Health And Disease Defined

Health is that condition of the human body in which the functions or activities work together in perfect harmony. Any serious interference with this condition we call disease. disease, therefore, in its final analysis, is merely the expression of violated natural law.

The harmonious working of the life-processes in the human body depends upon three things - (1) nutrition; (2) motion and (3) oxidation. Nutrition is the principal factor that controls the action of the living cells, for, if the body is kept up to its one hundred per cent of energy it will demand a certain amount of motion or exercise, and this will enforce the proper breathing (oxidation). We can see, therefore, that nutrition is the physical basis of all activities of life.

The phenomenon of death caused by self-poisoning.

By nutrition as here used I mean to include all chemical substances that may be supplied for the use of the body-cells, also the sum total of all chemical substances in solution in the circulating fluid or blood-plasma which bathes the body-cells.

The stoppage of the heart beat causes the nutritive fluids of the body to cease circulating. The cells are then no longer supplied with nutritive material, and the poisons which they are constantly throwing off accumulate, cell activity ceases, and the phenomenon we call death ensues. Suffocation acts in a very similar manner - oxygen ceases to be supplied to the blood; carbon dioxid accumulates; the vital fluids cease to flow, and death is the result.

disease is partial death.

disease has been defined to be an absence of harmonious activity in the body. It may result from the inactivity of some particular function. A stomach which secretes no hydrochloric acid is abnormal or diseased. Again, a disease may be due to an overdevelopment of some function, because the man whose stomach secretes more hydrochloric acid than digestion requires is as truly diseased as is the man whose stomach secretes too little.

disease may also be defined as partial death, for it is the disturbance or weakening of functions whose complete failure we call death. Starvation illustrates one side of this process. When nutritive material ceases to be supplied, the cells have nothing with which to work, causing disturbance of function (disease), and then partial, or complete death. The man in a desert under a hot sun will starve for water in one-tenth the time that he would starve for solid food. Animals fed on a diet from which all salts have been chemically removed will die in a shorter time than will those from which all food is withheld. This rather interesting fact is due to the rapid utilization of the salts residual in the body during the digestion and the assimilation of the salt-free foods taken. The order in which the withdrawal of nutritive substances will produce starvation is about as follows:

Animals starve when fed on salt-free food.

1 Aerial oxygen.

2 Water.

3 Mineral salts.

4 Organic nitrogen.

5 Carbohydrates.

Examples of drug poisoning.

Scientific definition of disease.

Poisoning by drugs is an excellent illustration of disease and death produced by specific starvation. When a man takes ether, this substance, passing to the brain, immediately interferes with the function of that organ. Insensibility to pain results. If ether is taken in larger quantities, the functions of the brain may be still further interfered with, and the nervous control of the heart beat will be lost, and death will ensue. When castor-oil is taken into the alimentary canal, the poisonous substances therein contained inflame the cells of the mucous membrane, and excite them to abnormal secretion, thus disturbing the harmony of the body-activities, and producing disease. The examples here referred to are not commonly considered disease, because we know the particular or immediate cause of the physical disturbance. Modern knowledge now shows us that the most prolific cause of what is commonly known as disease is but the interference with cell activities, either by the deficiency or by the excess of nutritive substances, or by the presence of irritating and disturbing poisons. This condition may be caused by an unbalanced diet containing too much of certain nutritive elements, or too little of others, causing surfeiting on the one hand and starvation on the other.

Man still in the childhood state of development.

Health is the normal condition, and in spite of Ingersoll's witticism, it is more "catching than disease." Were it not so, the race would long since have become extinct. With reference to body-health, however, we are still in the childhood stage of development, and the science, therefore, of building man to his highest estate - of lifting his mental, moral, and physical faculties to their highest possible attainment, is worthy the labor of the greatest minds. That person, then, who enjoys the best health, the keenest mentality and power of perception, the highest physical and emotional organism, is he who can select such articles of food as will supply all the constituent parts of the body most nearly in the right or natural proportions. The science of feeding, upon which this mainly depends, becomes possible only when food is taken in accordance with certain fixed, natural laws. These laws are not complicated - they are simple and easy to comprehend. Nature is constantly endeavoring to aid us in their solution. Hunger, thirst, taste - all the instincts and natural desires of the body are merely Nature's language. To interpret this language, and to obey the laws it lays down is man's highest duty to himself and to his race.

Hunger, thirst, and taste are Nature's language.

There are very few true diseases. Nearly all of the abnormal physical expressions given off by the body can be traced to a few primary causes, and most of these causes can be removed by ascertaining and removing other causes that precede them.

Classification of disease, a matter of convenience.

The classification of diseases is merely a matter of convenience, and is of no practical importance between the food scientist and the patient. It merely enables the one who has studied these classifications to convey his knowledge or information to the lay mind.

The diseases which will most interest the student will be those caused by a lack of nutrition, or by a surfeit of nutrition; that is to say, a form of starvation caused by a lack of certain nutritive elements, and overingestion caused by an excess of certain other nutritive elements.

The only practical method of describing disease is by indicating the organs afflicted and the impairment of their functions. Beginning with the stomach, in which, as previously stated, originates probably ninety-one per cent of all human disorders, I will first take up the question of the abnormal action of food caused by overeating.

The resourcefulness of Nature