A NEW Theory of Cure

From Tibb to Hippocrates, from Avicenna, Freud, Hahnemann, Pasteur and Beauchamp, to Fleming, to Hall. What did they know? What were they missing?

Many people throughout history who have tried to understand CURES. What can we learn from them?

When we ask Google, Bing, Grok, duckduck, Baidiu or other search engines to find a theory of cure, four names dominate, in various sequences depending on timing, the questioner, and other inscrutable factors. The names are Tracy Kolenchuk (that’s me) with the healthicine cure theory, Lydia C. Hall’s Care, Cure, Core theory of nursing, Samuel Hahnemann’s theory of like cures like, and Freud’s talking cures.

Notably missing are Tibb, Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Louis Pasteur and Antoine Béchamp and Alexander Flemming. Also missing are conventional, western, allopathic medicine, and osteopathy, as well as any so-called alternative medical practices from Ayruveda, chiropractic, homeopathy, to Traditional Chinese Medicine. Not one of those provides, much less explores any theory of cure.

As this history is reviewed, it is important to understand, and recognize that the presence of a cured case does not require a theory of cure. Historical, and current medical practitioners have cured many illnesses – despite not having any theory of cure, often without even using the word cure or cured.

Greek/Roman Medicine: Before Hippocrates

Prior to Hippocrates – there were many documented cures and curers, who generally practiced without any theory of cure. Early theories of disease were based in local religious faiths. Many diseases were believed to be caused by the disapproval, sometimes even the malevolence of various gods, and curers often sought the favor or the assistance of those gods. At the same time, as today, most cases of illness were minor, easily healed or cured. These were simply ignored – either they were understood or not important enough to be caused by the gods.

As various practitioners to rationalized illnesses and cures, they produced simplistic, limited, often confusing, sometimes ridiculous theories of cause and cure. Even flawed ideas, concepts, and theories can lead to actions that address a present cause. Actions based on wrong theories are often followed by cures, because most cases are cured.

No theory is perfect, or it would not be a theory, it would be accepted fact.

Unani Tibb

Unani Tibb is an ancient system of medicine based on the four humors, and the teachings of Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen, developed and documented by Avicenna. In China it is known as Urghur medicine; in Iran as Persian medicine; Anatolian medicine in Turkey; and European traditional medicine in Europe. However, none of these medical systems have documented a general theory of cure. Of course, neither has conventional western medicine.

Hippocrates – 460-370 BC

Often referred to as the father of medicine, the writing of Hippocrates are believed to be a collection of materials, not actually all written by one person. But that’s OK. We can treat the Hippocrates community’s products as one person’s writing, even when they appear to be inconsistent. No living thing is consistent. Rocks are consistent, because they are dead.

Hippocrates actually said little about cure. He is most famous for the Hippocratic Oath, which many patients mistakenly think is about them – “do no harm.” But when we examine the full oath, it is a promise to the medical profession, not the patient. The text says: “I will willingly refrain from doing any injury or wrong from falsehood, and (in an especial manner) from acts of an amorous nature, whatever may be the rank of those who it may be my duty to cure, whether mistress or servant, bond or free.”(Oath) The Oath was entry into the club, similar to the ummanu, who provided the royal family with medical care (physicians and exorcists), protection against demons and angry gods (exorcists and chanters), and whose access to the secret knowledge was hereditary, from father to son veritable scholarly ‘mafia’. (Enki)

Even without an actual theory of cure, the writings of Hippocrates come very close to the comprehensive view of the healthicine theory of cure. The Hippocratic Oath begins: “I swear by Apollo Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses.” Apollo is the god of healing (as well as the god of the sun, light, music, poetry, prophecy, and archery. His son, Asclepius is the ancient Greek and Roman god of medicine and healing. Hygieia is the ancient Greek goddess of health, cleanliness, and sanitation, the goddess of caring. Panacea was the goddess of universal remedy, the goddess of drugs. Hippocrates’ focus was generally on cures and curing, as opposed to a general theory of cure, but we can see the basic elements of cure: healing (natures cures), caring (health, cleanliness, and sanitation), and radical cures (medicines and drugs, the universal remedies).

Hippocrates recognized that most cures come from nature, from healing, not from doctors, not from medicines.

“It is nature that cures diseases. She herself finds the appropriate ways, without needing to be directed by our intelligence”. – Hippocrates

“The physician is often compelled to conciliate the mind of the patient while Nature is effecting the cure.” – Hippocrates. And he counselled others to cure without drugs whenever possible.

“Leave your potions in the chemist’s crucible if you can heal (cure) your patient with food.” – Hippocrates

Hippocrates often advised against fighting our natural curative processes with actions that reduce healthiness in the quest for a cure: “Our natures,” he said, “are the physicians of our diseases. We must refrain from meddlesome interference.”

Hippocrates was also well aware of the power of the patient’s belief in the doctor as a curative aid.

