stationary, for life means nothing more than the constant dying, of the old cells and the reconstruction of the new. It means that the human body as a whole is continually in a state of composition and decomposition.

Not until the accumulation of cells we call the body is recognized as one complete correlated and inseparable entity and the absolute interdependence of the separate cells, each one upon the others, is likewise accepted as the verified fact that it is—not until then will the erroneous and obsolete idea be discarded, by which the various organs of the body have been professionally treated as separate and independent considerations, even to the extent of being dealt with, in cases of disease, as totally aloof from one another and conveniently classed as proper subjects for submission to the expert opinion of that superior class of physicians who devote their attention exclusively to special organs and are accordingly termed "Specialists."

Thus the question arises: What is the cause of disease? The question does not apply to any one particular form of disease or class of diseases, but to disease generally, as a concrete term meaning any disorder which may manifest itself by individual disturbances in the body; for such disturbance is but a variation in quantity or quality of one general disturbance, a variation in the mechanism that controls the work of keeping the existing cells in proper condition and replacing those cells which are constantly being destroyed. It is a variation in the process of regeneration, which we term life.

METABOLISM is the process which is constantly going on in the human system, whereby the cells that have been consumed by oxidation are removed through the excreta—the faeces, the urine, the perspiration, and the exhalations from the lungs—to be replaced by new ones.

Metabolism, means change of matter. It signifies the course by which nutritive material, or food, is built up into living matter. This process is accomplished through the blood, which distributes the necessary material to all parts of the body where cells need to be replaced and carries away the consumed portions.

In the marvelous performance of its functions, when properly supplied, it carries the elements that are essential to regeneration in the correct proportions. When not properly supplied, these proportions become incorrect and foreign formations may arise which are disturbing to the organism.

In nature there is a constant tendency to counterbalance disturbances in the proper proportion and by distribution of cell building material to restore the normal condition. We may thus speak of the overwhelmingly curative tendency of nature.

Metabolism is the function of the body which most constantly requires attention. So, therefore, it is always through the blood that we must assist nature in the process of counterbalancing and rectifying or healing abnormal conditions.

It follows then, that, despite the apparent variety in constitutional diseases, they are all practically the same. They are all disturbances of metabolism through some irregularity in the quantitative or qualitative condition of the blood.

Professor Jacob Moleschott, the great physiologist, has crystallized this truth in the immortal words: "One of the principal questions to be always asked of the physician is this: How may good healthy and active blood be obtained? View the question as we may, we shall be forced to acknowledge openly and explicitly or guardedly and indirectly that our volition, our sensations, our strength, and our pro-creative powers are dependent upon our blood and our blood upon our nutrition."

If such unity exists, why then the great difference in the human organs? How is it that a bone in its stonelike hardness is essentially the same as the exquisitely sensitive eye?

This is owing to the adaptive property of the cells, in the course of their enormous accumulation, to different functions, which, again, depends upon the varied arrangement of the constituent elements. These elements all find lodgement in the blood, and are carried by it in necessary quantities to the points where they are needed to assist the organs in replacing consumed matter.

The difficulty found in grasping this idea of unity has led to the most momentous errors in modern medical science.

One result has been the undue attention paid to the study of anatomy, insomuch that the different organs are regarded as wholly distinct groups of cells. This is convenient from a descriptive standpoint, but it tends too much to draw attention away from the source of life, and of health. Only by noting the common characteristics of the cell accumulations termed organs, are we enabled to supply the necessary elements that may be lacking. And thus we arrive at the subject of the chemical analysis of the human body and its various organs, a subject that has been badly neglected throughout the centuries.

It has been determined that the entire human body consists of a certain number of chemical elements, appearing in different aggregations in different parts. These aggregations repeating themselves in the various organs.

Twelve principal aggregations of chemical elements have been established and designated by the term tissues.

This fact led to the discovery of the truth that in the process of healing attention must be given, not to the various organs, but to the various tissues.

These tissues are dependent directly upon the condition and contents of the blood, whose office it is to nourish them and which exhibits the wonderful property of conveying to each tissue its selective regenerative materials, provided of course, that these elements are present at the time in the blood.

