Throughout all systems and methods of therapeutics there runs the basic error that what they call the therapeutic actions of their various procedures represent the beneficial actions of these things upon the body, or that they call out actions on the part of the body that are beneficial or useful in overcoming “disease.” The truth is that these so-called “therapeutic actions” of “remedies” are actions of the body to
defend it against the “remedies.” The living organism acts in relation to everything in
its environment—to useful and salubrious materials and influences to assimilate and make use of these; against non-usable and destructive things to throw them off and defend itself against these. The action against harmful substances and influences is proportionate to their harmfulness and commensurate with the power of action possessed by the affected organism. These two factors—the amount and destructiveness of the material or influence, and the powers of the organism—are the determining factors in every action except where toleration has been established.
Mistaking the defensive actions of the sick body for evidences of the beneficial actions of drugs and other supposed remedies has led physicians of all schools into the most serious and egregious errors. Perhaps in no other field of “medicine,” archaic or modern, have greater blunders of this nature been made than in the delusion that “stimulation” is a beneficial or strengthening thing. We know of no portion of the human race in any age or in any part of the world that has not been misled by the Stimulant Delusion. No greater delusion ever possessed the human mind than the stimulant delusion. Like the ancient idea that the earth is flat and the heavens a great chandelier-studded canopy stretched over it, the stimulant delusion is based on appearances. Man lives in the appearance of things until ratiocination dawns, after which he attempts to get back of the scenes and find out what it is that makes the wheels go around. It is then that he makes the, at first, shocking discovery that the real is opposite from the apparent. Most people in civilized countries now know that the world is round and not flat, but how many of them know that “stimulants” take away the power they appear to give. Just as vital action against the so-called stimulant has been mistaken for the beneficial actions of the “stimulant” upon the body so, also, has there been much misunderstanding of what stimulants are and of the different kinds of stimulants. I shall endeavor to clear up some of this misunderstanding.
Science is the reduction of natural phenomena to an intelligible order. Science must be expressed in definite terms. Careless and often studied use of an ambiguous language which confounds the deepest distinctions in nature is often responsible for
great confusion. One of the best examples of this is seen in our use of the word
“stimulation.” There is hardly a more misused word in the English language. As
commonly employed it is very accomodating and, like rubber, may be stretched into any shape desired. The normal action of the stomach upon food is called stimulation. The exciting effect of alcohol upon the stomach is also called stimulation. The increased activity of the stomach in digesting food represents the normal performance of its function. The excited action occasioned by the presence of alcohol is the action of resistance. This action is normal, also, in the sense that it is normal for the body or any part of it to resist injury. Back of both actions is the same force—vital force—but their purposes are different. Confounding both of these types of activity under one term obscures their distinctions and leads, in practice as well as in theory, to confusion.
A material or influence that “calls out,” or provokes, or in any manner, occasions increased action in the body or any part of it, is called a stimulus or stimulant. Thus both food and arsenic are “stimulants;” although the one contributes to the renewal of the organism, while the other detracts from the substances and powers of the organism and injures it. The acceleration of function occasioned by the normal supply of glandular hormone, which is strictly physiological, is called stimulation; the excitement and resistance occasioned by a dose of strychnine, which is distinctly pathological, is called stimulation. Thus it is obvious that one word is made to cover too many and opposite phenomena. Here it is quite evident that we are dealing with two very different things jumbled together and concealed under loose, popular terms.
The absurd stimulus-response theory that now reigns in physiology and psychology is but a refurbished edition of the ancient notion that outside things first act on the body and then the body reacts. It is even held that the body is incapable of acting unless first “stimulated” from without. According to this theory the lifeless things that exist all around the living organism first act upon it and then it reacts. Under the stultifying effect of this theory, very little distinction is made between the many types of “stimulants.” Thus, it is said that every part of the body is “called into action by its appropriate stimulus.” Under this theory, taste is activated by food; salivary and gastric secretions are activated by food; the eyes are activated by light; the ears are activated by sound waves; odors activate the olfactory nerves and warmth activates the sweat glands. The presence of urine in the bladder stimulates the bladder to action while the presence of feces in the rectum has a similar activating action upon this structure. The living structure is passive, quiescent, inactive, inert until first acted upon by lifeless substances and influences from without. This view grows logically out of trying to fit the Law of Inertia or the Law of Motion, which
belongs to the field of physics, to the living body.
