Physiology plainly reveals mutual relations existing between the organs and the blood. The blood is not a self-forming fluid, but owes its state to the functions of the numerous organs, so that no material change can take place in the various organs of the body without in some way affecting the blood and lymph. Neither can the blood be affected without in turn exerting a distinct influence upon the organs and tissues.

The blood is a product of the cells and so great is the body's power to order its internal relations, it is often able to maintain a near-normal blood stream coincident with the gradual poisoning and breaking down of some part of the body. The blood possesses, to a very high degree, the power of self-regulation, drawing upon the body's reserves for its needed elements, or forcing into the tissues, its uneliminated excesses. The blood is what the digestive organs, the liver, spleen, lungs, skin, kidneys, colon, lymph glands, ductless glands, and other tissues make of it. These produce and maintain and sacrifice their dispensible elements and tissues to maintain the blood as near normal as possible, so that abnormalities and pathology show up in the cells and tissues long before they do in the blood. This is the reason most blood tests are practically valueless. The blood picture will remain normal so long as normal functions keep it normal.

The state of the blood cannot be made the remote or primary cause of pathology, for its state is the result of prior causes. So long as organic function is normal the blood will be kept in a normal state. Functional impairment from enervation must precede toxemia, and back of the enervation are its many causes.

The term toxemia is well enough known and, sufficiently used by the medical profession to indicate that no priority or invention can be claimed for its exclusive use in our system. But: "mark the distinction : The: medical profession thinks of toxemia in terms of infection by germs introduced into the body; practically, therefore: No germs, no toxemia." It is quite true that the term is used by the profession to designate other and comparatively rare forms of toxemia, but for the most part, when they think of toxemia they think of germs. The man of the street thinks of toxemia as poisoning coming from the bowels in constipation.

We employ the term toxemia in a more comprehensive sense and apply it primarily to the toxins from a different source. The ordinary understanding of toxemia, both lay and professional, is poisons in the blood that have gained an entrance from without, or of poisoning resulting from the breaking down of organs in advanced pathological states, as in cancer.

Such toxemias--bacterial toxins, ptomaines, pathological products, etc.,--are evanescent in their influence, are fragmentary and are very limited as to cause and effect. They are specific, transient influences which are incapable of acting as constants and are therefore, insufficient as a basis for a universal system of causation. As Tilden says: "Poisoning by extrensic toxins, bacterial or chemical, end with their specific influence. They have no tendency to become a constant cause; neither can their treatment immunize against a repoisoning."

If we employ toxemia as a blanket term it may be applied to anything that poisons. Thus, poisoning by mercury or arsenic or serum poisoning (anaphylaxis), may be called toxemia. A man drunk on alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, drugs, overeating, septic wounds, ulcers, etc., may be said to be suffering from toxic poisoning. A chicken dinner, under certain conditions, may develop sufficient putrescent poisoning to cause suffering and death. "If accuracy is no object, it may be said that the dinner caused toxemia." "Food poisoning," says Tilden, "is not a disease, any more than drug poisoning is a disease. To know and to hold this thought is necessary to a rational understanding of cause and effect concerning disease. An injury, a poisoning, an enervating habit, is not a disease nor a cause of disease per se, but is a cause of Toxemia--the only disease." Nor should the reader confuse septicemia (septic poisoning) or the very unusual term, bacteremia (bacteria in the blood) with toxemia.

Unfortunately very few doctors of any school know enough about the toxin theory to do developmental work, or to carry the theory into new territories, or to use the theory to rebut medical fallacies, or flagellate the numerous "cults" into silence, if not understanding. Hence, when they talk of toxemia, it is of some limited, evanescent poisoning that soon spends its force and passes.

All of these poisonings are possibilities, and when they occur are accidental, but they do not represent what we mean by the term toxemia. The matter is very simple and there need be no mistake made about it. The toxemia we refer to as the universal basic cause of pathology is a natural product of the body--a constant--and is in the blood from birth to death (autogenerated), but never in pathology-producing amounts except when enervation has checked elimination. All other toxemias are secondary and may complicate the basic, or metabolic, toxemia, but they should not be confused with toxemia.

"That the true cause of disease must be a constant is a proposition that cannot be gain-said," says Tilden; "and that constant must be built within the organism itself, and be the sequel of physiological perversion, is another proposition that must stand; for no outside influences can be found that have a constant or continuous influence." Evanescent, temporary bacterial poisonings are not constant and require an ally. Toxemia is a constant product and exerts a constant influence.

. The cause of toxemia is the unbalancing of the secretive and eliminative functions of the body, and the relative lowering of its eliminative activities. Any influence of a mental or physical character that reduces nerve energy below the point where secretion and excretion can meet the needs of the organism, causes a retention of waste products in the blood, producing toxemia. Overstimulation from any cause brings on enervation; enervation checks elimination; the retention of waste products builds toxemia. This condition of self-poisoning, or poisoning by one's own retained or endogenously produced poisons, is what we mean by the term, toxemia. This is the one primary, universal, constant, or ever-present toxemia that is the basic cause of all pathology. It is doubtful if most of the other toxemias would ever develop without a pre-existing endogenous toxemia.

Necessary for efficient elimination is full nerve energy; and such a state cannot be maintained while practicing continually enervating habits. When the body is enervated elimination is checked--inhibited--and there follows a retention of waste products--metabolites. Retained cell-waste beyond the normal, causes poisoning. This is the one and only all-inclusive toxemia.

Toxemia - Part 3

This section is from the book "The Hygienic System: Orthopathy", by Herbert M. Shelton.

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