Written By: Steven Horne

For years medical researchers have struggled to find the answer to the common cold. Yet, in spite of the thousands of hours of research and the millions of dollars which have been put into this project, no one has yet discovered a cure for this common ailment. In this article, however, you will find the answer to the problem of the common cold. In fact, you will gain an important key to understanding the nature disease symptoms in general.

This understanding of the common cold came from an analogy used in New Guide to Health by Samuel Thomson. Thomson compared the body to a furnace. A furnace takes in air and fuel and then burns the fuel to create heat or energy. It must also eliminate the smoke and ash that are created in this process.

A similar process takes place in our bodies. We eat food and breathe in air and burn to food to create the energy our bodies need to function. We must also eliminate the waste from this process.

When thinking about the body as a furnace, if we use high-quality fuel such as high-grade coal or hardwoods to stoke the fire, then we will get a hot fire with very little smoke and ash. On the other hand, if we burn cheaper fuels such as softwoods, then the fire will not burn as hot or as clean. If we throw green wood or other poor quality fuel into the fire the flame will smolder and produce a great deal of smoke and ash.

This also is true of our bodies. The body is a high performance engine made to run on quality fuel. When quality fuel is used, the body furnace burns clean and hot, as is suggested by the following diagram.

In Thomson’s words:

“Our life depends on heat; food is the fuel that kindles and continues that heat. The digestive powers being correct, causes the food to consume; this continues the warmth of the body, by continually supporting the fire. The stomach is the depository from which the whole body is supported. The heat is maintained in the stomach by consuming the food; and all the body and limbs receive their proportion of nourishment and heat from that source; as the whole room is warmed by the fuel which is consumed in the fire place. The greater the quantity of wood consumed in the fireplace, the greater the heat in the room. So in the body; the more food, well digested, the more heat and support through the whole man.”

Toxic Overload

However, when poor quality fuel (i.e., ‘junk” food) is used, the internal fire may begin to smolder and smoke. It no longer produces the heat or energy we need and we begin to feel tired and worn out. As smoke and ash begin to build up in the fireplace, the chimney may become clogged and the fire begins to smother. I call this condition “toxic overload.” This next figure illustrates this situation.

Thomson described this condition in the following words.

“By constantly receiving food into the stomach, [food] which is…not suitable for the best nourishment, the stomach becomes foul, so that the food is not well digested. This causes the body to lose its heat; then the appetite fails; the bones ache, and the man is sick in every part of the whole frame.”

If you’ve had any experience in making campfires, you probably realize that if the fire is hot enough, you can throw in a green branch or two and they will burn. However, if you continue to feed the fire with green wood, eventually in will smolder and die. Hence, we could get away with consuming this poor quality fuel if we only did it occasionally, but when we use inferior fuel constantly, our internal fire is going to diminish and our body will begin to accumulate an excess of smoke and ash (toxic waste). We will feel this first as a loss of energy.

According to Thomson’s theories, disease occurs when the body energy or fire is diminished and the perspiration or elimination is obstructed. He felt that fever was not a disease, but rather an attempt on the part of the body to burn up the excess toxic material in the system.

“Is fever or heat a disease? Hippocrates, the acknowledged father of physicians, maintained that nature is heat; and he is correct. Is nature a disease? Surely it is not. What is commonly called fever is the effect and not the cause of disease. It is the struggle of nature to throw off the disease. The cold causes an obstruction, and fever arises in consequence of that obstruction to throw it off. This is universally the case. Remove the cause and the effect will cease.”

The Body’s Chimney’s

As I thought about what Thomson had to say of fevers, I began to wonder if this was not true of symptoms in general. I began to understand that unlike a furnace, the body has intelligence. Hence, if one or more of the body’s chimneys becomes partially blocked, the body will seek to remove the excess waste through one of the other channels of elimination. The body, you see, does not have one chimney, it has four (five in women). These chimneys are the bowel, the kidneys, the skin, the mucus membranes (lungs & sinuses) and, in women, the female reproductive system.

When one channel cannot handle all the waste in the body, then another, stronger, channel of elimination will take up the slack. I call this process emergency evacuation. It has also been called vicarious elimination. This process is illustrated by the following.

