There is a vast difference between a plan of care based on removal of cause and one that is based on palliation of effects. As there can be no effect without a cause, it is essential that the cause be removed before the production of effects can be ended. Treatments do not remove causes and are not intended to do so. There are but four legitimate objectives of remedial care of the sick:

The removal of the cause or causes of sickness. The conservation and hoarding of the powers of life. Promotion of elimination of toxic accumulations within the organism, and The proper supply of the physiological needs of the organism.

We cannot reasonably expect a sick man to regain health so long as the causes that are impairing health are still present. The forces of the organism, though powerfully and distinctly self-preservative, cannot be expected to be successful against overwhelming or continuous cause. The symptoms and pathologies of the disease may change and often do indeed change; the disease may ebb and flow with changing circumstances; it may even appear to get well; it may change from acute to chronic, as often happens; but full recovery cannot be expected so long as cause remains.

Any effort to understand the problems of disease that refuses to see the phenomena of disease in the light of cause and effect is doomed to disappointment. What horrid superstition, what blinding prejudice, what unpalliated stupidity is that which cannot understand the simple doctrine that diseases are remmediable by (and only by) removing their causes! What is there so difficult to understand about the simple principle that in order to be saved from the effects of a practice, it is necessary to discontinue the practice? How absurd to think that the practice can be continued and poisons administered to erase or prevent its effects! The production of effects can be ended only by removing the causes that are producing them. The medical man acts as though he believes that effects can be erased and their production ended without the necessity of removing their causes.

We know of no so-called disease that is not the result of a departure from the laws of being. If this is the truth about the cause of disease, what is the first need of recovery? Certainly the taking of drugs, which is another and gross violation of the laws of life, is not among the requisites of recovery. The answer to our question is: return to obedience to the laws of life. Cease the disobedience and conform to the laws. To attempt to remove the causes of disease at the expense of the life of the sick man or by deteriorating the conditions of life, so as to render future existence more uncertain and full of suffering and guarantee a premature death, requires less skill than may be supposed.

Who can fail to understand that by teaching mankind how to live, we can be more serviceable to the race than we can by bending all our energies to the invention of new modes of subverting nature's laws to the end that the sick may be relieved of sufferings which are the legitimate consequences of their unlawful behavior? Such an undertaking as this last is about as practicable as would be the search for a means that would enable us to put our hands into a fire without being burned. Intelligence revolts at the preposterous proposition that remedies are to be found in the apothecary shop for ills that grow out of errors of living, that pills can cure the effects of worry, that draughts will remedy the results of overeating, that pink lotions will erase the evils of intemperance, that a drug can be given that will remove the effects of excessive venery while sexual overindulgence is continued. As well try to sober up a drunk man while he continues to drink.

What is called medical science does not teach man to remove the causes that are responsible for physiological impairment and replace these with conditions that favor normal physiological function. Its plan of curing consists of nothing more than the administration of drugs, while doing nothing to remove the causative factors. So long as their conception of curing does not go beyond this, they cannot hope to achieve a genuine solution to the problems with which widespread disease and degeneracy confront us.

When a misuse of the body and the means of life have resulted in disease, intelligence suggests that before health can be restored, the first and most important thing to be done is to correct the cause of illness, not by resort to means that are out of harmony with the human constitution, but by regulation of the means which sustain normal life and by cessation of the bodily abuses. To continue to abuse the body and misuse its means of existence and seek for cures or to seek to be immunized against the consequences of abuse and misuse through the use of extraneous, exotic and adventitious means, is absurd. In the proper regulation of the total life of the individual and his means of existence consists all true care of the body, whether in health or in disease.

When the impairing and threatening causes are removed, the body, by means of intrinsic powers and processes, remedies its own injuries and re-establishes normal function. When the conditions of normal vital activity are preserved, which are, obviously, sound and healthy tissues, the self-protective effort is continuous, varying in vigor and efficiency according to the amplitude of the nervous energy and the conditions upon which it is dependent for its manifestations. Hence it will appear that the skill required in caring for the sick will consist in removing the causes of disease without lessening the self-protective powers of the body. Health must ever be restored by the removal of the causes of disease, not by adding to the cause.

We who regard disease as the result of violated law cannot fail to view our duty in a different light from that which has hitherto been regarded as the legitimate way of caring for the sick. Generally regarded as an enemy, disease has been thought to attack the living organism and it was the duty of the practitioner of the healing art to array himself and his arsenal against it. Physicians often say that they administer their poisons to aid the vis medicatrix naturae in expelling the disease. What a fatal error! The disease is itself the vis medicatrix naturae. Although the physician imagines that he is "aiding and assisting nature," he is, in fact, simply wasting and destroying her reconstructive and recuperative powers. Dr. Oswald rightly said that diseases plead for desistance, rather than for assistance and the discovery of the cause is the discovery of the remedy.

The Hygienist recognizes the principle that the remedy for all impairments of health is to ascertain and remove its cause or causes. Believing these conclusions are true, we cannot reconcile ourselves to any mode of care that is directed exclusively at the symptoms. It is our firm conviction that cause is the most important factor in our equation. To find causes he is justified in trying to find out all about the habits of life and the conditions of living of all those who consult him for advice. All is wrong. All is a muddle from beginning to end. With individuals as with society, we are all victims of false and vicious habits, customs, practices and doctrines and lack both the knowledge and the independence to live in ways that are right and good for us. We are slaves to fashions, folly and pride.