He advised doctors, to “use their authority and charisma, and the mystery of their esoteric knowledge, to heal. They must practice their art calmly and adroitly, concealing most things from the patient while attending him. … sometimes comfort with solicitude and attention, revealing nothing of the patient’s future or present condition.” He did not dismiss such successes as placebo effects, nor did he see any need to apologize.

His advice: “Cure sometimes; heal often; comfort always” was aimed at physicians, but encompasses the entirety of the theory of cure, although the sequences is different from that in nature.

Healing is the first cure, occurring naturally when injuries are present. Healing cures most injuries without conscious effort. Caring (comfort), the second natural cure, occurs often. We care for ourselves, and others, often with no curative intent. However, caring does cure some cases. Medicines, although often referred to as “cures,” rarely cure diseases. Most drugs are designed, manufactured, and marketed to address symptoms not cure-causes.

Hippocrates advised on the important curative powers of communities, medical and non-medical, of caring and curative actions by patients themselves, family, friends, and others: “Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experience fallacious, judgement difficult. Not only must the physician be ready to do his duty, but the patient, the attendants, and external circumstances must conduce to the cure.”

Hippocrates seemed aware of Lifestyle Cures, although he saw some as unnatural.

“For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction [of the diet], are most suitable.” – Hippocrates

However, Hippocrates made no useful distinction between a radical one-time cure, which directly addresses a present cause, and a process or lifestyle cure, which is required to address an ongoing cause of illness. The same is true of most medical practitioners and theorists today.

Hippocrates was not a surgeon, and with regards to surgery, he was simply wrong, advising:

“What cannot be cured by medicaments is cured by the knife, what the knife cannot cure is cured with the searing iron, and whatever this cannot cure must be considered incurable.” – Hippocrates

The simple reality is that most cures, even most surgeries are not difficult, and not medical. Hippocrates knew that most cures come from nature, but then forgot, dismissed the easy cases. He naturally limited his view to difficult cases. Simple cases were not brought to his attention. Small wounds, cuts and bruises, even broken bones heal without medical attention. Most wounds are so small we forget them. We scratch away the flesh that contains a louse. We remove thorns, even porcupine quills without aid of a doctor. We can cut our own ingrown toenails, or get help from a family member. We don’t need a professional to puncture a boil, although it might be safer and more effective. Young children lose baby teeth through natural processes, adults need help. When the help comes from a doctor, it’s a “medical cure.” It’s only called medicine, only called surgery, only called a cure if we consult a doctor. Hippocrates, like modern medical authorities ignored most “cures” — they do not require a medical professional.

Hippocrates understood cause and effect, and stated clearly and simply:

“Sickness is not sent by the gods… find the cause, we can find the cure.” – Hippocrates.

“Diseases which arise from repletion are cured by depletion; and those that arise from depletion are cured by repletion; and in general, diseases are cured by their contraries.” – Hippocrates

and “One must know that diseases due to repletion are cured by evacuation, and those due to evacuation are cured by repletion; those due to exercise are cured by rest, and those due to idleness are cured by exercise.” – Hippocrates

However, he made no distinction between past causes, which cannot be accessed to cure, and present causes, the cure-causes of an illness. He also did not distinguish between status causes – like a deficiency, excess, or parasite, and lifestyle causes – like overeating and malnutrition.

To a certain extent, Hippocrates understood that the distinction between illness, cause, and cure is not always clear, advising:

“Give me a medicine that will produce fever and I can cure any disease.”

Hippocrates Summary

“Hippocrates was one of the first to declare that illness was caused, not by gods or evil spirits, but for biological reasons, and could cure itself by the same means.” – Camp, John Michael Francis, Magic, Myth and Medicine, 1973

Although Hippocrates did not create a summary, a general theory of cure, his writings provide many powerful understandings. Three failings are clear.

1. Hippocrates simply ignored cases of illnesses that are easily cured. Most cases of illness are easily cured without medical authorities. In his work Hippocrates saw only the difficult cases, and naturally assumed they represented the entre spectrum of illnesses and their cures.
2. Although advised “Epilepsy among the young is cured chiefly by change—change of age, of climate, of place, of mode of life,” Hippocrates was generally unaware of the concept of a lifestyle cure, a preventative cure, a process cure. We should not be surprised. Although lifestyle causes and lifestyle illness are recognized today, lifestyle cures are not. Most lifestyle cures are the responsibility of the afflicted individual – who is often not even a patient.
3. Hippocrates, and other medical practitioners of his time, studied the four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile: the body. Although Hippocrates understood that diet and environment were illness causes and cures, he paid little, if any attention to causes and cures of illness in the mind, the spirits, or the communities of the patient. The cures of these causes are still largely outside of the medical realm today.

But perhaps most important, Hippocrates recognized that a cured case is anecdotal and that there are a variety of cures for specific diseases, “And even if he were to suffer, the cure too would have to be one. But as a matter of fact cures are many.”

Galen: Claudius Galenus of Pergamum,129–200 CE

Galen’s medical theory of the Theory of the Four Humors expanded on the teachings of Hippocrates, which dictated that the body’s four essential fluids—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile— need to be in perfect balance to avoid illness.

