e have engendered the diseased condition we see before us; and the
only effective and rational way to stop the effects--the symptoms--is to
stop the causes, to change the habits of life which have led to such
results; and not to tinker with the effects. Even pain may be ignored to
some extent; but pain is due to a certain pathological state which
requires treatment. It is simply an indication of an existing bodily
condition. What is the good of ignoring that state, when it exists?
Symptoms may be ignored, but the causes of those symptoms run on in the
body, nevertheless, and in the end work havoc and breed sickness and
decay.

I am aware of the fact that the Christian Scientists, e.g., would reply
to this that the bodily state (there is no body, according to them, but
we let that pass, for the moment) _is_ cured at the same time; that, by
the mere affirmation that the body is whole, we thereby make it whole;
we do not suppress symptoms, we remove causes as well. This I deny, at
least in many cases. I have seen too many of such "cures" _and relapses_
not to know whereof I speak. A patient goes to a "healer" and becomes
"cured." A few weeks or months later his trouble returns; or, if not the
same trouble, another and perhaps a worse one. This is "cured" in turn,
and so on.

Now it is a well-known fact that a disease suppressed in one place or
one direction has a tendency to break out in another. It has been
gathering in force all the time within the body, and finally bursts
forth again worse than before. "And the last state of that man was worse
than the first." The _causes_ have run on. Similar causes can produce
opposite effects--just as opposite causes can produce similar effects.
Although no tangible connection between the first and the second illness
can be traced, it is there nevertheless; and both have been produced by
a common cause. We cannot ignore causes; we must treat them; and if we
do not, they will, in the majority of cases, repay us a thousandfold for
our past neglect.

When a person is diseased the majority of mental-scientists would at
least admit that certain unphysiological conditions were present and
needed to be overcome. If this be so, I ask: Why should we allow the
body to become diseased at all and thus necessitate its cure by mental
or any other means? Would it not be much simpler to prevent such a
diseased condition, in the first place, by proper physiological habits
of life; and so render an