The Ultimate Medical Mistake

Chapter 5

The High Price
Of Error

In the light of the challenges put forth in the previous chapter, we now need to answer a hugely important question:

If acute disease is the friendly, God-initiated effort of nature to rid the system of an undesirable condition, and we use medicinal drugs to suppress this life-saving, system-cleansing process, how will this affect the patient?

Whichever way we consider this question, it is more than obvious that the outcome for the patient cannot be favorable, for the simple reason that the suppression of God’s personal effort to restore wellness can never be favorable.

To illustrate the point, let us consider the matter of fever. In the previous chapter we confirmed that, as a rule, coughs, colds, sneezes, pimples, boils, and diarrhea, etcetera, are the friendly, healing and cleansing agencies of nature, but what of fever? Is fever a “friend,” or is fever an “enemy?”

Contrary to what most people believe, and contrary to what orthodox medicine generally practices, fever is also a friend – a friend of note in fact. Even Hippocrates, the so-called Father of Medicine, recognized the extraordinary healing powers of a fever.

“Give me the power to produce a fever,” he wrote, “and I will cure any disease.” (Hippocrates, The Nature of Man, p.241)

Fever is actually one of nature’s most efficient “housemaids.” She dutifully comes to the aid of our detoxifying organs (liver and kidneys) and our eliminative organs (lungs, bowels, bladder, and skin), and she works with superb efficiency as she assists nature to cleanse the system, to destroy microbial invaders, and to promote healing.[1]

The following are just some of the ways in which fever assists the body in this healing and cleansing process – a process that is always accompanied by a rise in body temperature.

• Because the heart pumps faster as our temperature rises, a greater volume of blood will be purified through the liver.

• As the temperature rises, so the pores of the skin will dilate and the individual will start to perspire – thus fever assists in the removal of impurities via the skin.

• The increased temperature will also encourage the patient to drink more water, and this will facilitate the elimination of impurities through the kidneys and the skin.

• The fevered patient will also start breathing more rapidly and more deeply, and this will assist in the elimination of gaseous waste and impurities via the lungs.

• The presence of impure matter in the body always lays out the red carpet for microbial invasion and fever always helps to destroy these microbial invaders by stimulating an inflammatory response. This inflammatory response sends all kinds of substances to the area of infection to protect the area, to prevent the spread of the invader, and to start the healing process.

• For more information in this regard simply search for “benefits of fever” at www.google.com

Understanding that fever is a protective, healing and cleansing process, the enlightened physician will monitor the fever, do whatever he can to assist the fever in its noble work and, depending on the vitality of the patient, he will usually allow the fever to run its course. Only in exceptional cases will the enlightened physician administer drugs to suppress the fever.

In the statement following, Dr Harry Benjamin explains why it is unwise to suppress a fever:

“When fevers are treated by drugs, their natural self-cleansing action is suppressed, and the toxic matter which the natural forces of the body were endeavoring to throw off through the medium of the fever are forced back again into the tissues and internal structures, where, plus the drugs and sera administered by the doctor, they sow the seeds for the development of disease of a more lasting and insidious kind ‑ to wit, chronic disease. What the doctor calls a “cure” is nothing more than a checking of this natural attempt at self-cleansing; and even if no direct complications set in, and the individual feels quite all right for the time being, he often wonders why he suddenly finds himself the victim of this or that disease thereafter for no apparent reason at all.” (Dr Harry Benjamin N.D., Everybody’s Guide To Nature Cure, p.405)

Dr Benjamin tells us that the suppression of fever leads to the development of diseases of a “more lasting and insidious kind.” Pneumonia is just one of those diseases.

Today it is a well-established fact that . . .

“Pneumonia often follows the common cold.” (Harold Shryock, M.D., Your Medical Guide, p.439)

What has not been so well established in orthodox medical circles, however, is the reason why pneumonia often follows the common cold. Again Dr. Benjamin explains:

“As in all toxic conditions affecting the health of the system, wrong feeding habits and general wrong living are the main factors concerned in the development of pneumonia in any given case, but suppressive medical treatment of previous disease plays a very big part in the matter too. The driving back of toxic matter into the system, and its collection in the lung tissue as a result of the suppressive treatment of acute toxic conditions such as influenza [and fever], etc., often leads directly to the setting up of pneumonia.” (Everybody’s Guide To Nature Cure, p.322)

As a rule, therefore, it is not wise practice to suppress any of the acute manifestations of disease for, by so doing, . . .

• We interfere with a God-initiated healing and cleansing process.

• We suppress nature’s effort to restore wellness.

• We leave the patient’s system in a decidedly more serious and more toxic condition than it was in before the drugs were taken – and this will be the case even if the patient’s condition appears to improve. (See 2SM451.3; CH 89.2)

• We add more impurities to the system instead of helping Nature to remove the impurities that are already there.

• We “sow the seeds for the development of disease of a more lasting and insidious kind” – namely chronic disease and/or degenerative disease.