Galen’s focus was on cures, not on cure. He expanded the Greko-Roman theory of causes, the theory of four humors, which were totally based on diseases of the body. Anatomy was his calling and most of his work was treating injuries. Perhaps his perception of cure was limited by his successes. He communicated no theory of cure, perhaps because he was too busy, having too much success curing.

Ibn Sina: Avicenna – 980-1037

Ibn Sina ( c. 980 – 22 June 1037), commonly known in the West as Avicenna was a preeminent philosopher and physician, often described as the father of early modern medicine, the father of medicine in the Muslim world, Avicenna challenged the medical systems cure denial of cured cases, something that persists in today’s modern medical practices.

“Of this it might be said that Medicine would not suffer by candidly acknowledging its (miracle cures) occurrence through her leading voices. Not to do so exposes her to disrepute in the minds of those who have experienced the cures, or have personally met with such cases.” (Avicenna’s Canon).

Avicenna had some understanding of the difference between status and lifestyle illnesses, advising that

“Note that some states are labile, and others are stable or fixed. Labile states are more or less easily curable, but fixed states are very difficult to resolve or cure. State. —We must distinguish carefully between cause, disposition, state, habit, and symptoms.” but failed to recognize that cause, disposition, state, habit and symptoms might each be causes of illness.

Avicenna often placed a focus on curable vs incurable diseases – frankly, offering nonsense claims like: “Diseases are curable or incurable. A curable disease is one which offers no resistance to treatment. An incurable disease is one in which there is some impediment to complete cure, so that whatever the doctor applies, the desired effect is not reached.” In similar nonsense, he advised, “The lucky physician sees the patient at the end of the disease ; the unlucky physician sees the patient at the beginning of the disease.”

Avicenna said, “Some diseases turn into new ones, and so themselves disappear. This is very satisfactory. One disease becomes the medicament for curing another.” – just as Hippocrates advised about fever sometimes being a cure.

Avicenna had advice for complex cases, where one illness caused another, and for emergency illnesses, which must be addressed quickly. “When several maladies occur together we should deal first with that which fulfils one of the following three conditions: 1. When the one must be cured before the other can be relieved. 2. When the maladies are related as cause and effect. 3. When it is absolutely essential to deal with one of the maladies.”

For poorly understood cases, he advised letting nature run its course, “When you do not know the nature of a malady, leave it to Nature; do not strive to hasten matters. For either Nature will bring about the cure or it will itself reveal clearly what the malady really is.”

Avicenna is remembered for his cures, not for understanding. He provided almost nothing to support any general theory of cure. He recognized the power of a lifestyle cure, but not as a cure concept: “Sometimes one may advantageously arouse his sense of shame, making him blush, and so leading the sick person to avoid what is harmful for him.”

Other Practices:

There are many other practices of medicine, however, none from Greko-Roman to modern medicine, has a functional, much less a generally accepted definition of cure, much less any theory of cure.

Chinese Medicine

Chinese medicine claims many cures, but, like modern medicine, cured is simply undefined. There is no theory of cure in ancient or modern Chinese medicine, known as TCM or Traditional Chinese Medicine. In addition, diseases and health are also too poorly defined to be studied scientifically. In place of the four humors of Greko-Roman medicine, Chinese medicine offers the mysticism of Yin and Yang, of Qi, and Five Elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water.

Many of the instructions to cure, are cryptic nonsense where even the disease is not defined: “Since Qi will be high or low, disease can be distal or proximal, syndrome internal or external, and treatment moderate or drastic, which is determined by the medicinal Qi to take effect adequately.” (Yellow Emperor)

The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine — Essential Questions contains the word heal once, healed once, and healing not at all. Most cases of illness are cured by healing, but the classic tomes of Chinese medicine, simply ignore healing cures. Likewise, because all cures come from the physician – little attention is paid to caring cures, of community cures.

Chinese medicine today appears to be moving towards, or perhaps following in the footsteps of western medicine, which treats only recognized symptoms and diseases with approved products and no definition of cured. What is not defined cannot be achieved.

Ayurveda: Indian medicine

Ayurveda is a holistic system of medicine in India with over 3,000 years of history. that takes a natural approach to all aspects of health and well-being. In India, Ayurveda is a recognized medical system.

However, the words cure and cured are simply not defined in Ayurvedic medicine. (Ayurveda Encyclopedia), making it impossible to develop a theory of cure, much less a comprehensive theory of cure. When researching Ayurveda, we also need to be aware that the word “healing” is generally used for “medically curing,” whereas in the healthicine theory of cure, healing is defined as the curing of injuries that occurs without medical intervention. This type of healing is not discussed in, for example, the Ayrveda Encyclopedia.

Ayurveda also speaks of vikriti, the elementary causes of illness, but the phrase is completely different from elementary causes and illnesses discussed in the healthicine theory of cure. Vikriti describes the dynamic states of a person’s doshas—Vata, Pitta, and Kapha—as they respond to lifestyle, diet, stress, seasons, and environment.

