Valere Aude: Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration. Louis Dechmann
drugs prescribed by thousands of physicians today, with but a casual acquaintance with their action, are bound by their nature to produce evils worse than the disease itself.
To cite an instance:
Physicians prescribe creosote in cases of consumption to stop the expectoration of blood.
Creosote will do this, and may suppress the cough, as well as the accompanying pain; but will it cure consumption or destroy or remove the cause of this deadliest of diseases?
On the contrary, it inevitably produces laryngeal phthisis after a very short time. It destroys the head of the windpipe and the patient dies in consequence of the destruction of one of the most important organs of the body.
In most instances the physician is either oblivious or unaware of these facts. He follows those old-standing doctrinal sophisms laid down by human "science" but discredited by nature.
His courage is called "audacity" by those who have not lost all feeling for humanity.
Meanwhile, those who regard medical science from a business standpoint only, are very quick to pronounce judgement upon any natural treatment of disease and to condemn the most successful natural physicians as charlatans and frauds.
In order to be competent to decide upon a correct course in the treatment of disease the physician must possess a thorough chemical knowledge of all the fundamental substances of which the human organism is constructed. With the patient therefore rests the responsibility of choosing his physician, since no physician can be of any assistance who cannot define what substances are deficient in the blood, and who does not possess the requisite technical knowledge to supply this deficiency by adequate dietetic means.
In my nutrition cell-food therapy for constitutional diseases, I have followed consistently upon the lines of one of the greatest masters of physiological chemistry that the world has known, who, in one of his medical colloquies spoke as follows: "In order to thoroughly understand any form of sickness or disease, so as to undertake the cure of the same, it is first of all necessary to picture before one's mental vision the ways and means of its inceptive formation, and by degrees to trace its origin, step by step, before one is enabled to decide upon adequate remedial measures conformable to the individual stages of the same."
In this sense it has ever been my strenuous endeavor to fathom the secret of the inception of constitutional diseases; but the entire medical literature did not advance me further than pathological anatomy, which informs us that the original cause of disease is a change in the form of the cellular elements of different digestive organs—in explanation of which the customary technical terms are used, such as "atrophy," "degeneration," "metamorphosis," etc. But, I reasoned with myself, this surely cannot be seriously regarded as the origin of disease!
The cause of the visible changing of the cellules must be sought in the conditional interstitial substances which cause the invisible changes or shiftings of the cellular forms, and which are scientifically termed "Changed nutritional conditions."
By the aid of physiological chemistry I was successful in finding a pathway to the centre of those mysterious occurrences of life.
And this was my course of reasoning: As the cellules, which are the smallest individual elements of the human system, are only products of the blood, and for their composition require the different chemical substances in sufficient quantities, it is obviously necessary to fathom what those chemical elements of the cellules may be, what form they take in their mutual relation to the separate parts of the body, and in what way they enter the organism.
In this manner I obtained a clear insight into the actions of the so-called mineral material in the organism, and it gradually became obvious to me that everything is dependent upon the introduction of the proper sanguifying or nutritive mineral salts into the blood.
On this basis I founded the so-called "organic nutritive cell-food therapy" (called the Dech-Manna therapy).
The point may be raised that the elements of the food we eat or drink are heterogeneous and that the mineral matter in them is naturally and casually acquired, according to the properties of the soil they grow in. This is the general opinion, but not the fact. Our vegetables, grain, meat and milk contain too much phosphoric acid and sal ammoniac, and this is due to the use of artificial and animal fertilizers, while the sulphurics are very often entirely missing.
Von Liebig says: When we consider that the sugar refineries of Waghausel have an annual output in the market of 600,000 lbs. of potassic salt, which is taken from the soil by the turnips of the Baden fields without being replaced, and that there is cultivated in Northern Germany, year by year, with the assistance of guano, an immense amount of potatoes solely for the manufacture of spirits, and that these potato fields are consequently robbed of the essential ingredients which potatoes should contain, and as these elements are only partially replaced by the insufficient component parts of the guano, we cannot be in doubt as to the condition of these fields. The ground may be ever so rich in ingredients, but it is exhaustible. The analysis of our blood indicates that, in order to remain healthy, it must contain twice as many sulphuric as phosphoric salts.
We talk glibly about a natural mode of living, a simple diet; but where in our civilized countries can we find food that really serves healthy sanguification?
The crux of the question is this: Why do we propose to heal naturally and not also to nourish naturally?—The latter is, to say the least of it, just as important as the former. But if both were practiced conjointly, a beneficial object might be more quickly and surely gained.
It is true, we are taught to eat more vegetables than meat; that our bread lacks the chief nourishing qualities, and so on; but we have hitherto been in no wise informed as to the substances that are relatively harmful or beneficial to us.
Why is it then that the science of the sanative power of nature, as well as medical science, is still in doubt in regard to the relation that must absolutely exist between the separate component parts of our nourishment in order to obtain normal healthy sanguification?
The reason is that the application of a real chemistry of life has never been comprehended until now.
According to my judgment it is Von Liebig and Julius Hensel who showed us the paths we are to take to the field of enquiry most important of all; for without a sound body all the coveted acquisitions of modern times are worthless to us.
The solution of the question how to prevent the degeneration of mankind would be a simple and natural one, if history and proverb had not taught us that as often as a new truth appears "the very oxen butt their horns against it." They cannot help this, the "disposition" is natural; for when Pythagoras had found the Master of Arts, Mathesios, he was so overjoyed that he sacrificed one hundred oxen to the gods, and ever since that time oxen are attacked with an hereditary fright whenever a new truth appears—the human ox is no exception.
Of what use to us, for instance, are the Roentgen X-rays in diseases of the nerves when there is a generally diseased condition of the blood, which, as we now know, is also the primary cause of lung, liver, stomach and kidney troubles, cancer, scrofula, rheumatism, gout, obesity, diabetes, and the rest?
In such cases chemistry is necessary, in order to ascertain what ingredients are missing in the blood; they cannot be detected microscopically.
What blunders are continually committed in the treatment of nerve diseases! No one considers the physiological law that no parts of the nerves can perform their functions lastingly and naturally unless they are continually supplied with blood permeated with oxygen; and for this purpose iron is most necessary as an adequate ingredient.
Physicians of the old-school do prescribe iron plentifully, but in inorganic form; and because it is not organized it is indigestible and is excreted. That is why the treatment of the diseases of the nerves, which are so general and widespread, has been so unsuccessful.
It is not generally known that organized ammonium phosphate (Lecithin), which is the mineral foundation of the Neurogen I prescribe, will regenerate