Clearly, therefore, the suppression of our acute diseases is not only an unwise practice, but a positively dangerous practice. As Dr Boris Chaitow confirms:

“If from time to time we suffer a headache, a cold, a fever, a skin eruption or any one of the many [acute] ailments to which man is subject, and through ignorance or neglect disregard nature’s warnings, continuing to suppress the body’s efforts to eliminate the provocation, then as surely as night follows day the price paid will be in the more deep-seated and chronic nature of the eventual disease.” (Boris Chaitow D.O. N.D. D.C., My Healing Secrets, p.14)

Please notice that where orthodox medicine does not generally recognize any direct association between our acute diseases and our chronic diseases, Nature Cure teaches that chronic disease is simply a “more deep-seated” and a more serious manifestation of the original acute disease.

With this all-important thought in mind, let us consider what takes place when we suppress our acute ailments, and let us carefully follow the steps, more or less, that lead to the development of chronic and degenerative disease conditions:

1. Every time we use suppressive medications, we lock into the system the very toxins that nature was trying to remove from the system.

2. Then, because the suppressive medications are toxic, they will contribute to the toxic load on the system.

3. Thus the more we resort to suppressive medical treatment, the more we will hinder nature’s cleansing efforts, and the more toxic the system will become.

4. Eventually the system reaches such an extraordinary and such an unnatural state of toxicity that it calls for an extraordinary and altogether unnatural response.

5. This unnatural response usually manifests itself in the form of a “more deep-seated and chronic” manifestation of disease, such as bronchitis, pneumonia, or asthma.

6. At this stage, and because of the nature of these ailments, we will have no option but to resort to suppressive medications – failing which we could find ourselves facing dire circumstances.

7. Thus, through the unwise suppression of our acute ailments, we reach a point where our very lives depend on suppressive medications - and thus we become party to one of the most vicious of all vicious circles.

8. As can be expected, therefore, this vicious circle soon becomes a vicious downward spiral.

9. As we dutifully take our medications, we will usually develop certain side effects, and further medications will be prescribed in order to suppress or to “mask” these side effects - and every additional dose will contribute to the toxic state of the system.

10. The lifestyle and diet that gave rise to the problem in the first place have not been changed and are still contributing to the toxic build‑up in the system, nothing has been done to assist nature to cleanse the system; even the original toxins are still backed up in the body, and all the while more and more medications add more and more toxins to a more and more toxic system.

11. Eventually our systems become so toxic that the environment surrounding our body cells undergoes radical change, and this strange new environment forces our body cells into an adapt-or-die type of situation.

12. As a direct result, our natural cells start to shed their inherent characteristics, and they undergo transformation from normal cells into abnormal cells.

13. This, in turn, can lead to . . .

• Cells mutating, as in the case of cancer and cysts,

• Cells losing their natural properties, as in the case of connective tissue disease (scleroderma),

• Cells degenerating, as in the case of emphysema.

14. All too often, the body will attempt to protect itself by encapsulating the offending impurities, and even the delinquent cells, in tumors – which are nothing more or less than the “dumping grounds” of nature.

This is a tragedy indeed, and it all begins with a general misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of disease – which misunderstanding has persuaded orthodox medicine that the friendly, healing and cleansing agencies of nature are antagonistic to life.

In the statement following, Dr Benjamin highlights the enormity of this situation.

“It is fully accepted by the Nature Cure philosophy that orthodox medical treatment, with its drugging and surgical operations, not only cannot cure disease, but succeeds merely in turning simple diseases into far more serious ones. The main fact to be noted is that, according to Nature Cure, all chronic disease originates in the first place through the suppression, by wrong medical methods of treatment, of acute diseases.

“And so it is with every kind of disease. How many people have been treated by the doctor for simple chest complaints every winter, only to develop asthma or chronic bronchitis in later life? How many have been treated for nerve trouble for years, only to end up nervous wrecks, or, worse, the inmates of asylums? How many children have had tonsils or adenoids removed, only to become affected in later life with a disease such as tuberculosis, asthma, chronic middle-ear disease, deafness, etc., for no apparent reason at all. These are all the results of wrong treatment, of suppressive medical treatment which removes symptoms and superficial causes, only to pave the way for more serious and lasting trouble later on in life, by its complete neglect of real underlying causes, which are thus left to go on unchecked and unhindered to undermine the after-life of the unsuspecting sufferer.” (Harry Benjamin N.D., Everybody’s Guide To Nature Cure, pp.409-410; 25)

The very real dangers associated with the use of medicinal drugs and with symptom suppression are brought to light in the following statement:

`A common pattern of symptom suppression under the contemporary medical model is this progression: treat colds with antihistamines until the body gets influenza; suppress flu repeatedly with antibiotics and eventually you get pneumonia. Or, suppress eczema with cortisone ointment repeatedly, and eventually you develop kidney disease. Or, suppress asthma with bronchodilators and eventually you need cortisone to suppress it. Continue treating asthma with steroids [cortisone] and you destroy the adrenals; now the body has become allergic to virtually everything.’ (Doctor Isabelle Moser with Steve Solomon, How and When To Be Your Own Doctor, Chapter 2, page 14)