In the theory of Ayurveda, “All diseases are caused by aggravation of the doshas.” (Vata, Pitta, and Kapha— physical, mental, and emotional well-being.) Ayurveda, as currently practiced, makes no attempt to, and cannot logically develop into a comprehensive theory of cure.

Other Theories of Cure?

Do any theories of cure exist in history? When we google, bing, duckduck, use other internet research tools to find theories of cure – outside of the healthicine theory, there are three notable findings, in chronological sequence: homeopathy’s claim of Like Cures Like, Sigmund Freud’s talking cure, and Lydia Hall’s Cure, Care, and Core theory. Let’s examine each of them in turn.

Like Cures Like: Samuel Hahnemann 1775-1843

The first law of homeopathy: the Law of Similars, or Like Cures Like: “the principle that a substance which produces certain symptoms in healthy people can cure the same symptoms in the sick” (Hahnemann Revisited) was created by Samuel Hahnemann when he discovered that cinchona bark could induce, in a healthy person, the same symptoms it would cure in the sick person. Like cures like does not apply to illnesses or disease, it applies to the cure of symptoms. As a result, like cures like is not a theory of cure. A theory of cure must be applicable to any and all cases of injury and illness. Most symptoms are not illnesses, not diseases. When we look at a comprehensive list of diseases in the International Classification of Diseases – most are simply out of scope of the Like cures Like concept.

However, we need to maintain awareness that homeopathy, like many non-theoretical cure concepts, actually cures many cases of illness in practice. In medicine, the weakness of the theory does not necessarily translate into poor performance.

Talking Cure: Sigmund Freud 1856-1939

Anna O., a patient of physician Josef Breuer experienced relief from her symptoms through talking during treatment, discussing her repressed traumas. This was later termed the “talking cure” by Anna herself.

Freud’s developed this cure into a practice, using techniques such as free association, encouraging patients to speak freely about whatever came to mind.

Talking cure is a very specific method of curing a very specific type of disease. It is not a theory of cure and has never been presented as a general theory of cure. It is simply not relevant to most diseases, not even to most cases of mental disorder. At the same time, The talking cure techniques continue to be used in and to influence modern psychotherapy.

Louis Pasteur 1850-1895, Antoine Bechamp 1816-1908

Pasteur and Bechamp are often seen as competitors over the germ theory of disease vs the terrain theory of disease, although their understandings of disease are often misconstrued. by various theorists and practitioners

Pasteur studied infectious disease – and claimed that diseases were caused by infectious agents, germs. Today’s medical cures are totally restricted to infectious diseases, based on Pasteur’s theories. Cured, today, is defined medically and scientifically only for infectious diseases – to kill, remove, or disable the infectious agent. Cured is not defined medically, in any practice, for any non-infectious disease.

Bechamp, on the other hand, claimed that argues that the body’s internal environment—the “terrain”— determines health, and that germs are opportunistic byproducts of diseased tissue. Terrain theory, which sounds like and is a powerful concept, has been largely neglected. No dictionary, much less any medical dictionary contains an entry for “terrain” with respect to disease. Today, there are several expansions of the concept of terrain, with little cooperation, much less coordination. The healthicine theory of cure recognizes the concept of life terrain in body, mind, spirits, and communities.

However, neither Pasteur nor Bechamp developed any theory of cure. In fact, neither paid much attention to the concept of cures. The primary focus of both was on the prevention of infectious diseases. Pasteur promoted vaccination and other preventative measures like pasteurization, to limit exposure to germs. Bechamp argued in favor of improving the healthiness of the terrain, the flesh of the body, to prevent diseases.

From the theory of cure perspective, their work was limited to a focus on infectious diseases of the body. Most cases of illness and disease are not infectious, and most cases of infectious disease are easily cured in otherwise healthy individuals. Injuries, chronic diseases, mental disorders, and even diseases with non-infectious causes in diet and environment were not part of their studies.

Alexander Fleming: Penicillin 1881-1955

Alexander Fleming, along with Ernst Boris Chain and Sir Howard Walter Florey, won the only Nobel Prize ever awarded for a cure, “for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases,” in 1945. It is interesting that today, more than 80 years later, no other medical or scientific CURE has been awarded a Nobel. Do cures exist?

However, like Pasteur and Bechamp, Flemming’s studied only a few infectious diseases. His award winning cure was a single product that, although it could cure many cases of infection, it could not cure all infections, and could not cure most diseases.

“Press publicity in the last few years has given many people the idea that penicillin is a panacea, but throughout the book it is emphasized that penicillin is not a “cure-all”. There are many of our most common ailments on which it has no effect.” (Penicillin)

Most cases of illness and disease are not caused by infectious agents. Of the top ten disease causes of death in the USA, heart disease, cancer, accidents (injuries), stroke, COPD (chronic lower respiratory disease), Alzheimer’s, diabetes, kidney disease, chronic liver disease, and COVID-19, only COVID is directly caused by an infectious agent, although COPD, kidney disease, and chronic liver disease can be the consequence of infections in some cases. Cured is not medically defined for any non-infectious disease, so no cures can be found, and no theory of cure can be tested.

