When we are looking for the various causes of disease we are inclined to overlook the fact that stress and the strain resulting from it are perhaps the most important. For most people the strain of life is essentially a mental one. The body is equipped to deal with the ordinary physical labour and, as is well known, it is not very easy to overwork the system by using the muscles. It is far easier to wear down the resistance of the whole body and mind by the stresses on the mental and emotional plane. In this way we build up tension within the system and constantly dissipate the precious nervous energy.
Of recent years it has been shown that there is a much more direct relationship between the disorders of the skin and the nervous system than many people formerly imagined, so much so that the pendulum has swung almost in the other direction, and we now hear of these cases being referred to the psychiatrist rather than to the dermatologist. This means that instead of using the old-fashioned remedies to allay the eruptions on the skin the practitioner tries to release the nervous tension from which so many of these cases are suffering. There seems to be little doubt that the results have been worth while, and it confirms the Nature Cure contention that we build our diseases through our habits and our way of living.
In trying to explain the nature of the various forms of disease including, of course, skin disease, the adherents of Nature Cure have propounded their theory of toxaemia, and if this theory is properly understood it helps us to realize the importance of the mind both in the making of disease and in the effective treatment of it. Unfortunately the Nature Cure theory has been open to a great deal of misinterpretation, and it has suffered more from its friends than from its opponents. Those who have tried to make it into a little system of diet or of a few cold packs or some such two by-four system have rendered to it a great disservice.
It may be well, therefore, if we go briefly into the Nature Cure explanation of disease, because it will help us to apply it to the subject under discussion. We have already described the “sea-water,” that great fluid medium of the body which bathes the cells in the system and governs the last and most important of the digestive processes. In this medium, too, lies the secret of elimination, because here all the waste products of cell activity are deposited. This fluid is constantly on the move, using the blood and the lymph vessels as its great carrying system. It is in this fluid that the first step towards disease is taken.
So long as the contents-the nutriments and the waste products-of this fluid are maintained, the functions of the body proceed apace; but let this balance be disturbed, and the most vital of life’s processes will be hindered. It is in this delicate and highly charged mechanism that all the stresses of the system, physical, mental and emotional, is registered.
All stress produces strain in the nervous system, no matter what its nature may be. If it is overwork it leads to fatigue, and this depletes the nervous energy. The same happens if it is mental strain in which the sedentary worker tires out his mind. Grief, worry, anxiety, shock, fright and fear will do the same. The emotional disturbances, which have been so carefully and extensively studied in recent times, reduce the nervous energy of the system more drastically than many people imagine. In short, modern living is a very strenuous affair, and the less fit to stand the strain find themselves and their ailments the concern of the public medical and health service authorities.
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