Part 33

Disturbances of the functions of growth, nutrition, and repair produce changes in structure, physical evidences of disease. It is probable that every disease has a certain amount of structural change connected with it; it is hard to conceive of functional derangement without structural change, in a universe in which Nature is eternally building, destroying, or modifying organic peculiarities to meet changing functional demands. But in many instances this structural change is so slight as to be undiscoverable; such diseases are called “functional” to distinguish them from those in which structural pathologic changes are directly discernible, called “organic.”

Beginning of the Process

Recognizing the fact that disease consists in a succession of steps or a series of events, each depending upon the next preceding one and making possible its successor, and desiring to arrest or check this process and correct the damage done, in other words, “to cure disease,” the question arises, “Where does this process begin?”

If we wish merely to check the process or to modify it, as does medicine, the etiology of the disease is less important than the present state. It is then more important that we understand the changes which are taking place in the body at the time of our attempt, the condition of each organ at that time, and the general recuperative or resisting power of the individual.

But if we would correct all the damage done instead of merely preventing further damage or building up internal resistance against a still active destructive process; if we would so eliminate the effects of the earlier steps as to make the resumption of the disease process most improbable, we must know each step from the beginning to the present, understand their sequence and relation, and go back to the beginning with our correction, removing the cause.

The Cause of Disease

Since each event in the morbid process depends upon the preceding one and makes possible those which follow, it is possible to stop at any point in the chain of events and declare, “Here lies the Cause of Disease.” This explains the various etiologies adhered to each by a school of intelligent and scientific men, yet each apparently disagreeing most flatly with the others. No matter which step we select as our “ultimate cause” it truly is the cause, or one of the causes, of succeeding steps, which succeeding steps may well stand in our minds as the whole of the disease. Thus the physician, having found a germ, is quite content to look forward from the invasion of the germ and consider that as the primarily necessary requisite for disease production. In retrospect he follows disease back within the body to the time of entrance of the germ and then leaves the body to study the life habits of the germ and its favorite mode of conveyance. He has unwittingly left the direct line of investigation and followed a spur-track.

So with the osteopath who discovers contractured muscles drawing a member, or a bone, from its normal position. He proceeds to a study of the effect of such contracture upon other tissues and strives to relieve it by treatment--of the muscle.

The dietist discovers that certain food combinations cannot be properly cared for by an individual and that if taken they tend to develop toxins deleterious to the system. Whereupon he undertakes to discover food combinations which the body can care for and believes that he has solved the question of etiology.

Now it is most important that we find the primary cause, the one which makes possible the operation of all the rest and without which all would be powerless to harm man. This we shall expect to find at the point of entrance of disease into the human organism. The primary cause must be the first step which concerns man, the first change from normal to abnormal, on which all subsequent changes depend. It is useless to pass outside of the consideration of man and those forces which directly affect man, in our search for the cause of disease. We are powerless to affect outside forces or to control or amend the laws of nature through which disease exists.

Let us attempt then to resolve disease into its successive steps and to find the first which concerns man. Correcting that, we shall have corrected, fully and completely, the process which constitutes disease. By striking at the root we may destroy the entire growth.

Vital Energy

Irritability is the property of being susceptible to excitement or stimulation. Stimulation is the process of increasing the functional activity of any organ. Inhibition is the act of checking, restraining, or holding back the functional activity of any organ. These definitions, taken from Gould, are here introduced as a necessary preface to an attempt to set forth, without unnecessary reference to, or discussion of, any other theory as to the etiology of disease, the Chiropractic explanation of its presence.

Chiropractic maintains that all the chemical and physical activities of the human organism are controlled, directly or indirectly, through a third form of energy transmitted through the Nerve System; that while all three forms of energy are interdependent and closely related in their ultimate expression, one of the three is the primary and most essential form, and especially indicative of life. We may call this third form Vital Energy.

There are several good reasons for believing that this nerve force is the primary form in which energy is expressed in man and for believing that it controls and directs the others in greater degree than it is controlled and directed by them.