Care, Cure, Core Nursing Theory: Lydia C Hall, 1906-1969

Lydia C. Hall’s writings, Care, Cure, Core Nursing Theory, is exactly that, a theory of nursing. It says almost nothing about cure, much less about a theory of cure. The basic concepts of Hall’s theory contains three independent but interconnected circles: the core, the care, and the cure, where:

• The core is the patient receiving nursing care.
• The cure is the attention given to patients by medical professionals.
• The care circle addresses the role of nurses and is focused on performing the task of nurturing patients.

Care, Cure, Core is an attempt to understand and facilitate a healthy nursing profession.

However, it contains no theory of cure, no theory of care (which often cures) and no theory of healing.

I suspect it rises to the top when we search for “theory of cure” because it contains the words CURE and THEORY in the title – and our intelligent computers, seeing no other references, fail to realize it is about a theory of nursing. Most cases of illness are cured without the need for doctors and nurses – and these cases are ignored by Hall’s nursing theory. Nursing, not cure is the subject of her writing.

CURES Today

Today’s modern medicine has no recognized theory of cure. Modern medicine’s concept of cure is so weak that the absence of a theory of cure is not noticed.

Today, cures are bureaucratically and legally defined as drugs, as products that have been approved. Claiming that an unapproved product or procedure can cure is simply illegal. The bureaucrats have taken over medicine. This rule is applied by every government in every country. Obvious cure claims, like water cures dehydration, or Vitamin C – in any natural or unnatural form, cures Vitamin C deficiency, are illegal claims, not permitted in actual product manufacturing or sale. (FDA)

Theories of Cause

Greko Roman medicine was, in theory, based on the theory of four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, bodily fluids believed to determine health, temperament, and personality.

Chinese medicine is based, in theory, on the Five Elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water corresponding to different organs, emotions, and seasons, as well as the the Yin Yang dual nature of reality – a simple truth and the inscrutable “qi” the circulating force of life. Disclosure: I have practiced Tai Chi for more than 40 years.

Ayurveda’s doshas: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha appear at first glance to be logical, but the closer we look, the more gaps and inconsistencies appear.

Samuel Hahnemann’s theory of like cures like addresses symptoms, not causes of disease – in theory, even as it cures in fact.

Louis Pasteur’s germ theory of disease has become dominant in modern medicine, even though it is not relevant for most cases of disease, and can lead to incorrect treatments for many cases of infectious disease. These errors tend to be dismissed or ignored.

Antoine Bechamp’s terrain theory, is a YIN to Pasteur’s germ theory YANG. It covers a wider span of illnesses than the germ theory, but it also ignores many, perhaps most cure-causes of illness and disease.

Healthicine Theory of Cure Causes: Present vs Past and Future

As we study causes of illness, we must distinguish between past, present. and future causes. Past causes are gone. They cannot be accessed to cure a case of disease. Future causes are not causing illness. They can be useful to prevent cases of illness, but cannot be accessed to produce cures.

Only a present cause of illness can be accessed, successfully addressed, to produce a cured status. Modern medicine ignores the concept of present causes.

Healthicine Theory of Cure Causes: Status vs Lifestyle

The theory of cure classifies elementary causes of illness into

status causes – attributes, status causes and injuries

lifestyle causes – process and lifestyle causes.

When a status cause is addressed, changed, the illness is cured. Attribute and status cures are one-time cures. If a bruise, hangnail, a shoe, a bacterial infection, or a nutrient deficiency is the cause of an illness, addressing the cause, making the necessary change to the cause produces a cured state. If the cause occurs again, a new case of illness might occur. No cause of illness causes illness all the time.

Lifestyle causes, however, are processes. They require ongoing cures. Starvation is a noun cause, a status, cured by eating food. Ongoing malnutrition, on the other hand, is a lifestyle cause, only cured with a healthy diet, an ongoing cure. A sore throat is a status cause usually cured naturally by healing. But smoker’s cough has a process cause and is only cured by a (negative) process – to stop smoking. Lifestyle cures must be maintained to maintain the cured status. Lifestyle cures are preventative cures, curing when illness is present, and preventing when it is not present.

The three causes of illness are illustrated in this image:

There are no clear distinctions between attribute causes and process causes, the distinction is determined by the cure. If an illness is cured by a one-time action, the cause was an attribute, status, or injury, a noun. If curing the illness requires an ongoing process to maintain the cure, the cause was a process or lifestyle factor.

Many illnesses are easily understood. An infection is a status cause, cured with a one-time cure, perhaps an antibiotic, perhaps our healthy immune systems, or sometimes by a surgical removal. Gingivitis, a chronic infections, requires a lifestyle cure. Overweight might be cured by a one-time diet. Obesity, cannot. It requires ongoing actions that must be maintained to maintain the cured status. Lifestyle caused illnesses are harder to cure.