This emergency evacuation of toxins produces most of the symptoms of acute ailments. When this elimination of excess waste occurs through the bowel we call it diarrhea. When it occurs through the kidneys it may produce frequent or burning urination or other signs of kidney or bladder distress. When it occurs through the skin we have body odor, pimples, acne, rashes, hives and pox. When it occurs through the sinuses and lungs we have bad breath, sinus drainage, runny noses, coughs and other forms of  respiratory congestion.

Further Validation

I am not alone in this line of thinking. Thomas Sydenham, known as the English Hippocrates stated “Disease is nothing else but an attempt on the part of the body to rid itself of morbific matter.”

A modern medical doctor, Dr. Henry Bieler, came to these same conclusions after years of treating patients with changes in diet. In his book, Food is Your Best Medicine, he states: The body’s

“terrific attempt” to burn up these waste products results in fever. And it is the changes (usually destructive) in the organs being used as avenues of emergency vicarious elimination which constitute the pathology, or conditions and processes of a disease.

Following this line of thinking, the name of a disease is based upon a description…of the changes in the organs being used as emergency avenues of elimination.

The Ayurveda tradition of medicine from India also describes disease as originating with an imbalance which impairs the body’s biological fire. They call this fire “agni” and teach that it governs the process of breaking down, absorbing and assimilating food. Once agni is impaired, the body’s natural immunities falter and “ama” (toxins) circulate throughout the body and accumulate in weak, susceptible areas, thus creating disease.

Cold Symptoms are the Cold Cure

This furnace analogy helps us to understand the truth about the common cold. Modern science will never discover a cure for the common cold, because the cold IS the cure. That is to say, the symptoms we associate with colds: fever, sinus drainage, coughs, sneezing, etc. are not the disease. They are not the enemy. They are the efforts of the body to heal itself. In fact, as we have suggested, this is true not only of colds, but of all acute ailments. Symptoms like rashes, hives, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, itching, body odor, inflammation and even pain are all manifestations of the life process. They are all efforts of the body to cure itself. Hence, anything we do to try to block or suppress these symptoms will only prolong the illness.

Going back to our furnace analogy, suppose we have a person whose body is in a disease state. The fire of life is burning low and the system is clogged with ash and smoke. To preserve the fire of life, the body is using what energy it does have to force an elimination of toxins through the respiratory passages. Because the person believes that this eliminative process is the enemy he takes a drug which poisons the respiratory system so that it is no longer strong enough to act as a channel for eliminating these toxins. This might be compared to putting a cork into that chimney. Now, the symptoms have been relieved, but at what price?

By this analogy, we can see that poisons destroy the vital power of the body, which suppresses the symptoms and therefore interferes with the healing processes of the body. This helps us understand why poisons may give the appearance of a cure, but in the long run, they destroy our health and vitality. Unfortunately, most modern drugs are poisons. In fact, Eli Lily, the founder of one of our largest pharmaceutical houses said that all drugs are poisons. He maintained that by definition drugs are poisons and if a drug was not a poison it was not a good drug. This is why drugs suppress symptoms, but they do not remove the underlying cause of disease.

The great secret of healing is that the body heals itself. All we can do is assist the body’s own healing process and this can only be done by providing the body with those things which would have helped to keep it healthy in the first place. Thus, the true art of healing involves things like: adequate rest, proper nourishment, pure water, fresh air, proper elimination, exercise, touch, positive mental attitudes and all other processes which would tend to keep a healthy person healthy. All of these things are natural to the body. Hence, healing by means of these processes can rightfully be called: natural healing, because all of these therapies are therapies which are natural to the body, whether it is healthy or sick. Thomson put it this way, “The same thing will prevent disease that will cure it.”

What About Germs?

But wait a minute. We were taught in school that germs cause disease. Cold symptoms don’t arise from blocked elimination, they are caused by infection. We catch colds don’t we?

The truth is, germs are not the primary cause of disease. They are a secondary effect and many herbalists and natural healers since Thomson’s day have realized this.

