Philosophy of Osteopathy Part 12
Fevers are effects only. The cause may be far from mental conclusions.
If we have a house with one bell, and ten wires each fastened to a door running to the center, all having wire connection and so arranged that to pull any one wire will set the bell in motion, and without an indicator you cannot tell which wire is disturbed, producing the effect or ringing of the bell at the center. An electrician would know at once the cause, but to discriminate and locate the wire disturbed is the study.
Before a bell can be heard from any door, the general battery must be charged. Thus you see but one source of supply. To better ill.u.s.trate--we will take a house with eight rooms, and all supplied by one battery--one is a reception room, one a parlor, one a sitting room, one bed room, one cloak room, one dining room, one a kitchen, and one a bas.e.m.e.nt room, all having wires and bells running to one bell in the clerk's office, which has an indicator for each room by numbers on its face. If the machinery is in good order he can call and answer correctly all the time and never make a mistake. But should he ring to call the cook and her bell keep on ringing and she and clerk could not stop it, and they summon an electrician, what would you think if he began at the parlor bell to adjust a trouble of the kitchen bell? Surely you would not have him treat the parlor bell first, because you know the cook could only answer by the effect, or rattling of the office bell. Hers is cause, sound at office, effect. Now to apply this ill.u.s.tration, we will say a system of bells and connecting wires run to all parts or rooms of the body, from the battery of power or the brain, conveyed by the strings of wires or nerves, that are put up and run to all active or vital parts of the body. Thus arranged we see how blood is driven to any part of the system, by the power that is sent over the nerves from the brain to the spinal cord, and from there to all nerves of each and all divisions of the body. Then your blood that has done its work in constructing parts or all of the system, entering veins to be returned to the heart for renewal. Each vein, great and small, has nerves with them as servants of power, to force blood back to heart through the different sets of tubes known as veins, and made to suit the duties they have to perform in the process of life. As it travels to the heart with blood too thick to suit the lungs, the great system of lymphatics pour in water to suit demands, preparatory to entering the lungs to be purified and renewed.
Thus you see nature has amply prepared all the machinery and power to prepare material and construct all parts, and when in normal condition the mind and wisdom of G.o.d is satisfied that the machine will go on and build and run according to the plan and specification. If this be true as nature proves at every point and principle, what can man do farther than plumb, line up, and trust to nature to get results desired, "life and health?" Can we add or suggest any improvement? If not, what is left for us to do is to keep bells, batteries and wires in normal place and trust to normal law as given by nature.
RESULT OF STOPPAGE OF VEIN OR ARTERY.
But few questions remain to be asked by the philosophical navigator when he sets sail to go to the cause of flux. Would he go to blood supply?
Certainly, there must be supply previous to deposit. Reason would cause us to combine the fact that blood must be in perpetual motion from and to the heart during life, and that law is the fiat of all nature which is indispensable and absolute. Blood must not stop its motion nor be allowed to unduly deposit, as the heart's action is perpetual in motion.
The work is complete of the heart if it delivers blood into the exploring arteries. Each division must to do its part fully as a normal heart does, or can in the greatest measure of health; and a normally formed heart is just as much interested in the blood that is running constantly for repairs and additions, as the whole system is on the arteries for supply. Thus you must have perfection in shape first, and from it to all parts as far as an artery reaches. All hindrances must be kept away from the arteries great and small. Health permits of no stopping of blood in either the vein or artery. If an artery cannot unload its consents a strain follows, and as an artery must have room to deposit its supplies it proceeds to build other vessels adjacent to the points of obstruction.
ANEURISMS.
Some are builded to enormous sizes. We call them aneurisms or accommodation chambers, builded by nature's constructing ability of the arteries as deposits for blood. The artery should pa.s.s farther on, thus you by reason must know an obstruction has limited the flow of blood, and the tumor is only an effect, and obstruction is the cause of all abnormal deposits, either from vein or artery. Un.o.bstructed blood cannot form a tumor, nor allow inharmony to dwell in any part of the system.
Flux is an effect, blood supply and circulation both at variation from normal. An artery finds veins of bowels irritated and contracted to such degree that arterial blood cannot enter veins with cargo of blood at all, and deposits its blood at terminal points in mucous membrane of bowels, and when membrane fails to hold all blood so delivered, then the first blood which dies of asphyxia finds an outlet into the bowels to be carried off and out by peristaltic actions. Thus you have a continuous deposit and discharge for arterial blood until death stops the supply.
CHAPTER XII.
SCARLET FEVER AND SMALLPOX.
As defined by Allopathy--Scarlet Fever as Defined by Osteopathy--Smallpox--Power to Drive Greater Than in Measles.
AS DEFINED BY ALLOPATHY.
"Scarlet fever begins with a short period of tired feeling. A short period of chilly sensation, fullness of eyes and sore throat. In a few hours fever begins with great heat of back of head. It soon extends all over the body, sick stomach and vomiting generally accompany the disease. Rash of a red color beginning on back, and extends to throat and limbs. About the second or third day, the fever is very high, from 100 to 104 and generally lasts to fifth and seventh day, at which time fever begins to diminish, with itching over the body. The skin at this time throws off all of the dead scales that had been red rash in the fore-part of the disease. Often the lining membranes of the mouth, throat and tonsils slough and bleed. Also pus is often formed just under the skin in front of the throat. Such cases usually die.[7]
ALLOPATHY."
[Footnote 7: Very true, if treated by the medicine man.]
