Healthy Immune System

But what, it will be asked, is to be done to protect ourselves against the deadly germs of which we hear so much - surely these must first of all be attacked and destroyed ? Here we have another issue on which herbalism and allopathy disagree. The latter school regards micro-organisms as a potent primary cause of disease. Thus, one is "attacked" by influenza, smallpox, diphtheria, tuberculosis and so on, and another germ or anti-toxin must be discovered which will wage war upon and annihilate the bringers of these diseases.

Herbalism, on the other hand, while recognising that the air is swarming with millions of these tiny specks of life, that they are contained in every breath we take and on each scrap of food we put into our mouths, holds that germs can only be a danger when suitable conditions obtain inside the body in the form of effete toxic matter on which they can thrive. Germs, therefore, are not a primary cause, but a secondary manifestation of disease. Germs can only flourish and multiply in the body when conditions there are "ripe" for them. If this were not the case, then out of fifty people in a room containing a high proportion (uncountable millions) of influenza germs, each one of those people would be in bed shortly after with a temperature. Even Pasteur unconsciously admitted the soundness of this argument when he said : "In a state of health the body is closed against the action of disease germs." Human disease, then, is mankind's responsibility and not the act of a God who sends these pests to plague and destroy us.

And that mysterious and highly esoteric (in two senses !) department of study known as vitamin research ? A continued shortage of those essential constituents of all natural, "live" foods, known as vitamins, results in stunted growth, rickets, skin diseases, affections of the eyes, various nervous derangements, and probably numerous other ailments which are not yet in the official list. State medicine, instead of insisting upon the necessity for the consumption of "whole" foods only, and working for the legal prohibition of this wholesale devitalizing of food in the interests of private profit, proposes to get over the difficulty by chemically extracting vitamins from their natural media and adding them to the dietary of all those who can afford to buy these vitamin preparations. Passive or active support is thus given to the food-fakers and to the manufacturing chemists who make and sell the vitamin extracts, to the greater profit of both and the loss, both in health and pocket, of the unfortunate consumer.

Independent herbalism takes, in this matter, the common-sense view that it is simpler and less costly to let people have their vitamins in the original state. It also accuses on health grounds. The natural philosophy of health and disease holds that a thing torn from its natural environment is no longer the same thing, and consequently that a vitamin in a bottle is a very different proposition from its fellow in a glass of undoctored milk or an uncanned pear. It further contends that this tampering with and "chemicalizing" nature's food will result in a further crop of those mysterious (?) "diseases of civilization" for which doctors and scientists are still trying to find the causative germs, and incidentally building up huge "research" interests with public money.

Herbalists are often asked their opinion on the desirability of surgical operations involving the use of the knife. They consider that in certain mechanical Injury this form of surgical interference may be necessary, although Herbert Barker and many others have proved in innumerable instances that what is known as manipulative surgery or osteopathy gives better results with less danger attached. The removal of glands such as the tonsils. and other organs is frequently entirely unjustifiable, as the resultant systemic disorganisation and the non-performance of functions for which these parts are responsible invariably brings more or less serious results in its train. Here again we have drastic dealing with effects instead of natural removal of the causes of diseased conditions. Where errors of living and the suppressive treatment of consequent ill-health have been permitted to persist for so long that actual tissue degeneration has followed, and normal functioning cannot be restored, removal of the organ may then have to be considered. Such a stage, however, need seldom be reached if the laws of living are observed.

The modern medical herbalist is, above all, a teacher of these laws, universal knowledge of which, and conformity to, must be the pre-requisite of an A1 community.