Usually, we think of curing an illness or a disease, but we often use the word cure for other problems. We might wish to find a ‘Cure’ for Turkey’s Ills, or claim that Rube Goldberg found the cure for self-isolation boredom or cure the quarantine blues, or Cure Our Wanderlust, or even to cure your desktop audio ills. Or maybe we need to cure our car? Are these really cures?
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To have, or to be, that is the question. Do communities have spirits? Or are they spirits?
Image from the book by Zygmunt Bauman.
What is a community? What is “not” a community? Is there a “black community” in the USA? Or are there many black communities, or none? Is there a Muslim community? A Jewish community? Are anthills and beehives communities? What about trees?How small can a community be, and still be a community? A family is a community, right? An extended family? A couple? A single person? How big can a community be, and still be a community? Is life on the planet earth a community?
Am I a community? Are you a community? Are “me, myself, and I” a community?
Communities consist of individuals, living individuals. A group of rocks, or mountains, or planets, cannot form a community. We’re never certain about cats.
A community is a group of living individuals. But what else? If we see a woman sitting on a park bench, and a cat under the bench, are they a community? Can communities be temporary? Can communities be permanent? What is temporary? What is permanent? Are all communities temporary?
A group of living individuals acting in cooperation defines a community.
The SPIRIT of COOPERATION defines life.
How much cooperation? If there is just a wee tiny bit of cooperation among the individuals, is it a wee tiny community? Or just a wee tiny bit of community? Is the size of the community defined by the number of members, by their size, or by their community spirit? Is there a minimum of cooperation to define a community.
What is the minimum of cooperation to create a life form?
More than a rock. Rocks don’t cooperate. They have no ability to cooperate and no ability to benefit from cooperation, much less to be aware of cooperation.
Every living cell is a single entity consisting of hundreds, perhaps thousands of processes in cooperation. If the cooperation fails, the cell dies. Or can it hibernate? A spore and a seed have no cooperating processes. Are they alive? They are alive until they die. When is a seed dead? When it no longer has the ability to create a community of cooperating processes. “Spores straddles the line between life and seeming death” – sporesmd.com advises. Actually, they straddle our definition of life and death. We see life as “cooperating processes.” When the processes of a seed or a spore are not cooperating, they seem to be dead. Maybe it’s dead. Maybe not. How can we tell? Ask Schrodinger. Give it light, food, water, an opportunity to cooperate, to live. If it starts up, it was alive. If not, it was (and is) dead.
When biologists isolate single bacterial species and grow them alone, they die. Not only do single celled bacterial cooperate with each other, they must cooperate with other bacterial species to survive, to thrive, to reproduce and evolve. They die without community. Similarly, no humans are strictly individual – or if so, they do not survive and of course – do not reproduce. Even very small single celled individuals, like diatoms form communities with other species – and we call that community phytoplankton.
Communities can cooperate, creating a higher level community.
We might view any multi-cellular living individual as a community of cells. In humans cells cooperate to create tissues, tissues cooperate to form organs, organs cooperate to create organ systems and together they create the living individual. When an organ fails to cooperate, the individual might adjust – or die – depending on the organ function.
Communities cooperate with individuals – forming more diverse communities – and with other communities, forming more complex communities. Our bodies cooperate with other individuals and communities.
Cooperation creates and maintains the individual. The individual is a community. The community is an individual. When cooperation fails, as it inevitably does, that community – the individual dies.
No individual, no community lives forever. Cooperation is a temporary process. A set of temporary processes. A hierarchy of temporary processes. A hierarchy of individuals.
Is cooperation intentional? Can it be accidental? Can it be due to circumstances? When a seed is hibernating, the potential for cooperation lies waiting. Dead things, rocks, don’t have the potential for cooperation, don’t have any potential for life. Time and place, lucky circumstance stimulates and facilitates cooperation.
Cooperation often requires individuals to develop take roles. Some ants develop into soldier ants, protecting the anthill, others into foragers, seeking food, others become nursemaids, looking after the queen. How does this happen? The genetics of worker ants and soldier ants are not different, their roles are decided by individual experiences in the community. We can imagine this happening is a much simpler community. Pond scum, is described as “a mass of algae forming a green film on the surface of stagnant water,” but it’s actually a community of algae. We often confuse a “mass” of life forms and a “community” of life forms. A mass is not cooperating. A community is cooperating. At the edges of the pond scum community, the algae cells need to be tough. They are exposed to forces of the external environment. Food can be scarce on the borders. The weather can be cold, or hot, changeable. In the middle of the mass, food is plentiful, and the mass of cells moderates the temperature.
