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Modern medicine is based on the germ theory as propsed by Louis Pasteur. In this theory, the boyd is a sterile machine which will operate properly unless a germ/foreign substance is introduced. Specific germs or microbes produce specific diseases and when those miscrobes are destroyed by chemicals/antibiotics, the body will return to health. Health, then, is defined as the absence of any disease. The body is divided into systems with some microbes attacking certain systems, such as the digestive system, but not others such as the respiratory system. The basic premise is that sickness is localized in one system and health is restored when microbes are removed from that system. It assumes that the rest of the body is healthy and that microbes are foreign to the bodies natural state. The goal of medicine using the germ theory is to make each body system work properly, which it will do if it is free from bacterial and viral infection. Claude Bernard, a psysiologist of the same time frame as Pasteur taught that the whole must be sick before any germ can make us ill. |
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Even when there are deadly organisms present that the healthiest body cannot overcome such as TB bacteria or cancer microbe, "the severity of hte disease is always inversely propertional to the state of the body's internal evnironment and defense syster (i.e., immunity)." The Wholeness Theory, and this theory is the basis of Balch's book states "If the whole of the environment is disturbed from its healthy whole condition, disease is inevitable." This is not solely because of the foreighn invader, but because of an imbalance and malnourished element; the whole. Wholeness can be defined as health restored. The wholeness theory can be broken down into three areas:
Even the smallest cell must be balanced for when they do not work properly, the organ malfuncitons. Yet in our affluent society, lifestyle shortcomings have caused the diseases of afflence such as heart attack, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. When lifestyle choices have caused problems for the individual, resotration of the body's health (wholeness) must take into account the whole person. |
