The book A New Theory of Cure clearly is about curing “curable illnesses.” But what if we want to cure a disease, a sickness, stop an epidemic, a pandemic, or even eradicate a DISEASE?
In the theory, a cure is not a thing, not a medicine, not a potion, drug, nor a food. A cure is an action that addresses the cause of a case of illness or disease.
Curing a case of Illness
An illness, in the theory of cure, is cured when its present cause has been successfully addressed. If there is more than one present cause – the illness is partially cured when one or more of the present causes are addressed and completely cured when all present causes are successfully addressed.
There are two basic causes of illness; and therefore, two basic types of cures. An illness might be caused by an attribute of diet, body, mind, spirit, community or environment that is either deficient or excessive. Attribute illnesses are cured by one-time transformations of the attribute cause – for example, by killing a bacterial parasite. Or, an illness might be caused by a process of diet, body, mind, spirit, community or environment, in which case the cure requires an ongoing transformation of the process cause, like the cure for obesity, which requires an ongoing cure process.
The temporal attribute of a cause of a curable illness might be temporary, repeating, ongoing, or chronic. If it is permanent – the illness is not curable. The illness caused is thus correspondingly temporary, repeating, ongoing, or chronic, matching the type of cause. Causes can change over time.
Illnesses cured by healing – the common cold, minor cuts and bruises, and COVID are temporary. Of course, each might be deadly in specific cases. Famine causes ongoing malnutrition – just as too much food causes a different kind of malnutrition we call obesity. In the 1500s, scurvy was sometimes a repeating illness because the cause arrived every winter. Depression might be temporary, repeating, ongoing, or chronic – depending on the cause. However, temporary or repeating depression is not recognized as a disease, only as a symptom – according to the medical definitions of mental disorders.
As we study cures of illness, we might notice that most cases of illness are easily cured. We suffer many minor cuts, bruises, sprains, as well as colds, flu, minor infections, and even indigestion, food poisoning, headaches and more throughout our lives. Most are cured in a relatively short time by our healthy bodies, minds, spirits, and communities.
Curing a case of Disease
What about a case of disease? What’s the difference between a case of illness and a case of disease? What’s the difference between curing an illness and curing a disease?
A disease, technically, requires a diagnosis. Diagnosis requires a disease definition by the prevailing medical system. When there is no diagnosis, even if a disease is present, no disease can be cured. Sometimes, a diagnosis can be made retroactively, although this is rare.
Some cases of disease are curable illnesses. some are not. Some curable illnesses can be mapped to diseases. Some cannot. Sometimes, a curable disease like pneumonia matches a curable illness; like pneumonia. However, most diseases cannot be cured medically, even if the illness can be cured. Medical authorities often claim “there is no cure for the common cold.” The same is true of many diseases, from influenza, measles, and COVID, to physical diseases like plantar fasciosis and vertigo; and so-called mental disorders like depression and bipolar.
Not only is “there no cure for the common cold… (influenza… measles…. COVID and more), there is no medical test for the common cold (and most other diseases) “cured.” Even though most cases of the common cold illness are easily cured – no common cold cured can be proven medically. There is no test for common cold cured – so it is not possible to claim a case of the common cold is cured by a treatment. Linus Pauling tried for years to prove Vitamin C cured many diseases, including the common cold and influenza – but without a test of common cold cured, much less a clear definition of common cold “cured by,” the task was impossible.
Of course, some diseases can be cured medically, and proven to be cured. Which ones?
A case of infectious disease can be cured medically, documented, and proven as cured when an approved medical treatment (drug or surgery) successfully addresses the infectious cause. That’s it. No other disease cures can be proven medically. No other tests for cured are generally recognized and accepted as medical proof of a cure.
Surgery is often classed as a cure. There’s just one small problem. There is no recognized “test of cured” for any medical surgery except for infectious diseases. Non-infectious diseases cured by surgery simply cannot be officially documented as cured. A surgeon might cure a hernia, or replace a knee joint, or even perform a heart transplant – but the word “cured” is not used. Surgical treatments are not counted as cured. Government and corporate medical insurance, for example, will pay for surgical treatments, but not for “cures.” Surgical cures are rarely recognized by any medical authority. The 1899 medical reference: Merck’s Manual of the Materia Medica, 1899 says “Iridectomy; the only cure” and Dictionary of Visual Science says, “A therapeutic iridectomy is the surgical removal of a portion of the iris for the cure or prevention of an ocular disease.” But – there is no medical test for ocular disease cured. It might be obvious, but it’s not scientific. Surgical cures are often subject to the standard joke “the surgery was a success, but the patient died anyway.” The word cured is omitted in favour of the success of the medical system.