Cooperation creates a thriving community – even involuntary, unintentional cooperation. Communities create cooperation.
Cooperation is one of the fundamental spirits of community. The foundational spirit. There are two fundamental spirits of community. Cooperation is the spirit of “goodness.” What is the counter spirit?
Individuals in a community cooperate. Cooperation defines the community.
Individuals in communities compete. Competition defines the membership boundaries of the community.
Every single celled algae in a pond scum is “looking out for number one,” competing with other cells for food, and for sunlight. The pond scum is the community, not recognized as an individual – the community exists as a result of the cooperation and the competition. Competition, fair competition by algae in the pond scum defines the community. Anything that competes “unfairly” is an outsider – it does not follow the rules of fair competition within the pond scum community.
Organisms that infiltrate the pond scum and eat cells of the pond scum are not the community, they are unfair competitors. These might be individual cells, small organisms like insect larvae, tadpoles, frogs, water bugs, and fish are unfair competitors. They are not part of the pond scum community – they eat it.
We can also look from a higher level, that of the pond, and see the pond scum with the organisms that eat it as a higher level community. In addition, they form their own communities – and are part of the larger pond community.
A group of individuals competing fairly defines the community.
The cells in the pond scum cooperate to create a community. Within the community, individual cells compete. The two spirits, cooperation and competition define the community.
A community of humans has the same two attributes – but there are millions of communities of humans, and millions of communities of communities of communities of humans – cooperating and competing.
That’s the spirit. The spirits of life.
In the image of community, from the cover of the book by Zygmunt Bauman, we might conclude that there is only cooperation, but no. Each human is cooperating in the circle, but the circle cannot last. Very soon – because they are falling, each individual must beak out of the community, or die. They can, of course, for the same or a similar community again at some time in the future, or perhaps not.
There are exactly three types of curing, based on cause.
In the theory of cure, we find three elementary types of causes of healthiness and illness, potentially leading to three types of illness, cured respectively with three types of cures: healing, curing, and caring.
We are familiar with healing cures, because most illnesses are cured by healing. We get a bruise, or a cut, or a puncture from a mosquito – and it heals. The more damage the slower the curing. Once the healing stops, the cure is completed. The injury is gone, although there might be some remnants. The less damage, the more perfect the cure. No cure is perfect, so no healing cure is perfect. Cures move us forward, not back to a previous status. Sometimes healing leaves a scar. Sometimes, the damage is too great, and healing can only close off the damage, but not produce a complete repair.
In the theory of cure, we cure when we intentionally address the present cause of the illness. If we have a bacterial infection, and we kill the bacteria with an antibiotic, that’s a medical cure. If a surgeon removes the bacteria – that’s a medical cure. If the infection is small, and we simply scratch it away – it’s also a cure, but not medical. If we have been stranded in the desert, we drink water to cure our dehydrated status. Curing cures, like healing cures are one-time cures. We cure and the illness is gone. It might occur again, if the cause occurs again.
When we are dehydrated from our desert experience, a one-time cure is needed, and sufficient. But if we are dehydrated because are not drinking enough water every day, the cure is to care for ourselves, to drink sufficient water every day, a caring cure. Caring cures are ongoing. When an illness is caused by a failure to care for ourselves – a one-time cure is not sufficient, an ongoing cure is necessary.
In this discussion, we are focusing on simple illnesses, elementary illnesses, to gain a clear understanding of the concepts, a clear foundation. An elementary illness, or an element of illness has a single cause. It is cured by addressing the single cause. When that cause has been addressed – the illness is gone. If the cause occurs again, a new illness is present, and a new cure is needed.
An illness consists of the intersection of a present cause and a set of negative consequences, resulting from that cause as illustrated in this figure:
When an illness is present, the cause is present. To cure, we must address the present cause. Working to address past causes, or future causes, might prevent future illnesses, but it cannot cure a present illness.
Healing, curing, and caring address different types of causes.
Healing addresses injury causes. The injury has past causes – but the injury is the cause of distress, the cause of signs and symptoms of the illness. When the injury is healed, cured, the signs and symptoms fade away.
Although modern medicine recognizes healing as a cure, healing cures are generally ignored. They don’t require medical attention. A patient with a stab wound visits a hospital, gets a blood transfusion, perhaps some stitches, and is sent home to heal.