Just prior to Pasteur’s day Rudolf Virchow, in his pioneer work on cellular pathology, maintained that the health of body cells depended on their chemical make-up and this chemical make-up depended in turn upon the kind of food eaten by the individual. “If I could live my life over again,” stated Virchow, “I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat–diseased tissue–rather than being the cause of diseased tissue: e.g. mosquitoes seek stagnant water, but do not cause the pool to become stagnant.”

The famous herbalist, Dr. Edward E. Shook explains this eloquently in his Advanced Treatise in Herbology. Speaking of orthodox medical tests he says: “They will show you illustrations of minute living organisms (so-called pathological germs) which are found in sputum, or pus taken from diseased tissues or secretions. Probably, at first sight, you are astonished; then you wonder “Can this be true?” Yes, it must be true. There they are! Right in the pus, plain as can be. How awful that such creature can live and destroy our bodies without our knowledge until too late. Surely these doctors have discovered the truth. They are right. The germs must be killed.” But wait a minute before you jump to such a conclusion. We find the fly on garbage which is composed of decaying organic matter. Is he, the fly, the cause of the garbage, or does the garbage breed the fly? We find the white maggot in decaying flesh. Was he (the maggot) the cause of death? And what are these creatures doing there? They are eating, consuming, doing away with decaying matter….”

Shook recognized that germs, like flies and mosquitoes, live where there is stagnation and decay. Using Thomson’s furnace analogy, germs live in the smoke and ash that accumulates where the fire is burning low. When the fire is burning hot and clean, germs cannot live.

In modern terms we call that clean, hot burning state immunity. Even in orthodox medical circles, it is recognized that immunity is an important factor in whether or not we “catch” a disease. Here are two statements which discuss this concept. These are from Man the Unknown by the famous medical doctor Alexis Carrol.

Microbes and viruses are to be found everywhere, in the air,in water, in our food. They are always present at the surface of the skin, and of the digestive and respiratory mucosas. Nevertheless, in many people they remain inoffensive. Among human beings, some are subject to diseases, and others are immune. Such a state of resistance is due to the individual constitution of the tissues and the humors, which oppose the penetration of pathogenic agents or destroy them when they have invaded our body. This is natural immunity. This form of immunity may preserve certain individuals from almost any disease. It is one of the most precious qualities for which a man could wish. We are still ignorant of nature. It appears to depend on some properties of ancestral origin, as well as on others acquired in the course of development…

But natural immunity does not exclusively derive from ancestral constitution. It may come from our mode of life and alimentation, as Reid Hunt showed long ago. Some diets were found to increase the susceptibility of mice to experimental typhoid fever. The frequency of pneumonia may also be modified by food. The mice belonging to one of the strains kept in the mousery of the Rockefeller Institute died of pneumonia in the proportion of fifty-two percent while subjected to the standard diet. Several groups of these animals were given different diets. The mortality from pneumonia fell to thirty-two percent, fourteen percent, and even zero, according to the food.

Disease can be prevented by the individual doing everything in his power to keep in the best physical condition. Disease is a common enemy of all of us, waiting to destroy, but Nature is in league with us if we obey her laws. With a normal body and pure blood, should the invader arrive, the fight is on our side. But once the body is weakened by heredity as a result of our parents’ or forefathers’ neglect of the body, through the abuse of alcohol, tobacco or immoral living, lack of exercise, overeating and loss of sleep, overwork or lack of work, or improper food, then will the soil be fertile for the planting of the germs of disease. When exposed and once planted, the fight will be in their favor, as the rundown body will not have sufficient vitality to overcome the invader and sickness and death result.

These quotes all suggest that our health is not dependent on the whim of germs, but rather that germs take advantage of our body when it is weakened by abuse. Our thesis is that germs invade the body only because of the weakened energy of the tissues and the accompanying accumulation of toxic waste. Hence, using antibiotics and drug medicines may be likened to spraying our garbage piles and swamps with insecticides. It may temporarily relieve the symptoms, but as soon as the poison wears off, the scavengers will return.

Thompson’s analogy that the body is like a furnace is still useful and valid. So, what about the fuel we are “burning” in our modern stomachs? Is it high quality fuel, poor quality fuel or kitchen garbage? It’s something to think about.