This section is from the book "Health Via Food", by William Howard Hay. Also available from Amazon: Health via food, by William Howard Hay.

Disease has always been a complete mystery in all ages and among all peoples.

Always there has been that feeling of misunderstanding, heavily mixed with superstition and fear.

Always it has been considered and treated as an extrinsic affair, something that attacks us from without.

It has generally been considered a ministration of some higher power as a punishment for sins committed against this higher power, but always with the feeling of helplessness and fear.

This attitude easily lent itself to the plundering of the fearful by those in authority, the priests, later physicians, or magicians, augurs, workers of charms and miracles, so that humanity, through this fear of disease, has been plundered incessantly from the beginning of conscious time to the very present moment.

One fears only what he does not understand, even as the animal, and when a thing is understood there is nothing to fear, for knowing the nature of this we can easily devise means to avoid its supposed dangers.

Thousands of years ago there existed in Egypt, the home of medicine, two different schools, the one official, recognised by the Egyptian government, the other and more recent school considered a sort of experimental idea without the sanction of government.

If one died under the ministrations of a member of the recognised school of medicine no blame attached officially to the one who administered the treatment, as it was considered then, as now, that everything had been done that science could devise, and if the patient died under this sort of treatment it was his own fault, or he was out of luck.

If one died under the newer school of treatment, the one administering this was held responsible for the death, and paid with his life for the life of the patient; surely a most deterring penalty. Now the strange part of this historical fact is that the recognized, official school at that time was the one that believed that disease was a self-created, intrinsic affair, and that all that could be done to relieve was to discontinue its causes, assisted by such means as the enema, fast, baths, massages, sunlight, diet, the so-called natural means, while the other and non-official school believed disease an extrinsic affair, something that attacked the victim from without, and so to be treated with means to counteract this thing, whatever it was.

This led the newer school to the use of various drugs, in an effort to counteract this outside influence, also to much surgical interference, as we have today many records of operations performed thousands of years ago showing trephining operations, sections of the body (our present day internal operations) and a surprising amount of operative lore that we used to think originated with this present civilization.

It would seem that unless the physicians of the new school at that time were much more successful with their operations and their drugging than are our present crop, the ranks of their adherents must have been rapidly thinned by the number of vicarious deaths claimed as forfeit for surgical and medical losses.

Hippocrates, the so-called father of medicine, was educated in Alexandria, under perhaps both schools of treatment, and his practice and teaching show much of both sides.

He believed in the potency of drugs to assist Nature, as also in operations, yet he evidenced all through his teachings a profound respect for Nature as expressed in the human body, and many of his suggestions for treatment would fit well with the practice of the so-called naturopathic school of today.

He still retained the idea of allowing Nature free rein in the management of the case, but believed much could be done through the agency of baths or massages or drugs to relieve the condition and so assist the body in regaining a normal state.

It is easy to see how the new school, exploiting all sorts of remedies that consistently failed to relieve, was led farther and farther into the field of research and experiment in their hunt for something that would cure, so that by the Middle Ages everything imaginable had been used: toad's toenails, bat's tongues, the entrails of various animals, the more disgusting the better suited to the case, and always with this idea that something not yet discovered would cure disease.

The fountain of youth was ever the chief incentive, and perhaps more ingenuity was expended in search for something that would promote eternal youth than for anything else.

Yet always the search went on, and never did it arrive, for when disease is understood it will be easily seen that there can be no remedy for it except the discontinuance of its causes.

From the time of Hippocrates to the very present this same search is going on, and it will go on unavailingly till humanity realizes that its troubles are always intrinsic, as is also the only remedy.

Our prescriptions today do not include such strange things as toad's toenails or bat's tongues, but they are no more availing in the relief or cure of disease than were these ancient nosodes.

We are still treating disease as if it were something, an entity, blaming it on germs or other extraneous influences, and of course this holds us to the idea of extraneous cure.

Here and there for the past hundred years and more has arisen a voice protesting that we were on the wrong track on both our understanding of disease and our means for its relief, yet these were always regarded as the protests of idle dreamers who did not understand, and their voices were drowned in the tumult of those who were exploiting panaceas or special treatments guaranteed to cure this or that ailment. Even now, with the present awakening on the subject, the number of those who understand what disease is and what to do for it is inconsiderable as compared with the great majority who still believe and teach that disease is something that we do not know anything about and that all we can do about it is to wait till it develops and then do something for the symptoms, just as the cry at present is for early diagnosis and early operation in cancer, when the very earliest possible diagnosis is too late, much too late, for effective treatment.