Whatever may be the truth about this, and I have elsewhere given reason for doubting the validity of applying the laws of physics to living structures, it is certainly inaccurate to describe the normal functional behavior of organs of the body, when in contact with their normal and wholesome requirements, by the same term with which we describe the actions of these same organs, when they are in contact with substances that are inimical to their welfare and which have no normal relation to life. To call both the normal function of vision in the presence of light and the seeing of a bright light (even in the dark) when struck in the eye by the same term is to mislead everybody. To call light a stimulus when it comes in contact with the eyes and then to call tobacco a stimulus when a small particle of it falls into the eye is to overlook the fact that in the first instance the eyes perform their normal function of seeing while in the latter the action is that of resistance and defense. The two types of action subserve different ends. The first is physiological, the second is pathological.
While the actions of the body in relation to food, light, warmth, etc., and its actions in relation to poisons are both vital, in the first case they perform their normal or physiological functions, in the other, these functions are impaired or suspended, and the action is one of defense. Let us consider, in this connection, the case of food and an emetic. When food is eaten the function of digestion is performed. This is physiological action. When an emetic is given, vomiting follows to cast out the poison. This is defensive or pathological action.
The subtle inter-organic motivation seen in the body, is classed in the same category as the goading and pricking of strophanthus; the hormones of the various ductless glands are classed as stimulants along with caffeine. This is certainly non- discriminating and confusing. We give a man food and he is enabled to do his work. We strike him with our fist and he drops his work, grabs a club and strikes back. In both cases the action was vital but the actions have different objectives and are occasioned by different antecedents. Both the food and the blow are classed as stimulants. The term stimulation is used to cover at least three groups of phenomena, as follow:
1.—The increased activities of the body resulting from a renewal and replenishment of its cells by nutrition—food, water, air, light, warmth, rest, exercise, etc.
2.—The immediate elevation of functional action when the body is subjected to the kindly influence of light, warmth, coolness, mental elation, worthy motive, ambition, the will, etc.
excitants—drugs, electricity, heat, cold, blows, stabs, shocks, etc.
We have here three distinct groups of occasions for increased activity with at least two, perhaps three, distinct groups of effects, the increased action serving different purposes and springing from different motives. We certainly need three terms to express these things and should not confound them all under the one term stimulation. Let us restate this in the following manner to distinguish the three types of occasion for increased action:
1. —Those substances and forces—light, air, water, food—which supply the materials of renewal and prepare the body for increased activity.
2.—Those kindly influences—warmth, coolness, good motives, good feelings, joy, enthusiasm, ambition, determination, will, etc.— that invite or inspire increased action; inspire the body to exert its power and means in a given direction and enable it to mobilize, organize and redirect its forces.
3.—Those substances, forces and influences—heat, cold, electricity, poisons, violence, etc.,—that provoke or excite defensive action.
I propose that instead of calling the three types of occasions for added activity stimulants that we use different terms for each type, somewhat as follows:
1.—Vigorants, renewers or nutrients.
2.—Inspirers or tonics. It seems to me that such normal and wholesome influences as warmth, light, cheer, good motives, etc., that occasion increased and more efficient functional activity should be regarded as the true tonics, rather than drugs which only occasion antagonism and excited and hurried, but less efficient action. These factors may be properly looked upon as accessory nutrients and control factors.
3.—Stimulants, excitants, irritants: These are pricks and goads. They are poisonous and injurious substances and influences. There is neither nutriment nor accessory nutriment in the excitant.
In the literal significance of the term stimulation, which means to excite, it is pure nonsense to class a stimulus along with food or warmth or good motive. To say that anything that occasions increased activity is a stimulant and make no distinction between the kinds of activity that result is to blind oneself to what is taking place. It is simply a misapplication of language to the extent of calling one thing by the name of another thing and that other thing so different as to be its opposite or contradictory.
It may be asserted that the renewers and tonics also occasion destruction. It is true that all physiological action involves wear and tear; but the wear produced by normal function in the presence of sunshine or food for instance, is incidental and is destruction in appearance only—the destruction is reproduction in another form,
regeneration—for if these things appear to destroy they constantly repair, or supply materials for the repair of the injury they seem to occasion and without them the body would wither away into a cold, inert, decaying mass. In a few words, while the
renewers and tonics take from the body, they give more than they take, they
compensate for the losses; the excitants give nothing, and take much, they do not compensate for the losses they compel.
It may be necessary to explain our use of the word, tonic. This word is subject to many and quite wrong uses due to a misunderstanding of the true nature of tonics. Drugs which are called tonics are not true tonics. The use of heat, cold, electricity, manipulations, etc., for their so-called tonic effects is also a delusion. Drugs and drugless irritants are really atonins, for every one of them, if their use is continued, produces atony and weakness. They first “strengthen” and then debilitate. True tonics do not produce debility as a secondary effect.