SCARLET FEVER AS DEFINED BY OSTEOPATHY.
Is a disease generally of the early spring and late fall seasons.
Generally comes with cold and damp weathers during east winds. It begins with sore throat, chilly and tired feelings, followed with headache and vomiting. In a few hours chilly feeling leaves and fever sets in very high, burns your hands. The patient is rounded in chest, abdomen, face and limbs by congestion of the fascia and all of the lymphatic glands.
This stagnation will soon begin its work of fermentation of the fluids of fascia, then you see the rash. If you do not want to see the rash and sloughing of throat, with a dead patient, I would advise you to train your guns on the blood, nerves, and lymphatics of the fascia and stop the cause at once, or quit.
OSTEOPATHY.
SMALLPOX.
If we give a thought to the action of the electro-motor force, we would be constrained to believe that a power that could drive gas through a body of great density, would be much less than one that could force lymph through the same density. The same of alb.u.men.
POWER TO DRIVE GREATER THAN IN MEASLES.
Thus in smallpox the motor energy must be equal to the force that would convey alb.u.men through all tissues. Measles would be less, and so on according to the thickness of the fluids present. Thus you see the power to drive dead fluids from fascia must be much greater in smallpox than in cases of measles. Then we must see why the pulse of smallpox is so powerful during development of the pox. After killing the fluids by retention in the fascia of the skin, a greater force yet is created by hurting nerve fibers of fascia; then the motor energy appears and all the powers of life go to help the arteries force fluids through the skin and push to and leave them in the fascia of the skin to be eliminated as best it can. In some parts elimination fails, such places are called pox. They supurate and drop out leaving a pit (the pox mark). Now had the nerves of the skin and fascia not been irritated to contract the skin against the fascia pa.s.sing its dead fluids through the excretory ducts of the skin, we probably would have no eruption. It is not quite reasonable to conclude that after the heart overloads the fascia and the nerves lose their control by pressure of fluids, that all that is left is chemical action to the production of pus, which throws it out of fascia in intervening s.p.a.ces? Then should the fascia have greater death of its substances, we have one spot to run into others, and we have "confluent smallpox."
CHAPTER XIII.
A CHAPTER OF WONDERS AND SOME VALUABLE QUESTIONS.
Wonders on the Increase--What Is Life?--How Is Action Produced--Acquaint Yourself With the Machinery--Duty of the Osteopath--Formation of Sacrum--The Pelvis--Appearance of OEdema--Do All Diseases Have Appearance in OEdema.
WONDERS ON THE INCREASE.
Wonders are daily callers, and seem greatly on the increase during the Eighteenth century. As we read history we learn that no one hundred years of the past has produced wonders in such number and variety.
Stupid systems of government have given place to better and wiser.
Voyages of the ocean have had months by sail reduced to days by steam.
Journeys over land that would require six months by horse and ox, are now accomplished in six days by rail. Our law, medical and other schools of five and seven years, are now but two or three; and the graduates of such schools are far superior in useful knowledge to those of the five and seven. And no wonder at that, for the facilities for giving the pupil an education are so far superior that the knowledge sought, can be obtained in less time. Our schools are not intended to use the greatest number of days that are allotted to man. But at this day schooling and learning mean, to obtain useful knowledge in the quickest way that a thoroughness can be obtained. If there is any method by which arithmetic can be taught so as to master it in thirty days instead of thirty months let us have it. We want knowledge, we are willing to pay for it, we want all we pay for, and we want our heads kept out of the sausage-mill of time wasting.
A great question now stands before us: What are the possibilities of mind to improve our methods of gaining knowledge, shorten time, and getting greater and better results? I am free to say the question is too momentous to form an answer, as each day brings a new wonder, to the man or woman who reasons on cause, and gives demonstrations by effects.
WHAT IS LIFE?
The philosopher who first asked that question no one knows. But all intelligent persons are interested in the solution of this problem, at least to know some tangible reason why it is called life; whether life is personal or so arranged that it might be called an individualized principle of nature.
I wish to think for a time on this line, because we should make a wise handling of the machinery of the body.
If life in man has been formed to suit the size and duties of the being; if life has a living and separate personage, then we should be governed by such reasons as would give it the greatest chance to go on with its labors in the bodies of man and beast.
We know by experience that a spark of fire will start the principles of powder into motion, which, were it not stimulated by the positive principle of father nature, which finds this germ lying quietly in the womb of s.p.a.ce, would be silently inactive for all ages, without being able to move or help itself, save for the motor principle of life given by the father of all motion.
HOW IS ACTION PRODUCED.
Right here we could and should ask the question: Is this action produced by electricity put in motion, or is it the active principle that comes as a spiritual man? If so, it is useless to try, or hope to know what life is in its minutia. But we do know that life can only display its natural forces by the visible action of the forms it produces.
If we inspect man as a machine, we find a complete building, a machine that courts inspection and criticism. It demands a full exploration of all its parts with their uses. Then the mind is asked to see or find the connection between the physical, and the spiritual. By nature you can reason on the roads that the powers of life are arranged to suit its system of motion.
If life is an individualized personage, as we might express that mysterious something, and it must have definite arrangements by which it can be united and act with matter; then we are admonished to acquaint ourselves with the arrangements of those natural connections, the one or many, as they are connected to all parts of the completed being.
As motion is the first and only evidence of life, by this thought we are conducted to the machinery through which life works to accomplish these results.
ACQUAINT YOURSELF WITH THE MACHINERY.