Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/28

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that good digestion depends upon restful sleep, fresh air, sunlight, physical exercise, and activity of the bowels, kidneys, and skin. Disregarding these essential matters, it is difficult to apprehend the nature of digestive disturbances, or to prescribe for their relief. It may truly be said of an individual that, in a sense, his digestive ailment arises in the brain, in the lungs, in the heart, or in the kidneys, but the distinctions and differences heretofore stated must be clearly kept in mind, lest the idea of the unity of disease be clouded. The study of disease of the stomach is not limited to that organ, but is the expression there of disturbances that may be widely distributed throughout the body. Medicine has sought to give disease specifically classified names based upon locality of symptom, but this, it is seen, is only a relatively justifiable conception. There are no symptoms referable solely to the kidneys, to the heart, or to the blood; the man is sick from a single cause; his illness appears here or there.

The advance toward unity of thought and of action goes on in all scientific fields, and it is logical to believe that the important place occupied in the universe by the body of man should long since have been completely