Curing a Sickness
We often use words like illness, sickness, disease, disorder, medical condition and more without clear definitions, much less distinctions. However, there are generally recognized distinctions in medical theory.
“A patient goes to the doctor with an illness; and goes home with a disease.“
– source unknown
An illness is what the patient has. A disease is what the doctor diagnoses, which might be aligned with the illness; or not. In North America, a disorder is the word used for what a psychiatrist diagnoses. A sickness is a community view of the illness or disease, which might align with illness or disease, or sometimes not. In this image, all three are aligned.
An employer might agree that a sick worker diagnosed with a disease, needs time to recover. On the other hand, a religious leader (and their followers) might judge a normal behaviour or the person who undertakes a specific behaviour as “sick,”
As a result, we might say that a case of sickness is only cured when the community’s perception changes. There is no medical test for a sickness cured.
Curing an Epidemic
Curing a case of an epidemic can be technically easier than curing a case of disease – although the word cure is not used. An epidemic is a situation where a number of patients – who might be people, animals – like chickens – or even plants suffer from the same illness or disease. An epidemic does not require a disease, does not require a medical diagnosis. The claim of an epidemic might be made by a business owner, the media, or a government official with no medical expertise. For example, we might have an epidemic of violence, or vandalism, or even a plague of “dancing.”
Epidemiologists study causes and consequences of medical epidemics and recommend actions to address them. Epidemiology does not need, and does not have a definition of “cure” or “cured.” Timmreck’s 1998 An Introduction to Epidemiology says “Epidemiology is more interested in prevention and control of diseases than secondary and tertiary curative approaches.” What that means is not clear, but in general, dictionaries of epidemiology do not contain a definition of cure.
But epidemiologists cure epidemics. They just don’t use the word cure when they recommend that all chickens in a barn be killed and the barn be burned down or sanitized to cure the epidemic. Sometimes, it goes beyond surgery, where the “operation was a success, but the patient died anyway” to “all of the patients were killed so the epidemic could be cured.” Of course most epidemic cures don’t require killing all of the patients.
Curing a Pandemic
According to the World Health Organization, “A pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease.” This is a political definition. How political? The WHO Pandemic prevention, preparedness and response accord says “It could be anticipated that a new accord could define the term “pandemic” as part of its terms.” It’s official, pandemic is not officially defined.
We might ask, as well, when does a pandemic become “not a pandemic?” When is a pandemic cured? That, too, is a political definition, not a medical one.
We can’t “cure” a pandemic. We take actions, and time passes. Over time, the pandemic fades away. The disease might become endemic, like HIV, or it might disappear like the disease that caused 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Is the pandemic cured? It depends not on the pandemic, but on how we define cure.
Curing a DISEASE
The word disease has two meanings. although the second is generally ignored by dictionaries, even medical dictionaries. Merriam-Webster defines disease as “a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms.” That is to say, a “case of disease.” However, when we speak of “searching for a cure of cancer, or AIDS, or arthritis, or when we say “there is no cure for the common cold (disease),” we are speaking about the general collection of cases of diseases or a set of diseases. The entry for disease in Mosby’s Medical Dictionary 9th Edition makes this distinction clear, defining disease as:
- a condition of abnormal vital function involving any structure, part, or system of
an organism. (a specific case of a disease) - a specific illness or disorder characterized by a recognizable set of signs and symptoms attributable to heredity, infection, diet, or environment. (the medical definition of a disease used for diagnosis, a DISEASE)
We don’t cure DISEASES, only cases. We might search for a cure for pneumonia – we have found many cures for pneumonia – but none of them cures “the disease pneumonia” – they only cure some specific cases of pneumonia.
Sometimes, we eradicate a disease. According to OurWorldInData, we have eradicated exactly two diseases: smallpox and Rinderpest. It’s interesting to search OurWorldInData for “cure.” There are no statistics for cures, only for “acute care beds.” In addition, the first two references to cure are “no cure exists” and “can no longer be cured…“
Theory of Cure
There is plenty of nonsense, and not much sense, said about cure, cures, curing and cured. Only when we study the theory of cure, can we begin to understand.
The book A New Theory of Cure is about curing individual cases of illness, which can sometimes be applied to curing cases of disease and might be logically extended to cure disorders, sicknesses, and even epidemics and pandemics.
to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure (there is no “old” theory of cure in today’s modern medicine)