Sixteen definite elements have been established—and a seventeenth will probably soon be added thereto—which, in their various combinations and aggregations, form the different tissues of which the organs in the human body are composed.

The prevalence of one or several of these elements in a certain tissue forms the main or governing feature of that tissue. Thus, the prevalence of potassium phosphate characterizes muscle tissue, the prevalence of ammonium phosphate (lecithin) nerve tissue. Each one of the various tissues consists of certain of these elements, and each tissue at every point where it occurs is affected by the lack of any of its elements.

One of the greatest physiological chemists, Justus von Liebig, maintains that, if one of the necessary elements in a chemical composition is missing, the rest cannot fulfill their duties and the respective cells must become diseased and degenerate.

This discovery, known as "the law of the minimum," has thrown additional light upon the tasks before the new school of medicine.

Upon the basis of a careful diagnosis, the necessary nutritive salts or cell-foods, carefully compounded in accordance with the law of chemotaxis must be administered. This law discovered by Engelmann, requires that these cell-foods must be administered in digestible and assimilable forms so that the cells will be attracted by the chemical reaction, which may be of a positive or a negative character.

This being so, we can easily build up the tissues, by studying their chemical composition and supplying to the system that which is necessary, in the form of food. The cell will take care of the rest. Each tissue has its specific cell-system, and each cell will be attracted only by those ingredients which are needed for the mother tissue.

To bring to a tissue through the blood the lacking constituent element or elements is the only means of regenerating and healing diseased cells.

In this connection we are considering only constitutional diseases.

It has been shown that the lack of certain chemical elements from the blood signifies disease and that the variety of the disease depends on which of the elements are either lacking entirely or are present in incorrect proportion.

After this lack has been determined, the course to pursue in curing the disease is to supply the lacking chemical elements in the form of concentrated cell-food in addition to the regular food.

This method displaces entirely the old system of filling the body with poisonous drugs in order to counteract the effects of the disease. Such a system may suppress the symptoms by benumbing the nerves and preventing pain, it may counteract the natural process of healing of which inflammation, fever and pain, are the outward manifestations;—but it can never cure.

The discovery of dysaemia, or impaired blood supply, as the governing cause of disease, has destroyed another idol of modern fetish worship in medicine.

Since the discovery of various species of bacilli, which accompany nearly every form of disease in some form or other, these have been commonly declared to be the causes of diseases, and the tendency is to find some poison that will kill the bacilli in order to cure the disease.

The bacillus, on the contrary, is only the consequence, or symptom, of a disease. The diseased and decomposing parts furnish fertile soil suitable to the propagating of bacilli because of the lack of the normal chemical elements in the blood and tissue. But to kill them, while the underlying conditions for their reproduction remain unchanged, can, obviously, never effect a cure. So the great hopes that have attached to sero-therapy are doomed to disappointment, and the application of anti-toxins prepared from the serum of animals, are fated shortly to vanish in the wake of others of those strange temporary crazes which periodically obsess mankind for a while and pass away.

The discovery that a dysaemic condition of the blood leads to certain destructive processes termed diseases, was soon followed by the apprehension that one of the principal factors in bringing about such disturbance is predisposition,—in many cases heredity.

The term "Hereditary disease" signifies that the improper chemical composition of the blood of one or both parents is transmitted to the offspring, and that it causes in them likewise a degeneration of certain tissues and of the organs composed of those tissues.

The hygienic-dietetic system of healing does not, however, regard heredity as an invincible enemy, especially since my discovery of the "Law of the Cross-Transmission of Characteristics."

It is in the solution of this problem of "hereditary disease" that my system will eventually come into its own and will ere long be recognized as the most rational and effectual therapy ever applied since the beginning of the art of healing. It may be years before it is accorded the proverbially tardy acknowledgment of the "orthodox" schools, but that it will, nay must be eventually adopted is virtually a foregone conclusion—that is, if it be indeed the function or policy of the physician of the future to adequately seek to succour the suffering and regenerate the races of mankind. Of the physician of the present it can at best be said in Goethe's incisive words:

For full explanation of the significance of my law, I must refer you to the first lecture in my book entitled "Within the Bud,"—and the lesson therein on the theory of "Pangenesis," which space forbids my repeating here. This lesson will convey conclusively to any thinking mind what heredity really means. After a brief study of this interesting subject the importance of the "Law of the Cross-Transmission of Characteristics" will become amply apparent and the intelligent reader will undoubtedly wonder why it has not been applied and acknowledged long ago. For answer, I must refer you to the schools, whose policy it has ever been to, at any rate, abstain from assisting, if not absolutely to diplomatically hinder the development of fresh scientific discoveries. But the time is fast approaching when a sharp and decisive end to this iniquity will be demanded by the will of an enlightened people; only then will the existing orthodox power be compelled to loosen its obstructive grip which the interests of humanity have, so far, been powerless to unclasp. But, to quote the stirring words of one who looked with prophetic, faithful eye into the tangled problems of futurity:

My Law of the Cross-Transmission of Characteristics may be simply stated as follows:

Under all conditions, the matter of sex is determined in the egg-cell at the moment of fertilization.

Under all conditions, the sex is determined by a struggle for the mastery in the egg-cell, between the energy of that egg-cell and the energy of the male spermatozoon. In a crisis, when the life of one of the two seeds is trembling in the balance, one of them—through the exertion of its "Latent Reserve Energy," dominates, and engenders a child of the opposite sex. This reversal of the sex is in conformity with the Law of the Cross-Transmission of Sex; that is, the mother is represented in the male offspring and the father in the female,—this being the normal expression of the Law of Cross-Transmission of Characteristics.

The "Latent Reserve Energy" is provided by nature for the "Preservation of Species," and through this provision an impulsive, vehement energy can, at the final moment of a crisis, be called upon for the salvation of its kind.

A seeming exception to this is due to the "Law of the Dominant" which overrides the action of "Latent Reserve Energy," and is a provision of nature for the preservation of the "Dominant," which is the most prominent quality in nature.

When the subject is properly understood, this seeming exception will also become clear.

In the natural course, the study of heredity leads to the understanding of predisposition. In other words, if you have understood heredity, it will be easy to understand predisposition; for it means that the protoplasm or seed, from whichever organism it may proceed, must contain some of the salient characteristics of its ancestors, good and bad, dominant and recessive. Not only will it contain characteristics from father and mother, but from all the direct ancestors. It is impossible to know exactly which points will manifest themselves, but a good many bad points may be eliminated by studying the ancestral line; and the direct diseases or bad characteristics of a parent, must be eliminated by applying the Law of the Cross-Transmission of Characteristics.

For example: If the father has a certain disease or positive symptoms of that disease, by no means create a girl, as she will certainly be predisposed for that disease, and may pay the penalty, if "Regeneration" is not begun early. The same principle applies to the mother. If she is diseased, do not create a son, until "Regeneration" has been brought about.

Furthermore, it will be possible to improve the offspring by encouraging and promoting the good points, especially after studying and applying the above law, as well as my law of the "Determination of the Sex at Will."

Looking at the question from this point of view, we begin to realize the enormous significance of my discovery. This supplies the main reason for the study of the laws, for the "Prevention of Diseases."

Only when we know that every acquired characteristic may be transmitted to the offspring will we become conscious of the terrible responsibility we assume when we reproduce offspring, and realize that we may create more pain and suffering instead of eliminating it.

As Nature demands that we reproduce ourselves or be punished for disobeying her laws, what is to be done?

Study and follow the advice given in this book, and you will awake to the fact that Nietsche's words were not "Utopian" when he commanded us to "reproduce something better than we are."

Together with the predisposition to disease, the child also acquires the hereditary tendency to regeneration; and thus rational hygienic-dietetic treatment may be able to eliminate the diseases which were formerly pronounced incurable. This can only be effected by the effort to remove the cause and strengthen the weak points by means of Regeneration.

The reader will now plainly understand that in order to heal, according to the hygienic-dietetic system, the blood must be supplied with the chemical elements that are missing from the tissues.

There are three ways of accomplishing this; namely, by diet, by nutritive preparations, and by physical treatment.

The first and most natural way is by means of proper diet.

Since the chemical elements are introduced into the body through the food, the quantity and quality of the food must be regulated. The patient must receive food that will help in regenerating his blood; particularly such food as contains the elements that are lacking in the affected tissues in his body.