Sometime cases of illness can be cured by either a one-time cure or by a process cure. In these situations, the cure determines the cause.

Causes and Consequences

Every living individual consists of a body, some kind of mind that remembers and decides, a life spirit, and lives in communities of like and unlike. Every living individual eats, lives, and excretes in an environment.

Causes of illness are present in deficiencies, excesses, and disharmonies of attributes and processes in the six domains of life, of health, and of illness: diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. Signs and symptoms of illness are negative consequences on the body, mind, spirits, and communities.

This image illustrates the entirety of causes and consequences.

It is important to understand that at each boundary, the distinctions can be unclear. We have no clear distinction between body and mind, between mind and spirits. Even our diet enters our bodies, and our human environments consist of many layers from cellular to tissue, organ, organ systems, and even our communities. Life is not trivial.

CURED

Cured is presently so poorly defined that we have no scientific or medical test of cured for any disease, independent of an approved treatment. Cured can only be documented as proven in a clinical study, where cured is defined as part of the study. Cured is undefined in actual practice, except for an infectious disease cured with an approved drug or surgery that kills or disables the infectious agent. Cured is not medically defined for any non-infectious disease, therefore not defined for any chronic disease, any mental disorder, any nutritional disease, any disease caused by flaws in diets, minds, spirits, communities or environments.

Drug marketers suggest, “ask your doctor about drugs X.” They don’t suggest asking about cures. Today, no doctor, no clinic, no hospital, and no medical system tracks cured cases of any disease. Cases cured by an approved treatment can, in theory, be tracked, but nobody bothers. Cured is simply not important to the system.

CURING

Curing, the process of bringing about a cure, cannot be defined, because cured is not defined. Conventional and medical dictionaries often define curing as healing and healing as curing – with no useful distinction between the two. (Webster)

The consequence, today, is that the word CURE itself is banned. Doctors are trained to avoid the word cure. They teach their staff to avoid the word cure. Medicines, even medicines that can cure infectious diseases, do not have the word cure on the label nor on the package insert. Lawyers specifically advise doctors to never use the word cure in their practice. (Baldwa)

It has not always been like this. In 1936, Elmer D. Brothers wrote in Medical Jurisprudence, “One who, for a fee, professes to cure disease by dieting his patients, regulating their exercise and using spectacles, must be licensed as a physician.” It’s time for a change, time to move towards curing, towards a comprehensive theory of cure.

CURE Today

Today, cure is simply not well defined. Many current and historical medical dictionaries simply do not contain an entry for, a definition of cure – even though the word is often used in the contents. No medical reference text contains a definition of cure. (MERCK)

No theory of cure is recognized by any of today’s medical practices.

Healthicine: Theory of Cure

The healthicine theory of cure encompasses all cases of illness and disease – their present causes, consequences, the signs and symptoms of illness, and their cures. It is a theory, not a practice. It is also a general theory that can be expanded to problems in any intentional system, but let’s focus on living things and their illnesses.

In the theory of cure, a case of illness is cured when its cause has been successfully addressed, when signs and symptoms of that cause fade and disappear, when healing has completed or stopped, when no more medicines for signs and symptoms are necessary. The cure proves the cause.

The inverse is also true. When a case of illness has been cured – its causes have been successfully addressed. A cured case is a cure, a result of a natural or intentional cure action which addresses the cure-cause.

To your health, tracy

Author: A New Theory of Cure

References:

FDA: “The disclaimer must also state that the dietary supplement product is not intended to “diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease,” because only a drug can legally make such a claim.” Structure/Function Claims | FDA

Webster uses healing to define curing and curing to defined healing. (WEBSTER)

2. – “healing: the act or process of curing or of restoring to health” and,- “cure vb cured; curing vt : HEAL: a : to restore to health” (Merriam-Webster, 1995).

(BALDWA) “Nor shall he (any physician) boast of cases Operations Cures or remedies or permit the publication of report thereof through any mode.” – Mahesh Baldwa (et al), Legal Issues in Medical Practice, Vols 1 2, 2e , 2024

(MERCK) Cure is not defined in Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Treatment, 2011; Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, 2011; Lange’s Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment., 2016; Ferri’s Clinical Advisor, 2019; DSM-5, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 2013.

Oath: “The Hippocratic Oath is the oldest and most famous ethical code in medicine, a pledge that defines a physician’s moral responsibilities to patients, teachers, and the profession.” and “One of the most common misconceptions about the Hippocratic Oath is that it contains the phrase “first, do no harm.” It doesn’t.” – What Is the Hippocratic Oath and What Does It Say? – ScienceInsights

Enki: Enki’s Seven Sages (Adapa/Oannes and the Apkallu): Humanity’s Cosmic Guardians, Asen Bondzhev

Yellow Emperor: The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine — Essential Questions, Jinghua Fu & Mingshan Yang

Ayurveda Encyclopedia: The Ayurveda Encyclopedia, Swami Sada Shiva Tirtha, 2007

Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine, Gonzalez, Cibeles Jolivette.

