Dr. John Tilden, in his book Toxemia Explained: The True Interpretation of the Cause of Disease (read the book here), states that disease is caused by toxemia plus enervation. He writes:
DEFINITION of Toxemia and crises of Toxemia:—In the process of tissue building—metabolism—there is cell building—anabolism—and cell destruction—catabolism. The broken down tissue is toxic and in health—when nerve energy is normal—it is eliminated from the blood as fast as evolved. When nerve energy is dissipated from any cause—physical or mental excitement or bad habits—the body becomes enervated, when enervated, elimination is checked, causing a retention of toxin in the blood or Toxemia. This accumulation of toxin when once established will continue until nerve energy is restored by removing the causes. So-called disease is nature’s effort at eliminating the
toxin from the blood. All so-called diseases are crises of Toxemia.
Lyla sick for 8 days
This has never been more evident than in my cats following our road trip from Oregon to Pennsylvania. A few weeks after arriving my cats began getting eye infections. One or both eyes would swell and begin excreting pus.
I even got sick myself. A couple weeks after arrival I woke up completely weak with an incapacitating headache. I drank some water and threw it up. I couldn’t keep anything down. The next day I was fine but a week later I spent the night sneezing with runny nose and eyes and felt tired most of the day.
Lyla became very sick. She stopped eating and would spend all day sleeping in a warm location in the bathroom. She became slightly dehydrated, lost weight, was weak and a tad wobbly on her feet. This went on for eight days. She continued to drink water from the faucet (not the best source but she gets whatever she wants at this point). On some days she showed an interest in food but ate no more than half a teaspoon on the days she did eat.
Two years ago her brother George had the same symptoms after we moved into my new house. Upper respiratory infection, they call it. The current “wisdom” is that it’s caused by viruses or bacteria. That means we must have driven through a patch of kitty germs on the freeway that took three weeks to infect the cats! Or maybe these pernicious germs were lounging about the house just waiting for cats to pounce on. Or maybe a cloud of them wafted through the window! (See Germs: A Natural Hygiene Perspective) I took George to the vet for hydration therapy and antibiotics. He died and my heart was broken. What would have happened had I left him alone, had I trusted his body’s own immune system?
Two of my cats have fasted for over a week (Toby once and TipToe twice) and I left them alone. They recovered. When animals are sick, they fast. I have learned to trust nature and the innate wisdom of the body. Digestion takes a lot of energy, energy that is needed in healing the body and fighting infection. The body can live on its own reserves during this time.
The cross country trip was so stressful to the cats causing a lowering of nerve energy, which caused a buildup of toxins in their systems that had reached a critical point and had to be removed. Another physiological insult the cats received was when I switched them from raw to canned food in preparation for the trip. They had been eating it for two months.
I was really worried about Lyla. I knew that her body had only such much energy to carry her through this crisis. But I also knew that her body had instituted this crisis to reduce the toxins that had accumulated in her body. I kept trying to get her to eat because I was so worried. Then I thought, “What am I doing?! I know better than this. She’ll eat when she’s able.” Fasting, sleep and warmth is what Lyla needed. So I quit trying to get her to eat and made sure she had all the water she needed.
If I had taken Lyla to the veterinarians, they would have introduced antibiotics into her system. These would have killed off the bacteria and would have loaded her system with a toxic drug and dead bacteria that would need to be excreted. (Every creature contains bacteria, good and bad. We have all evolved together. And when you kill them all at once, that’s a big load of toxins to dump on the organs of elimination.) The vet would also have forced hydration on her. Then her body would have to deal with the introduction of water that she could not and would not take in herself. When I drank water my body couldn’t use it threw it up. How does a cat easily remove water that’s been injected under the skin? Add to that the stressful trip to the vet, the handling, the meddling, and you have a thoroughly enervated cat. A young cat might easily survive such handling, but a 15-year-old might not.
Tibbs is the last to get sick
No, Lyla stays home and recovers on her own, and recover she did. Around the eighth day she came out of the bathroom during feeding time wanting food. She ate small quantities for a few days, so I fed her four times a day. Now she’s at twice a day.
TipToe hasn’t been eating much for several days, but this morning she ate quite a bit. Now Tibbs is flushing her toxins. Her eyes are runny and she’s eating little.
All the other eye infections have cleared on their own. No drugs. No vets. Just nature at her best.