The regular supply of food is however usually insufficient to overcome the process of destruction, and it is therefore necessary to add the missing elements in purer form and larger quantity. These nutritive preparations contain only such chemical elements as exist in the human body; they also contain them in the proper chemical proportion and are entirely free from poisonous substances. They promote a general regeneration of the blood that will eventually lead to a complete cure.

Physical treatment may be made to assist the proper circulation of the blood, opening at the same time the pores of the skin for the withdrawal from the body of disease elements and the introduction of desirable material. Massage, gymnastics, ablutions, and various kinds of baths and packs constitute the most of the healing measures of this description resorted to.

This is indeed the legitimate field for Osteo-Chyropractice.

In order to understand the method of treatment which I apply, it is necessary to understand one of the great laws of physiological chemistry, acknowledged as such by the great masters of chemistry, such as Liebig and Hensel.

This law demonstrates that nature is a unit, its component parts a given number of elements, each of which has distinct qualities, and the combination of which produces the various manifestations of life.

These elements are classified as combining to form minerals, plants and animals. They are all closely interrelated. The plant draws the mineral elements from the soil, and after certain processes of combination, conveys them as food to the animal. The animal substances that man consumes make up the balance of the elements that are required to build up the human body.

It is a matter of comparatively new discovery that the minerals are just as important a part of the human body and of its food as the other basic chemical elements. The discovery showing of what minerals the necessary ingredients of the different body tissues are composed and in what combination and quantity, in order that they may become incorporated into the organism, has made it possible to supply them to the diseased body in the purest and most effective way through nutritive preparations, while their existence in food also furnishes an indication as to the regulation of diet.

I have already given, in the preceding pages, the frank expression of favourable opinion upon this vital topic generally, as voiced with unmistakable, conviction by no less an authority than Assistant Surgeon-General, Dr. W.C. Rucker of the United States Public Health Service. I will now cite, in further corroboration, the opinion of the distinguished Editor of "The Fra," as addressed to myself personally, in special relation to an advance section of the book "Dare to be Healthy," together with other similar matter, and which, coming as it does from one who is himself a leader in the van of the advancing phalanx of the followers of Truth and Enlightenment, may be safely held to constitute a just criterion of the literary and technical value of the work. It is expressed as follows:

From John T. Hoyle, Managing Editor of "The Fra."

"From my reading of your 'Lessons,' and especially from 'Dare to be Healthy,' I can see that you have evolved a new concept in medicine, or rather 'Nature Healing,' which promises great results. I trust you will be able to put the whole into a printed book that we may all have the benefit of your discoveries. Unlike most physicians, while you treat of the most profound and vital scientific subjects, your language is so well chosen and your method of presentation is so clear, that no intelligent person would have difficulty in following your thought. You have undertaken a monumental work, and that success may attend your efforts is our heartfelt wish."

From Elbert Hubbard.

"What I have read of it is intensely interesting and shows that you have a keen insight into the philosophies of life."

There are other spontaneous and unexpected testimonials of an equally encouraging and complimentary nature from men whose knowledge and attainments entitle their opinions to the tribute of respect. These might well be likewise added here, but for the necessary limitations of space.

When Moses saved the hosts of Israel from starvation in the desert, by obtaining the solid and liquid food requisite for their deliverance, he called the name of that food "Manna." in like manner, both as a just tribute to the success they have achieved in the past and as an earnest of the deliverance they are destined to achieve in the future, I have designated my preparations by a similar term and called them the "Dech-Manna" Nutritive Preparations.

Although presented in so condensed a form, the preceding outline cannot fail to inspire in the mind of the reader a vivid conception of the simple grandeur of nature's handiwork, more especially as regards her provisions in relation to health and disease—secrets revealed, through microscope and alembic, to those who, in spite of organized discouragement, have attempted to fathom the erstwhile mysteries of human suffering and to carry hope and freedom into the hostile camps of Fear, Disease and Death.

To bring these considerations within the comprehension of all, and to win all, so far as possible, to the practical observance of the means and precepts of Health and Safety is the object of the projected course of study of which the following is the business proposition.