Davis conceived of “Nature” as a “mighty and Magnificent M
achine, and the Divine Mind as the omnipotent and omniscient A
rtisan.”
18(p20) Perfect health, he declared, is “that state where the immortal spirit is circulating harmoniously through every organ, tissue, and ramification, of the organism.”
18(p43) Disease, then, “is caused or created by a constitutional disturbance in the circulation of the spiritual principle.”
18(p110) Clearly, it is but a very short leap from Davis' free and unobstructed flow of spirit to Still's “rule of the artery”—or the free and unobstructed flow of the blood. Furthermore, Davis waxed rhapsodic about the body's ability to produce the chemicals it needs as well as the body's capacity to heal itself. Davis also argued that physicians were usually mistaken in how they managed their patients' problems, noting that the general practice of treating effects instead of causes is erroneous. As for drugs, he declared, “I am impressed that medicine
never cured a disorder in the human body.”
18(p234) Drugs were nothing but harmful. Indeed, Davis continued, “medicines penetrate, imprison, and partially murder, some of the weakest or most susceptible organs of the body.”
18(p237) In frustration, Davis sighed, “O, that patients could place the same unbounded, submissive, child-like confidence in the in-dwelling Divinity of nature, that they place in their physicians!”
18(p237)