Curing addresses attribute causes. The bacteria causing an infection is a thing, which when successfully addressed – killed or removed – results in a cure. Most infections are cured by natural forces, by healing, but some are severe enough to require intentional action like antibacterial medicine, or surgery.
Medical curing is recognized medically – although rarely documented as a cure. When a surgeon operates on a hernia, it’s a surgical cure, billed as a surgery, not a cure. Non-medical curing is generally ignored. When a grandchild clips the grandmother’s ingrown toenail, curing it, the surgery is not considered medical. When a doctor or nurse does the same – it’s medical, medically billable, but not documented as a cure.
Caring cures address lifestyle causes, often addressing chronic causes. If we don’t get enough healthy food, we suffer malnutrition. The cure is not a healthy meal, it is healthy eating. There are many different types of malnutrition, and many other lifestyle causes of illness. In each case, the cure is to care for ourselves. When we fall into a damaging habit, like smoking, we develop smoker’s cough. The cure is a negative action: not smoking.
Caring cures are not one-time cures. The cure must be maintained to maintain the cured status. Before the illness, the cure action is maintained without conscious attention. Sometimes, when illness is present, the cure can also occur without conscious intent. Sometimes, after we start eating a healthy diet to cure an illness, the cure becomes part of us, maintained without conscious intent to cure.
Caring cures come first from self-care. But, sometimes we need help. Children need help from parents to maintain healthiness and to cure when lifestyle illnesses occur. Sometimes a cure comes from a sibling – feeding an aging senior can no longer care for themselves, or from a care home.
Most caring is not curing. Most of the time, we care for ourselves without any illness, without any desire to cure. Caring can be viewed as a preventative when no illness is present, a cure when a lifestyle illness occurs.
Modern medicine rarely, if at all, acknowledges caring as curing. Palliative care is a medical term for caring with no intention to cure, caring after the medical system has given up on curing. Even when palliative care cures – for example curing a patient’s chronic dehydration – the cure is rarely recognized, much less documented. Caring often cures illnesses that are chronic, but modern medicine generally judges chronic diseases as incurable.
A present case of illness has a present cause. Any illness might have many different past causes, which we can speculate backwards in a chain as in the ditty, “for want of a nail…”
An illness is cured by addressing its present cause(s). There are three fundamentally different types of causes.
The three elementary causes of illness are injuries, attributes (things), and processes (lifestyle causes), as illustrated in the above diagram.
Note: there are no clear distinctions between the three different types of illness, we distinguish by curing, by successfully addressing the cause.
Injury illnesses are the most common – and most injuries are trivial, easily cured by the natural forces of health and healing.
Attribute illnesses are caused by things, attributes. The attribute cause might be a barrier, like a brick wall, or perhaps a hole. The attribute must be changed, transformed, such that it no longer causes illness, to produce a cure. An illness caused by a thorn, a bacteria, or an ingrown toenail are cured when the cause is addressed, transformed, or removed.
Injuries are also attributes and an injury illness is cured when the injury is transformed by healing. The distinction between healing and curing, in the theory of cure, is the intent. When we cure without conscious intent – it’s healing. When we cure with conscious intention – it’s curing.
Causal illnesses are caused by life processes. We often think of lifestyle illnesses as chronic and incurable, but this limited vision can result in a failure to cure many curable illnesses and failure to recognize many cures when they occur. Causal illnesses are cured by processes changes, addition, removal or change, transformation of a process that must be maintained to maintain the cured status.
The distinction between an attribute illness and a causal illness is judged by the cure. When a one-time transformation produces a cure, the illness was an attribute illness. On the other hand, when a cure requires an ongoing process, the illness was a causal illness.
A simple case of dehydration is cured by drinking sufficient water to address the dehydrated status. However, an ongoing case, a case of chronic dehydration, requires an ongoing action – regularly drinking sufficient water. Of course, dehydration can have many other causes – but those are not simple, not elementary cases.
The three different types of illness, injuries, attributes, an causal illnesses are cured respectively by healing, curing, and caring.
In this image, we can see that healing, curing, and caring actions match perfectly with the different causes and different types of illness in the circle.
No cure is perfect.
Healing cures are not perfect – they are forward transformations. Sometimes, healing does not cure, sometimes healing is deficient or excessive, resulting in failure to cure or negative consequences from the cure process. Healing, however, is usually naturally curative.