Hahnemann Revisited A Textbook of Classical Homeopathy for the Professional, Luc De Schepper

Penicillin: PENICILLIN ITS PRACTICAL APPLICATION, Under the General Editorship of PROFESSOR SIR ALEXANDER FLEMING

I have just published a new paper on Academia.edu and on Researchgate.net:  Cure Theory Fundamentals.

The paper Cure Theory Fundamentals provides a comprehensive foundation for a theory of cure of any curable illness by identifying the two basic types of illness, the four domains of illness consequences – body, mind, spirts, and communities, and finding causes in the six domains of life, diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments.

The theory begins with the tautology that a curable illness is a case of illness that can be cured, and leads to concepts and understandings that can be applied to any curable problem in an intentional system – living or not living.

The paper is an update, clarification, and extension of the concepts in the papers Theory of Cure and The Nature and Evolution of Healing Caring and Curing. It is the result of ten years of ongoing research into the concepts of cure, cures, curing, and cured, of the two types of illness causes: status and lifestyle processes, and the three types of cures: healing, radical cures, and caring cures.

to your health, tracy
Founder: Healthicine
Author: A New Theory of Cure

I began developing the theory of cure when, in 2016, I discovered that no medical dictionary, nor medical publication contained a philosophical, theoretical, or scientific definition of cure that is generally accepted and used in medical practice. Over the next ten years, I have published several books, papers, articles, and blog posts, gradually developing and improving on a general theory of cure. Last year, in 2025, I began a complete overhaul, not of the core theory, rather, a consolidation of the wording used to describe the concepts. This paper is the first publication with those changes. The theory of cure of April 2026, is the result of ten years of research and work preparing a comprehensive theory of cure.

Introduction:

None of today’s medical practices, and no historical medical practice has any theory of cure for all diseases. The very concept of disease suffers a similar deficit. Although our medical systems often use the word cure, especially in regulations and marketing, the concept of cure remains undefined. Most medical texts confuse the words cure and cured, and make only poor distinctions, if at all, between is cured and has been cured. Bureaucratically, a cure is an approved product, not an action, not a process. No doctor, clinic, hospital, medical system, nor insurance company counts cured cases, much less maintains or analyzes statistics of cured cases of any specific disease, much less any general studies of cured. Medically, most diseases, from the arthritis, to the common cold, from cancers to zika virus disease, are considered incurable – even though most cases are cured. We have no theory, barely a basic understanding of cure. When we ask any doctor, in any conventional or alternative practice of medicine, any medical researcher, any medical philosopher for a definition of cure –we rarely receive a response, much less any agreement. This is the problem to be resolved by any general theory of cure.

Presence: Health, Illness, Cause, and Consequences

The fundamental starting point to understanding cure is presence. The presence of health, the presence of illness, the presence of causes and consequences of health and illness. We can only cure a specific present case of illness. When an illness is present, its causes and consequences are also present. To cure is to address the causes, such that the negative consequences are no longer occurring – such that the case of illness is no longer present. It has been cured.

A cure is an action, a process undertaken in the present to address causes of illness, to create a new status: cured, in the new present, to move the illness, its causes and negative consequences into the past.

No causes, signs, symptoms, nor consequences of illnesses, by themselves, constitute an illness. The presence of an illness, by definition, consists of present causes and the negative consequences of those causes.

Curable Illness

An illness is that which is present, that which we desire to cure, to be cured. The theory of cure is about curable illnesses. A curable illness is one that can be cured. A curable illness consists of a set of causes and negative consequences that are linked such that when the causes are addressed, the negative consequences stop occurring and the illness is cured. References to illness, in his text, refer to curable cases of illness. Disease is a medical term. A case of disease might be curable, or not.

A case of illness is a judgement that a negative situation is present and in need of our attention. The presence of an illness, of its causes and consequences, might be faint or strong, and might be steady, fluctuating, repeating, growing, or shrinking over time. Cured is a judgement that an illness is no longer present, that the illness causes have been successfully addressed, or are no longer present.

Negative Consequences

We typically judge an illness by its negative consequences. As we study cure, we can also learn to judge a case of illness by its causes. Throughout our lives we experience many signs and symptoms that might be an illness, most of which we simply ignore, or address in the moment, and life goes on. We are hungry and we eat. When we are suffering from malnutrition, food cures. The difference is one of degree, a judgement. We feel pain and we move away from the cause. We judge an illness to be present when the negative consequences of an illness are severe or persistent enough to warrant concerted attention, when we desire a cure.

Every case of illness has two components: cause and negative consequences. These components are interdependent. Causes are responsible for negative consequences. When the cause is successfully addressed, the negative consequences stop occurring. If the negative consequences are no longer occurring, the cause, even if it is still present, is no longer causing those negative consequences. The illness is no longer present. It has been cured.