Tonicity is health—health is the great tonic. Tonics are those materials and influences which impart a fuller vigor and stronger acting power to the organism; that is materials which by their contributions to the body slowly and permanently add greater firmness or tone to the tissues. Nothing will answer to this requirement save the natural elements of normal life.
Impairments of nutrition are the most prominent origins of general weakness; hence, a tonic is an agent or influence that promotes nutrition—a promotor. Excitants may be appropriately termed disintegrants in contrast to the renewers and tonics. All drug store “tonics” are in reality disintegrants or excitants. No tonic can be expected to confine all of its effects to one or more tissues, for in the very nature of physiology this is impossible. So, whether we are building and maintaining health with true tonics, or building and maintaining impaired health with false tonics (disintegrants), their effects are general and not merely local.
Nor does it matter whether we say that it is the vital force or vital substance that is used up or expended by excitants. That is largely a matter of terminology or nomenclature, and neither expression affects the actual fact that something essential to life is used up when excitants or atonies are employed. Fine spun theories of the nature and origin of life are interesting enough, if we recognize them for what they are; but when we come to deal with the body we want something that will “make bricks,” that will work in practice.
The renewers bring about invigoration of the body and fail to compensate for the increased action they occasion only when they are used excessively; the tonics mobilize, organize or control the increased activities they induce and are harmful only when the mental, physical and physiological activities called out by these are
carried beyond the organism’s power to compensate during the hours customarily allotted to rest, sleep and relaxation; that is, when used excessively; the excitants are always destructive, their destruction being commensurate with their use. Electrical, mechanical and chemical “stimulation” and intense heat and great cold have similar effects, are not necessary to life and are injurious and destructive in their nature. A great error has been committed in classifying the necessary and vivifying substances and influences with unnecessary or accidental and useless substances and influences. These latter do not really contribute to the normal composition of organic bodies, nor to the necessary conditions of normal function, and do not renovate their powers. A mechanical stimulus —for example, pressure—which modifies the condition of a membrane endowed with sensibility, excites, it is true, vital phenomena —sensation and, perhaps, motion—but does not vivify nor invigorate the organic forces; while on the contrary, the essential vital materials really contribute to the formation of organic matter and form essential factor-elements of its normal functions. Nutriment, for instance, is capable of being transformed into living matter and thereby vivifying it. Nutriment is the material with which growth, repair, reproduction and the manufacture of functional products are accomplished and, in the absence of all nutriment, these processes and functions cannot be carried on.
Man in a healthy state is absolutely dependent upon food and cannot continue to exist for long without it. Water and air both serve similar purposes to food and are indispensable to life. Life in the higher animals cannot continue many days in the absence of water. The complete absence of the oxygen of the air produces death in but a few minutes. Heat, which is not a substance, is especially important to life. Among the warm-blooded animals, if the animal is unable to generate its own heat in sufficient quantity as is often the case with the young, or in disease, external heat is essential. Both the plant and animal require heat in varying degrees if their life processes are to continue. Even among cold-blooded animals, if the temperature falls below certain levels the organic processes are suspended until there is a rise in temperature. Under the influence of and by the use of these materials and conditions —heat, light, air, water, food—the organic being is developed from the germ and by these same materials and conditions it carries on its processes and functions, repairs and maintains its parts; thus, the phenomena of life are equally as dependent upon these materials and conditions as upon the vital principle itself.
It should not be inferred from the foregoing that these things are always salutary in their effects and are never harmful under any circumstance or in any amount. Such an inference would be far from true. Heat in excess of the organism’s power of adaptation is decidedly injurious. Light in excess of the body’s need or in excess of
its powers of adaptation is also injurious. These things are harmful in excess. The over-activity these excesses occasion wastes the body’s substances and powers beyond its ability to recuperate. The same may be said of food, water and oxygen. The amount of any of these materials required by the body at any time depends upon various conditions. Its requirements vary from day to day, from hour to hour or even from minute to minute. There are conditions, as will be shown in another volume, in which it is dangerous and injurious to feed the body. Forcing vital activity beyond the recuperative abilities of the organism is a ruinous process even when done with the normal things of life. More than twenty-five years ago, when I wrote Human Life: Its Philosophy and Laws, I suggested that the renewers and tonics be called compensated stimulants and the excitants be called uncompensated stimulants. I there wrote:
“Making an effort to define the vital and non-vital stimuli we would say: Vital (compensated) stimuli are those substances, agents and influences which are essential to the normal existence, development, maintenance and active life of organisms and