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Correct diagnosis is the first essential to rational treatment. Every honest physician admits that the old school methods of diagnosis are, to say the least, unsatisfactory and uncertain, especially in ascertaining the underlying causes of disease.
Therefore we should welcome any and all methods of diagnosis which throw more light on the causes and the nature of disease conditions in the human organism.
Two valuable additions to diagnostic science are now offered to us in Spinal Analysis and in the Diagnosis from the Iris of the Eye.
Spinal analysis furnishes valuable information concerning the connection between disease conditions and misplacements of vertebrae and other bony structures, contractions or abnormal relaxation of connective tissues, and inflammation of nerves and nerve centers.
Men of high standing in the profession have many times admitted the uncertainty of medical diagnosis, but never has more enlightening information on this subject been furnished than by Dr. Cabot of Harvard University, one of the foremost diagnosticians in this country, and author of a standard work on diagnosis.
In a recent address before the American Medical Association he stated that postmortem examinations of one thousand cases which he had conducted disclosed the fact that the antemortem diagnoses were correct in only fifty-three percent of these cases. The following table compiled by Dr. Cabot gives the nature of the various diseases and the exact percentage of correct diagnoses in each:
Disease Percent Diabetes Mellitus .................... 95 Typhoid .............................. 92 Aortic Regurg ........................ 84 Cancer of the Colon .................. 74 Lobar Pneumonia ...................... 74 Chr. Glomeruloneph ................... 74 Cerebral Tumor ....................... 72-4/5 Tb. Meningitis ....................... 72 Gastric Cancer ....................... 72 Mitral Stenosis ...................... 69 Brain Hemorrhage ..................... 67 Septic Meningitis .................... 64 Aortic Stenosis ...................... 61 Phthisis, acute ...................... 59 Miliary Tb. .......................... 52 Chronic Interst. Neph. ............... 50 Thoracic Aneurism .................... 50 Hepatic Cirrhosis .................... 39 Acute Endocard ....................... 39 Peptic Ulcer ......................... 36 Suppurative Neph. .................... 35 Renal Tb; ............................ 33-1/3 Bronchopneumonia ..................... 33 Vertebral Tb. ........................ 23 Chron. Myocarditis ................... 22 Hepatic Abscess ...................... 20 Ac. Pericarditis ..................... 20 Ac.Nephritis ......................... 16
Dr. Cabot's candid report surely gives food for serious thought. If his colleagues on the staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital, with excellent scientific equipment at their command, failed to render a correct diagnosis in about fifty per cent of one thousand cases, what may be expected of the average less skilled physician and surgeon in general practice?
Correct prescription, according to allopathic standards, can be based only on correct diagnosis. The old school of medicine recognizes hundreds of different diseases, each one an entity by itself arising from specific causes--mostly disease germs. From this it follows that each specific disease must be treated by specific drugs, vaccines, serums and antitoxins, or by specially devised operations.
It is evident that the wrong remedy applied in a given case will not only prove useless, but may cause serious injury; yet if fifty per cent of all the diagnoses rendered in our best equipped hospitals are erroneous, how can the doctors apply the right remedy? Will somebody please explain?
Compare with this extremely dangerous guess work the safe and sane methods of Natural Therapeutics. Perfectly harmless in themselves, when applied with a modicum of common sense they tend to correct in any case the three primary manifestations of disease, and must therefore produce satisfactory results no matter what the diagnosis. This, I have fully explained in Chapter XX, Vol. I, of this series. While the allopathic physician must postpone the administration of his specific remedies until he gets ready to make a guess--first at the nature of the disease, and then at the indicated remedy--the practitioner of Natural Therapeutics applies his natural remedies with absolute safety, and assurance of success if that is possible in the nature of the case, from the first appearance of abnormal symptoms. Thereby he frequently cures the disease before his allopathic colleague would get ready to treat it. In many cases medical indecision and procrastination allows the disease processes to make such headway that they cannot be arrested by any means.
Dr. Cabot is not the only allopathic physician who admits an appalling discrepancy between clinical findings and the revelations of the postmortem examinations. According to a recently published report of a committee appointed to investigate New York hospitals, the autopsies of the famous Bellevue Hospital prove that out of every hundred diagnoses made by the physician in charge 47.7 per cent are absolutely wrong. These figures coincide very closely with those of Dr. Cabot.
This revelation of medical incompetency caused Dr. C. L. Wheeler, editor of the New York Journal of Medicine, to make the following sensational statement: "Every doctor in America is a quack--and he can't help it! This statement is amazing only to the layman. No doctor is surprised at it. Doctors know that all of us are more or less quacks; that many of our diagnoses are only guess work; and we all know what is far worse than this--that . we cannot help it, because our hands are tied. Why is this? Because the public refuses medicine the right to become an exact science by objecting to the performance of an autopsy in every case of death."
