“The modern school of medicine looks upon the bacillus as 
the sole cause of disease. 
“The cause, however, is not the bacillus, but rather the 
impure blood which prepares a fertile soil for the development 
of those destructive germs. 
“He who lives strictly in accordance with the rules of hygiene 
need not fear the bacillus, for man is not born sick; he creates 
sickness for himself by his irrational mode of living. 
“What does the world profit by bacteriological institutions 
if the people continue to live in the old sins against health and 
hygiene ? 
“Man may be born with a predisposition to disease, but not 
with disease itself. 
“Our health depends entirely upon the conditions of our life. 
“In cases of predisposition to disease, therefore, as well as 
in disease itself, according to the principles of hygiene, we must 
employ only the hygienic and dietetic methods of treatment. 
“Is the medical science of the day, then, totally incompetent? 
You may well ask.—Have the patient studies and research of 
nearly two thousand four hundred years, since the days of Hip¬ 
pocrates, been all in vain? 
“The reply lies ready to your hand, from the lips of one of 
the brightest scientific spirits that ever illumined this dull earth 
of ours with knowledge and sincerity. 
“In Goethe’s Faust the following lines are found,—lines which 
sad memory brings back to the minds of many an unfortunate 
who, according to the dictates of the medical science of today, is 
pronounced incurable,—a sufferer from one or other of the so- 
called chronic diseases and in dire need of both physical and 
spiritual support. 
“ 7 have, alas, philosophy, 
Medicine , jurisprudence too , 
And, to my cost, theology 
With ardent labour studied through ; 
And here I stand with all my lore, 
Poor fool, no wiser than before” 
39 
