A Single, Common Theory of Medicine, a Common Theory of Cure

Note: This post has been updated to coordinate the ideas herein with the concepts published in the paper A Theory of Cure and the book: The Elements of Cure.

What is the theory of medicine? Is there a fundamental theory of medicine?

Yes there is. It’s simple, and important.

Historically, there are many different theories about illness. But, when we view them together, we can find one simple, fundamental theory. Do you know it?

Humoral theory states that illness is caused by imbalances of blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.
Chinese medicine states that everything, including the body, is governed by yin and yang, and illness is caused by improper balance of these principles.
Ayurveda states that health is a state of balance between body, mind and consciousness, and illness is caused by imbalances.
Modern medicine says illnesses are caused by bacteria, viruses, genetics, toxins, and other factors.

It sounds like there is not much agreement. But there is agreement of the fundamental concept which is also a fundamental concept of healthicine.

Every school of medicine believes that: “Every illness is caused by …” This is the fundamental theory of medicine: cause.

Why is this so important? It’s because of cures. If we don’t know the cause of an illness, we cannot find a cure. If we don’t know the cause of an illness, we need to search for the cause.

Once we know the cause, we can search for the cure. Of course we can work in the reverse. We can try to cure, and if we succeed, we have found the cause.

Humoral theory believes that illness is caused by imbalances of blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. The cure for every illness, in humoral theory, is to address the imbalances of blood, phlegm, yellow and black bile. Once these imbalances are addressed successfully, the patient will be cured.

Chinese medicine states that everything, including the body, is governed by yin and yang, and illness is caused by improper balance of these principles. The cure for every illness, according to Chinese medicine, is to address the imbalances of yin and yang. Once these imbalances are addressed, the patient will be cured.

Ayurveda states that health is a state of balance between body, mind and consciousness, and illness is caused by imbalances. The cure for every illness, according to ayurvedic medicine, is to address these imbalances. Once they are addressed the patient is cured.

Modern medicine says illnesses are caused by bacteria, viruses, genetics, toxins, and other factors. The cure for every illness is to address the causal factors. Once the bacterial, virus, or toxin is addressed, the illness will be cured. However, there is a fly in the ointment of modern medicine. It seldom searches for cause for any illness not caused by a parasite. Modern medicine, and most clinical studies, search instead for treatments of symptoms.

Until we know the cause – we know little. Until we know the cause, no theory of medicine can search for a cure.

The theory that every illness has a cause, is supplemented by an additional factor, ‘faith’.

Faith does not make things easy, it makes them possible Luke 1:37.

Faith in ourselves, in our communities, in our gods, in our knowledge of cause and the link between cause and cure, makes cures possible. If we don’t believe in cures, if we don’t believe in causes that can be addressed, we are less likely to be cured. When modern medicine, as it often does, declares an illness ‘incurable’, they destroy faith, and distance us from cures.

With healthicine, we extend the analysis of cause further. We begin with “every illness is caused by …”, or in simpler terms: “Every illness has a cause.” We take it to the next logical step, simplification:

Every illness has a present cause.

Now that’s a challenging statement. Is it too obvious? Is it always true? Are there any illnesses that do not have a present cause? Injuries have a cause in the past – but the injury is present, causing pain, signs and symptoms, possibly bleeding, or worse. An injury is a present cause. Every illness that exits is present. It has a present cause, or it would not exist.

Notice that we said “a present cause”, not “some present causes”.

Does every illness only have one cause? Surely there are many illnesses that have more than one cause? Some illnesses appear to have dozens of causes.

If an illness has two causes, what should we call it? Two illnesses.

When we identify illness by signs and symptoms, we cannot cure, because curing requires us to address the cause. If an illness has two causes – it requires two actions to be cured. One for each cause. Therefore, it is an illness, consisting of two illnesses.

Know that we are talking about illness, not disease. Disease is not well defined in medicine. The word disease can refer to a class of illnesses, or to a specific case, an injury, a disability, a symptom or set of symptoms – especially chronic symptoms.

An illness, on the other hand, is a specific case, in a specific patient.

A simple illness, then, an element of illness, or an elementary illness, is a single case of an illness with a single cause.

An illness element is an illness with a single present cause. Every illness element has a single cause. Is it so simple.

When we find an illness, with its single cause, we can always ask the question “what is the cause of the cause?“, and when we find the cause of the cause, we can ask again “what is the cause of that cause?” and so on. How can there be a ‘single cause’ when we can always find a chain of causes of causes?

There’s a catch. Sometimes, a cause in a causal chain is in the present. Sometimes, it’s in the past. When a cause is in the past, it is not present. It cannot be accessed to produce a cure. We can only cure by addressing present causes.

How can we tell if an illness cause is in the past?

There are two kinds of causes. There are two kinds of causes of health, and the same two causes of illness. They are the same two fundamental types of causes of success, and problems, and of failure. What are the two types of causes? We can use many different terms to define the two types of causes, but perhaps the easiest to understand are processes and things.

Sometimes an illness (or a healthiness) is caused by a process.
Sometimes an illness is caused by a thing.
There are no other types of present causes.

A dietary deficiency illness is caused by a faulty diet process. Scurvy is caused by a process (or the absence of a necessary process). The cause is present, and when the present cause is addressed – the scurvy will be cured.

On the other hand, poor vision due to cataracts is caused by a thing, an attribute of the lens in the eye. There is a process that causes cataracts – which might be useful to prevent cataracts, but there is no present process that can be addressed to cure cataracts. The only cure is surgery, to address the thing.

Cataracts are a type of injury, caused by life. All injury illnesses are caused by a present thing, the injury. The cause of the cause is in the past and cannot be accessed to cure.

When the cause is a process, addressing the chain of causes of scurvy can produce a cure.

When the cause is a thing, or an attribute the chain of causes is in the past, and cannot be accessed to produce a cure. Only a change to the present cause can cure.

Every elemental illness has a single cause, or chain of present causes.

Once we accept this simple statement, we can take the next step, to an illness with two causes. What is an illness with two causes?

A compound illness consists of two or more illness elements. It is an illness with two or more causes, two or more causal chains.

Therefore: a compound illness requires two cures, one for each cause.

There are two more types of illness we can construct from the basic principles of an elemental illness.

A chronic illness is an illness with a chronic cause. A chronic cause is one that persists over a long period of time. A chronic elemental illness is an elemental illness with a chronic cause. A chronic compound illness is a compound illness with a chronic cause. Although our current medical system is well aware of chronic illnesses, they often fail to properly address them. Some medical references even refer to chronic illnesses as ‘incurable’.

A complex illness is an illness caused by an illness. When an illness is caused by a present illness, two cures are required. Curing the second illness will do little – it will be recreated by the first. Curing the first illness might allow the second to be cured by nature, by healing. But it might require a second cure.

There are actually very few illnesses that can be cured with a medicine, and most medicines, like Vitamin C tablets for scurvy – make no attempt to cure, because they avoid the fundamental principle of illness:

Every illness is caused by the presence of X.

And the consequences of that fundamental principle:

Illness can only be cured when the present cause is addressed.

To your health, tracy
Founder: Healthicine

This post was originally written in March 2017, as I began to work on the concepts of cure. It has been updated, as of November 2019, to match the concepts of cure published in the research paper A Theory of Cure.