Dr. Wheeler evidently has not learned the lesson taught by these autopsies, namely, that the allopathic conception of the nature of disease and its methods of diagnosis and prognosis as well as of treatment, are all wrong in the first place. He might just as well try to prove 100x0=1 as to establish an exact science of diagnosis by multiplying autopsies. The postmortem examination may reveal the final stages of destruction in vital organs, but medical science will continue to fail in diagnosis and prognosis as long as it does not understand and refuses to understand that such destruction is brought about through wrong habits of living and through unnatural methods of treatment.
This is a serious accusation. Why should conscientious physicians refuse to investigate the true nature and causes of disease? The answer is: Because such knowledge comes from "unethical" sources; because from the viewpoint of medical ethics it is better to let a patient die in the "regular" way than to see him cured in the "irregular" way.
Not the opposition of the public to autopsies is responsible for the inadequacy of allopathic diagnosis and prognosis, but the fact that orthodox medicine is not an exact science because it bases its findings on the chaotic and contradictory teachings of medical authorities instead of studying and complying with the laws of Nature governing the processes of health, disease and cure.
This valuable knowledge is freely offered to the medical profession by the School of Natural Therapeutics. As long as they refuse to give fair consideration to this exact philosophy and science of disease and cure, the teachings of which are verified by the experience of millions of intelligent followers all over the earth and in the daily practice of tens of thousands of drugless healers in this country, they must stand convicted of wilful indifference and neglect.
Since prominent members of the medical profession admit the utter inadequacy of allopathic methods of diagnosis and prognosis, why should we hesitate to welcome such valuable aids to diagnostic science as Iridology, Spinal Analysis and Basic Diagnosis, when every one of these helps to elucidate, to correct or confirm the findings of other methods? Is it not a matter of common sense and of personal responsibility toward our patients that we should combine in diagnosis as well as in treatment all that is good and helpful?
In the light of these revelations, what reliance can we place on medical health certificates issued to candidates for marriage? What value can be attached to enforced medical examinations in our public schools? What right have medical practitioners to pronounce chronics and defectives incurable, to sterilize them, or to kill them by the refusal of medical aid or by the practice of euthanasia ?
Iridology is as yet a new science, and much remains to be discovered and to be better explained. Many times we do not find a sign in the iris for the lesion or diseased condition which we know to exist in the body. At other times the records in the eyes indicate more serious conditions than can be ascertained by other methods. As regards this point, however, it is well to remember that old school physicians, notwithstanding their up-to-date scientific equipment, only too often see their diagnosis discredited by the postmortem findings.
Those who confine their examinations to the eye or the spine fall as far short of making a reliable diagnosis or prognosis as the old school country doctor with his limited equipment. In our work we do not confine ourselves to Iridiagnosis, but combine with it the diagnostic methods (physical diagnosis) of the allopathic school of medicine, spinal analysis, basic diagnosis, as well as laboratory tests and microscopic examinations.
Thus any one of these methods supplements and verifies all the others. In this way only is it possible to arrive at a thorough and definite understanding of the patient's condition.
Dr. Von Peckzely, of Budapest, Hungary, discovered Nature's records in the eye, quite by accident, when a boy ten years of age.
Playing one day in the garden at his home, he caught an owl. While struggling with the bird, he broke one of its limbs. Gazing straight into the owl's large, bright eyes, he noticed, at the moment when the bone snapped, the appearance of a black spot in the lower central region of the iris, which area he later found to correspond to the location of the broken leg.
The boy put a splint on the broken limb and kept the owl as a pet. As the fracture healed, he noticed that the black spot in the iris became overdrawn by a white film and surrounded by a white border (denoting the formation of scar tissues in the broken bone).
This incident made a lasting impression on the mind of the future doctor. It often recurred to him in later years. From further observations he gained the conviction that abnormal physical conditions are portrayed in the eyes.
As a student, Von Peckzely became involved in the revolutionary movement of 1848 and was put in prison as an agitator and ringleader. During his confinement he had plenty of time and leisure to pursue his favorite theory, and he became more and more convinced of the importance of his discovery. After his release he entered upon the study of medicine, in order to develop his important discoveries and to confirm them more fully in the operating and dissecting rooms. He had himself enrolled as an interne in the surgical wards of the college hospital. Here he had ample opportunity to observe the eyes of patients before and after accidents and operations, and in that manner he was enabled to elaborate the first accurate Chart of the Eye.