Attribute cures work when they successfully address the cause of the illness, and fail when they do not – and result in partial cures when the cause is only partially addressed. Of course, not all of our intentional curative actions result in cures and neither do all of our intentional transformations. Life is about intention.
Modern medicine has no concept of a causal cure, a cure that must be maintained, must be cared for, to prevent the recurrence of illness. Caring is often dismissed as non-curative. For example, palliative care is delivered without any intention to cure. However, many illnesses require ongoing caring actions to maintain the cure. We need to understand this to build a comprehensive understanding of curing, caring, and healing.
Most cases of elementary illnesses are trivial, easily cured – so easily that we dismiss the cure and often even dismiss the illness. We get a minor cut, a bruise, indigestion, a headache – and we simply ignore it. It’s not important. It heals. Life goes on.
A case of disease is an illness recognized, diagnosed by a medical professional. We rarely take our elementary illness to the doctor – because we can cure it ourselves. The exceptions are lifestyle chronic illnesses, like tennis elbow and smoker’s cough, where we know, in theory, the cause and the cure, but choose instead to ask for medical assistance.
Most diseases are defined such that multiple causes are present. Compound and complex illnesses require compound and complex curative actions.
Modern medicine, however, often wants to find simple cures, one-time cures, complete cures, permanent cures – and thus cannot recognize cure elements, which are partial cures. The vocabulary of cure, in our current medical paradigm, does not have words for the concepts of cure elements, partial cures, temporary cures, repeating cures, and process cures. The cure for smoker’s cough, easily understood by patient’s, friends and family, and medical professionals, cannot be recognized as a cure even after it occurs, because modern medicine has no concept of a negative process cure “stop the smoking process.”
To cure more illnesses, to improve our cures, we must cure and recognize cured cases and the causes of the cures.
to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure
I am currently (for the next few weeks at least) living in Arequipa, Peru, and working on a translation of the Theory of Cure, into Spanish.
Actualmente vivo en Arequipa, Perú, y trabajo en una traducción de la Teoría de la Cura al español. ¿Puede usted ayudar? Necesito ayuda de personas que hablen español e inglés para que me den sus opiniónes.
Thanks for reading Theory of Cure. Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Can you help? I need help from people who speak Spanish, and English to give me feedback. You can provide feedback here in the comments, or by emailing me at tracychess@hotmail.com.
The draft paper, in Spanish, can be accessed at this link: Teoría de La Cura. If you wish, you an also view a version that contains both Spanish and English for each paragraph.
Any feedback you can provide is important to me. It might be useful to understand some of the challenges – even in the English version of the theory.
The first problem in creating a theory of cure is simply the meaning of cure. In English, most medical references have no definitions for cure, cures, curing, and cured – much less any standard medical definitions. Most medical references do not even provide a definition of cure. It turns out the same is true in Spanish.
These dictionaries do not contain an entry for cure (cura)
MANUAL DE TERMINOLOGIA MÉDICA, Prof. Edwin Saldaña Ambulódegui, 2012
Diccionario Medico Título original: Concise Medica/ Dictionary de Oxford University Press,
Traducción y adaptación: Dr. Rafael Ruiz Loro, 1988.
Diccionario Médico (Barcelona) )by Bello, Jorge, 2001
Diccionario Espasa medicina by Universidad de Navarra. Facultad de Medicina, Madrid, Spain, 1999.
Libro De La Vida Diccionario De Medicina Abril 1973
Diccionario de términos técnicos usados en medicina by Garnier, Marcel, 1918
Diccionario Médico, Chris Brooker, 2008
Diccionario Medico Completo, Engais-Espanol, Jorge Carlos Berriatúa Pérez, 2013
The definition for cure in Nuevo diccionario médico by Ruiz Lara, Rafael Publication date 1988 says simply “cura: Ver TERAPÉUTICA“, but there is no entry for TERAPÉUTICA.
I did find Spanish medical reference that claim to define cure. The first is a Nursing dictionary, Diccionario de Enfermería – Segunda Edición (Spanish Edition), Rojas Núñez, Silvia, 2003 which defines cure and curable thus:
“Cura > (Del lat. cura, cuidado, solicitud). Curación.
