INTRODUCTION

Without health, no joy of living nor true happiness!

Medicine today is not concerned with health. It is only interested

in disease. In the field of diagnosis, it has made astonishing
progress. It succeeds in recognizing, in identifying complex diseases,
with remarkable precision and at an increasingly early stage in their
development. New tests (ecography, scintigraphy, nuclear resonance,
magnetics etc.) make it possible to get an image of smaller and
smaller lesions, hidden deeply within the body. Surgery has profited
from this progress: it can now intervene much earlier, eliminating
lesions before they have reached a dangerous stage of development. It
has now mastered the technique of transplants, making survival
possible in otherwise hopeless cases for patients afflicted with
diseases of heart and kidneys that used to be fatal. Internal medicine
has learned to treat serious infections. Progress in all these fields
enables us to live longer, to overcome many health crises in the
course of our existence, but they do nothing to reduce the number of
the sick. In our time, we know, in fact, the existence of an ever
greater number of so-called degenerative diseases that can be
localized in any organ, tissue, cell or fragment of cell - enzyme or
gene - and disturb its functioning. We all suffer from these
affections. Who among us, at 40 years of age, still has his or her
teeth intact, has no visual anomalies (half the German population are
now wearing corrective lenses!), has neither varicose veins nor
digestive disturbances, has never suffered - especially in winter, and
even from an early age - from recurring infections of the respiratory
or urinary tracts? These infections are cured by taking antibiotics,
but constantly recur. Why?
To protect us from microbial attacks, we have an immune system.
Today it no longer functions correctly. At times, it is deficient,
and the annoying, commonplace, infectious diseases recur at brief
intervals or become chronic. At other times, it is exuberant,
producing either allergic phenomena (asthma, urticaria, eczema, etc.)
or auto-immune diseases, in which the organism attacks its own cells
and tends to destroy them (erythematous lupus, multiple sclerosis,
etc.).
Arteriosclerosis, arthritis, thromboses, embolisms, myocardial
infarcts, mastopathy (alteration of the structure of the breasts,
affecting today about one woman out of two) metabolic and glandular
disorders (including obesity and diabetes, which are more and more
common), diseases of the central nervous system (Parkinsons disease,
schizophrenia): all these disorders have been called diseases of
civilization. And the list is still incomplete. Of special concern
for the future of our race is the multiplication of cases of sterility
in young couples and the increased frequency of congenital
malformations.
Young people today are less vigorous than we, their elders, were.
Although the doctors responsible for recruitment have lowered
requirements and reduced regulations, 52% of Americans are today
declared unfit for military service. The same phenomenon occurs in
the other industrialized countries.
Why can I no longer get my students to run? They havent the
strength any more! What is happening to them? I was asked recently by
a fifty-year old teacher of physical education in a French secondary
school.
 Health services have everywhere been given maximum development:
mutual insurance, Social Security and other bodies guarantee medical
care for all citizens - care, but not health. Perfecting methods of
testing for the human body has meant increasing the cost of medicine.
The ratio of cost to utility is at times so high that the situation
becomes worrying; it is we who have to bear the burden through
payments to insurance companies and taxes. Moreover, the major
disabling diseases of our civilization - cancer, arthritis and
arthroses, multiple sclerosis... - are attacking more and more
individuals, and medicine does not succeed in stopping this increase.
The remedies attempted are only problematical, symptomatic and
palliative, chemical appliances of temporary effect or aggressive and
mutilating procedures.
In the path it has chosen, medicine seems to have reached, or
almost reached, its limit. It would be urgent to find a better way,
but how?
When the body no longer functions as it should, people today place
their trust in medicine, just as they trust the mechanic when their
car will not go, and the electrician when an appliance is out of
order. No doubt, medicine will always be useful to repair damage of
one kind or another. But our future does not depend on perfecting
repairs. The health of human beings in the XXth century is
deteriorating at such a rate that, if we want to escape disaster, we
must all take the problem in hand, become adult and responsible for
ourselves, learn not how to treat our illnesses, but how not to
contract them, how to manage our bodies correctly. The technique
exists. It gives excellent results. We have to acquire it, and then
remain faithful to it.
Men and women, citizens of the world, take yourselves in hand to
win health. Do it for love of yourselves, of those near to you, of
your children, present and future. Today you have the means to do it!