Since Von Peckzely gave his discoveries to the world, many well known scientists and conscientious observers in Austria, Germany, Sweden and in this country have devoted their lives to the perfection of this wonderful science. Foremost among the followers of Von Peckzely in Europe was the Rev. Niels Liljequist, a Swedish clergyman, who, for many years, has made Iridology his life work. He perfected Peckzely's chart of the iris and was the first one to describe signs of drug poisoning. He had suffered terribly from most of the symptoms of quinin poisoning (chronic cinchonism) ever since he had taken large quantities of the drug in early life. After he became acquainted with iridiagnosis he discovered the connection between the yellow discoloration in his eyes and the chronic quinin poisoning. This led him to study the relationship of other color pigments to various forms of drug poisoning, such as iodism, mercurialism, bromism, arsenical poisoning, etc.
In Germany Dr. Thiel and Pastor Felke made valuable contributions to Iridology, and became famous diagnosticians and Nature Cure physicians.
In this country Henry Lahn, M. D., wrote the first book in the English language on this new and valuable method of diagnosis. Many years of personal acquaintance with this remarkable man and his work impels me to give him credit for being the ablest iridiagnostician now living. Anderchou in England published a few years ago a brief summary of the discoveries and teachings of the pioneers of Iridology.
The "regular" school of medicine, as a body, has ignored and will ignore this science, because it discloses the fallacy of their favorite theories and practices, and because it reveals unmistakably the direful results of chronic drug poisoning and ill advised operations.
Leaving out of consideration everything that is at present speculative and uncertain, we are justified in making the following statements, subject to the qualifications and limitations before described:
(1) The eye is not only, as the ancients said, "the mirror of the soul", but it also frequently reveals abnormal conditions and changes in every part and organ of the body.
(2) Organs and parts of the body are represented in the iris of the eye in well defined areas. (Chart--Frontispiece.)
(3) The iris of the eye contains an immense number of minute nerve filaments, which through the optic nerves, the optic thalami and the spinal cord are connected with and receive impressions from every nerve in the body.
(4) The nerve filaments, muscle fibres and minute blood vessels in the different areas of the iris reproduce the changing conditions in the corresponding parts or organs.
(5) By means of various marks, signs, abnormal colors, or discolorations in the iris, Nature reveals transmitted disease taints and hereditary lesions.
(6) By signs, marks and discolorations, Nature also makes known acute and chronic inflammatory or catarrhal conditions, local lesions, destruction of tissues, various drug poisons, and changes in structures and tissues caused by accidental injury or by surgical mutilations. (Figs. 12, 28)
(7) The diagnosis from the iris of the eye positively confirms Hahnemann's theory that acute diseases have a constitutional background of hereditary or acquired disease taints or systemic encumbrances.
(8) This science enables the diagnostician to ascertain, from the appearance of the iris, many of the patient's inherited or acquired tendencies toward health and toward disease, his condition in general, and the state of various organs in particular. Reading Nature's records in the eye, he can predict many of the healing crises through which the patient will have to pass on the road to health.
(9) The iris frequently reveals dangerous changes in vital parts and organs from their inception, thus enabling the patient to avert threatening disease by natural living and natural methods of treatment.
(10) Changes in the iris indicate plainly the gradual purification of the system, the elimination of morbid matter and poisons, and the readjustment of the organism to normal conditions under the regenerating influences of natural living and treatment.
The effects of surgical operations performed under anesthesia either do not show in the eyes at all, or only very faintly, though entire organs or large parts of the body may have been removed by the surgeon's knife. This is due to the fact that under anesthesia the sensory nerves are benumbed and paralyzed; for this reason we do not feel pain. This condition of temporary paralysis prevents the transmission of impulses to the iris and thereby the production of corresponding signs or lesions in the eye. For instance, the loss of a leg amputated under anesthesia may not show in the eyes, while the scar tissue caused by the bite of a dog, a wound received from a bullet, or other injury received in a waking, conscious condition, may show for life in the form of a closed lesion in the iris.
These facts prove that the lesions in the eyes are made through abnormal or pathological nerve impulses, which throw the nerve fibres and other structures in the surface layers of the iris out of their normal arrangement. Inflammatory processes incidental to the healing of wounds show temporarily as white signs.
Discolorations or color signs in the eyes are created by color pigments carried into and deposited in the surface layers of the iris through the capillary circulation.
The dark signs of subacute catarrhal and chronic catarrhal conditions and of loss of substance or death of tissues are created through atrophy and sloughing of nerve and muscle fibres in the surface of the iris, or depressions and holes in the deeper layers.
I have frequently heard the question, ''How is it possible that lesions in the body show in the iris on the same side, when all the afferent nerves cross to the opposite brain half? According to this, lesions in one side of the body should show in the opposite iris." The answer is,--the crossing of the optic nerves brings back the signs in the iris to the side of the body in which the corresponding lesion is located.
Exceptions to this are lesions in the brain. They cross over in the optic nerves, and show in the opposite iris. Thus lesions in right brain half show in the left iris and vice versa.
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