Of the four forms of tissue of which the body is composed--connective, epithelial, muscular, and nervous--the latter is the one damage to which is followed by the greatest and most permanent consequences.

It is a fact that there are several organs whose removal leads to certain death because of their importance in the general economy of the body, but it is also true that section of the nerves leading to these organs just as certainly causes death by the cessation of their functions. There is no organ in the body aside from the nerves themselves which does not immediately cease to act upon withdrawal of its nerve force and at once begin a process of degeneration or atrophy.

Pathologic changes in the Nerve System invariably are followed by pathologic changes in the organs controlled by the diseased segment but the converse is not true. Excitation or inhibition of nerve activity produces corresponding and responsive change in the activity of the organs innervated, but excitation of an organ does not necessarily produce similar changes in the Nerve System. That system possesses the power of inhibiting or permitting responsive action, in other words, the power of choice.

Research in Comparative Anatomy develops the fact that the differences in power of complex action possessed by different organisms are entirely measurable by differences in the structure and complexity of their nerve mechanisms.

Further, by studying the effects of removal or extirpation, or of pathologic changes in various parts of the nerve system it has been demonstrated that the Brain is the center for those higher forms of activity known as psychic, for the power of accelerating or inhibiting the responses of the lower centers of the nerve system to stimulation from without, and for the conveyance of authority to act to all the lower centers. The Nerve System is the morphologic, physiologic, and dynamic center of the organism and the Brain the center of the Nerve System. We may, then, logically expect to find in the Brain, or in the channels by which power is distributed from the Brain to lower centers or organs, the initial step in the disease process, which is our present quest.

One Nerve System

All nerve tissue in the body is organized and linked together in a complicated aggregation of individual units, communicating by contact, and forming one great Nerve System having its directing center in the Brain. It is said by some writers to consist of two distinct systems--cerebro-spinal and sympathetic--but would better be described as consisting of central organs--brain and spinal cord--and peripheral organs--cranial, spinal, and sympathetic peripheral axons connecting with cells in the central axis and linked together in a net-work improperly separable into separate or distinct divisions, the fibres of different parts being bound together in such a way as to establish an intricate intercommunication, closest on the one hand between the cranial and sympathetic and on the other between the spinal and sympathetic. The sympathetic system may be regarded as nothing more than a medium for proper distribution of impulses originating in the cerebro-spinal system, and a series of reflex centers deriving their power to act from the central axis. The proper action of sympathetic ganglia has been demonstrated to depend upon the integrity of the spinal nerve fibres, or rami communicantes, which pass to and terminate in the ganglia with their telodendria (terminal arborizations) in contact with the dendrites (cellulipetal processes) of the ganglion cells.

It will appear that interference with one division or part of the nerve system may be followed by effects partly manifested through a distant part; that excitation or inhibition of a spinal nerve may correspondingly excite or inhibit sympathetic fibres.

Chiropractic Hypothesis

Chiropractic has accepted, as a convenient working hypothesis amply justified by years of clinical experiment and anatomical and physiological research, the proposition that all disease in the human body is primarily made possible by injury to (stimulation or inhibition of) some part of the nervous mechanism.

Injury to other tissues, unless the injury also involves nerve tissue, is quickly repaired and the body goes on without disease. Or the injury is sufficient at once to render the body untenable and death ensues. Few pathological changes follow trauma unless nerve tissue be injured.

This theory to be logical must and does include the entire nerve system. Also, since it is noted that each nerve cell presides over the nutrition of its own processes and possesses its own power of repair, it follows that unless an injury be of fatal nature or of permanent duration, even injuries to nerves tend toward automatic cure. We must seek a permanently operating interference with nerve tissue.

The brain, enclosed within the comparatively solid cranium, is so well protected that nothing except fracture of the skull, violent concussion, or shutting off of its blood supply from without, will produce permanent change there. Also, unless there be pressure by foreign substance against the brain, an injury will be repaired in time and the body resume its normal functional activity. It has been demonstrated that comparatively few diseases occur in this way. Such as do are called traumatic; i. e., caused by wound or injury.