In our study of the cause and character of disease we must endeavor
to begin at the beginning, and that is with LIFE itself, for the
processes of health, disease and cure are manifestations of that
which we call life, vitality, life elements, etc.

While endeavoring to fathom the mystery of life we soon realize,
however, that we are dealing with an ultimate which no human mind is
capable of solving or explaining. We can study and understand life
only in its manifestations, not in its origin and real essence.

There are two prevalent, but widely differing, conceptions of the
nature of life or vital force: the material and the vital.

The former looks upon life or vital force with all its physical,
mental and psychical phenomena as manifestations of the electric,
magnetic and chemical activities of the physical-material elements
composing the human organism. From this viewpoint, life is a sort of
spontaneous combustion, or, as one scientist expressed it, a
succession of fermentations.

This materialistic conception of life, however, has already become
obsolete among the more advanced biologists as a result of the
wonderful discoveries of modern science, which are fast bridging the
chasm between the material and the spiritual realms of being.

But medical science, as taught in the regular schools, is still
dominated by the old, crude, mechanical conception of vital force
and this, as we shall see, accounts for some of its gravest errors