Curable = (Del lat. curabĭlis). Persona que es susceptible de curar.“
The only Spanish Medical reference where I could find a meaningful definition of cure was written in 1805. which identifies four classes of cures:
1. la conservativa ó vital, baxo la qual se halla también comprehendida la analéptica:
2. la preservativa ó profiláctica:
3. la paliativa ó mitigatoria, que comprehende la urgente; y
4. la radical, que es con toda propiedad el tratamiento terapéutico ó curativo.” –
In English
“1. the conservative or vital, under which the analeptic is also included:
2. the preservative or prophylactic:
3. the palliative or mitigating, which includes the urgent; and
4. the radical, which is properly the therapeutic or curative treatment.”
Has there been no change the medical definition of cure since 1805.
Of course normal Spanish dictionaries define cure, and Spanish-English dictionaries defined cure, but these cures are based on general language usage, not on medical theory, practice nor science.
The second problem to defining a theory of cure, is the question: “What is cured by a cure.” Working in English, I quickly learned that we cannot begin by studying cures of diseases. Most diseases, officially – according to our medical systems are incurable. Even “there is no cure for the common cold.”
In English I chose the word illness. The concept of illness is broader than disease. It is possible to be ill without a disease. It is necessary to have an illness before any disease can be diagnosed. In addition, it is possible to have an illness – and a cure – without any diagnosis of a disease. The common cold is a perfect example. We get a cold. We suck it up. And we are cure by health and healthy actions, without seeing a doctor, without a diagnosis, without a officially recorded case of disease.
What is the Spanish word for illness? I’ve chosen dolencia. In Spanish,
“Una dolencia curable se curaba con una cura.”
Writing the Theory of Cure also required the creation of several new concepts. Modern medicine has no clear definition of cure, much less an agreed scientific definition. As a result, many of the concepts required to support an understanding of cure are poorly developed in English.
My Theory of Cure goal is to create a comprehensive view of cure that can be applied to any type of illness or disease. Starting with a process of simplification, I was able to accomplish much more. The resulting general theory of cure is not limited to diseases – it can be applied to any problem in a goal directed system, like a flat tire.
Because I speak English reasonably well I was able to make effective use of current words and language by selecting some clear definitions already in use and combining well known words to create new ideas.
For example, I have defined cure – in the theory of cure – as
Cured: “the cause has been addressed,” a definition that applies to an elementary illness, one with a single cause.
But, what is to be cured? Many diseases – I eventually learned that most diseases – have multiple causes. Does that mean most diseases require multiple cures?
This required a change in the definition of “cause“. The epidemiological cause of dehydration, or scurvy, or a broken arm, or COVID ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) is in the past. Going back into the past to address the failure to drink water, eat healthy foods, to fall down the stairs, or to avoid be exposed to the virus, is not possible. We cannot cure “past causes.” A cure requires addressing the present cause. Drinking water now, consuming Vitamin C new, healing the injury now and addressing the respiratory distress. The concept of present cause does not exist in modern medicine, but it is required to understand cure.
So the definition of cure became an elementary case of illness is cured when its present cause has been successfully addressed.
After more than a year of researching concepts of cause and effect, I made an interesting discovery. There are two basic types of causes, which we can view as nouns and verbs, the words used in the theory of cure are attribute causes and process causes. This is most clearly understood by studying elementary illnesses.
Translating to Spanish, therefore, is quite a challenge. I started over a year ago with Google Translate, and then let it sit for a year. Google translate has problems with new ideas – the words and concepts don’t exist yet. I have similar problems when I try to use Grammarly to edit my content. It simply doesn’t understand new word usage. In Peru, I found someone to help me with the translation and corrected a lot of the Google problems.
I’m looking for Spanish speakers to give me some input on this draft.
to your health, tracy
Tracy Dean Kolenchuk
tracychess@hotmail.com
Have you ever been cured by an illegal medicine? I’m looking for stories. I know there are thousands of illegalicines, illegal medicines that can cure. Tell me your story.
I have begun a study of illegalicines: illegal cures. I have written about illegal medicines in the past, in several blog posts – without using the name illegalicines.
In 2010, I published the post Health Protection vs Health Freedom, in which I discussed how the producing and selling a Teddy Bear constructed with a microwavable rice warming pouch to comfort children was made ILLEGAL. All of the medically illegal Teddy Bears were confiscated by Health Canada. Shawn Buckley, who I heard speak on that issue continues his battles today, against the insidious growth of illegalicines. At the time, he was also speaking about True Hope nutritional supplements, which had managed to survive an legal court challenge due to a judges ruling that said “‘The Defendants were overwhelmingly compelled to disobey the D.I.N. regulation in order to protect the health, safety and well-being (of their clients)“.
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