COLDS AND INFLUENZA
by C. Leslie Thomson
The fundamental difference between orthodox and Naturopathic attitudes to disease is probably most clearly obvious in the case of the common cold. Whereas the doctors, and their drug-‐manufacturing associates, spend much time and money trying to discover ‘the cure’, since the time of Hippocrates the Naturopathically-‐minded observer has had a contrary attitude. Instead of regarding a cold as an evil to be fought, the more perceptive student has recognised the eliminative and corrective function of the cold. A cold is not in need of ‘cure’; it is in need of understanding. A cold is not a ‘disease’ (except in the limited, literal sense of being uncomfortable and causing dis-‐ease); it is in itself the body’s own cure for a pre-‐existing state of disease and disorder.
To the reader who accepts Nature Cure principles, the foregoing will appear elementary and obvious; but it may seem nonsense to anyonewho has not previously been exposed to our ideas. The latter individual is the victim of a conditioning process, in which there are powerful vested interests in his continuing ignorance. The honest teacher does not make a fortune from his information; the enterprising merchant may easily do so when he is able to manipulate gullibility and fear.