Disease

diz-ez, a serious disorder of the system. The literal meaning of the term is want of ease, uneasiness, distress. The term is difficult to define. A bruise, a burn, drinking lye, taking poison, the action of certain chemicals, all cause want of ease--pain; but their action, however fatal, is not termed a disease. A cold, a headache, hunger, overeating, overheating, or indigestion may cause distress and even death, but are hardly called diseases.

A very large group of infectious diseases may be described not inappropriately as an attack made by minute plant and animal forms on the living cells of the whole or a part of the body. Two scientific discoveries have laid a foundation for the understanding of this class of diseases. First, that the human body, as well as all animals and plants, is made up of cells. Secondly, that exceedingly small plants and animals of many kinds, known variously as molds, bacteria, and protozoa, enter the body, multiply rapidly, attach themselves to the cells, absorb their sustenance, and destroy them. This statement is true not only for man but for the lower animals and for plants as well. These destroying, disease-causing pests are parasites. They feed on living cells and on the corpuscles of the blood. A colony of one particular bacterium or plant feeding on the lungs produces tuberculosis or consumption; another kind spreads over the throat like a mold, causing diphtheria. Typhoid fever, pneumonia, cholera, lockjaw, cancer, influenza, erysipelas, the plague, and glanders are due each to its specific bacterium or parasitic plant growth. Other diseases again are due to attacks of low microscopic, parasitic animals. Malaria and many skin diseases are of this sort. Sometimes the cells of the body are destroyed by the organism direct; sometimes a poison is manufactured which kills the cells. None of these plants or animals can do harm unless they gain entrance to the body. Many of these can do no harm unless they find the body weak or injured. Diphtheria, for instance, finds ready lodgment in a raw "cold throat." Tuberculosis is powerless unless it finds weak lungs. Improper food and impure water are two prolific sources of disease.

Preventive medicine consists in keeping the body in health and strength to resist the attacks of germs and in providing pure air, food, and water that the germs may not enter the system.

See Food; Epilepsy; Lungs; Blood; Bacterium; Diphtheria; Small Pox; Typhoid; Consumption; Gout; Glanders; Cholera; Lockjaw; Asthma; Catarrh; Medicine; Phosphorus; Poison; Galen; Hahnemann