The Four Domains of Illness Consequences

The negative consequences of an illness occur in the four living domains of life and healthiness: body, mind, spirits, and communities. Negative consequences in diets or environments are not considered illnesses.

Body: Our bodies are physical. Illness is most obvious in the body. We feel physical discomfort or pain that persists and identify it as an illness to be cured. As we become more ill, our bodies lose their ability to function effectively. Other people, community members, medical professionals, and sometimes even machines can see or measure negative consequences of illness on our body.

Mind: Our minds observe, remember, calculate, and plan future actions. Illness consequences in the mind are more difficult to detect. Our mind easily rationalizes its errors and failures. But, when we are ill, these faculties begin to fail. Others might detect problems before we notice them, and denial is often a factor.

Spirits: Our spirits drive us forward, give us direction in the face of changing life circumstances. When we become depressed or manic, when we lose our motivation, desire, or direction in life, our spirits are suffering negative consequences.

Communities: All life forms, all living individuals, live in communities, participate in communities. Our lives and health are affected by our communities and by other communities. When we suffer illness, negative consequences can affect us, our interactions with our communities, and the way different communities interact with us.

All life forms, not just humans, have physical bodies, even those without brains have some sense of a mind, some ability to observe internal and external environments, to make life decisions, to remember past events, and plan future actions. All living entities have the spirits of life, or they fade away and die. All living individuals are part of many communities, of the communities of life. Any individual living entity can suffer cases of illness and those illnesses can have short-term or long-term negative consequences on body, mind, spirits and communities.

We often deny the presence of our illnesses – not just mental illnesses. Denial can be a positive or negative force depending on the case. We might deny or successfully ignore an illness until it is cured by natural or other forces. In other cases, denial can facilitate growth of cause and consequences, leading to more severe illness and injuries.

Cause

The fundamental starting point in any theory of cure is an understanding of cure cause. We cure by addressing the causes of an illness. To understand cure, we need to study and understand cause and effect.

Unfortunately, many philosophical conversations about cause and effect, are about past events like “a caused b.” The theory of cure, on the other hand, functions only in the present. Understanding the theory of cure requires a different concept of cause and effect.

A case of illness exists in the present. The cause of a case of illness, the cure cause, exists in the present. The consequences of the cause exist in the present. The cure must come about in the present, to move the illness into the past. Past illnesses become faint memories. Past causes can no longer be proven – they are gone. Future causes are hypothetical. Future illnesses are speculation.

Causes and Consequences

The cure cause of an illness is the cause which, when successfully addressed, results in a cured status. Cure causes exist in the present, with the present illness consequences. Together, these comprise the illness. If either disappears, the illness is cured.

Only a present case of illness can be cured.

The Six Domains of Life Causes

Causes of life, of healthiness, and of illness are present in six domains: diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. Body, mind, spirits and communities are living domains. Diet and environmental factors might be living or not and can be internal to the living entity, or external.

Diet: our diet changes throughout our lives and can produce healthiness or cause illness, even both at the same time. Our diet includes not just what we eat and drink, but also what we absorb through our lungs and our skin. Our understanding of diet must include abstinence, the intentional or unintentional absence of consumption.

Body, Mind, Spirts, and Communities: form the living individual and require sustenance, exercise and rest. Healthiness of body, mind, spirits, and communities rise and fall throughout any individual’s life. When the healthiness of body, mind, spirits, or communities fall, it can cause negative consequences in other aspects of healthiness, leading to illness.

Environments: an individual lives in many external environments and has many internal environments of body, mind, spirits, and communities. Our environmental factors, like all causal factors, can promote healthiness, or cause illness in different situations.

It is important to understand that most causes of illness are also causes of healthiness in different circumstances. Life takes healthy advantage of factors in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments to live, to grow, to heal, to reproduce and to evolve. Most causes only create illness in rare or exceptional circumstances.

Thus, we begin our understanding of illness and cures at the root, the causes of illness. The cause of a case of illness is that which, when successfully addressed, produces a cured status. The cause of an illness can only be proven by a cure. A cured result proves the cause.

Two Causes of Illness

To cure is to address the illness’s present cause, it’s cure cause. There are two types of cure causes of illness, which we can view nouns and verbs. In the theory of cure, these are called status, or attribute causes and lifestyle, or process causes.

Status Causes: An illness might be caused by the presence, absence, deficiency or excess of some status or attribute of diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. An illness that is caused by a status is cured by changing the status such that it no longer causes illness. The presence of a cured state proves the cause. Status cures are one-time cures. If the status cause occurs again, a new case of illness might occur.

Injury Causes are in the past. Excessive stress can cause injuries to body, mind, spirits, or communities. However, the stress that caused an injury is gone. Only the injury is present, causing negative signs and symptoms. From a cure perspective, the injury itself is a negative status, the cure cause. Injuries are defined as illnesses that are cured by healing, although many severe injuries require additional cures. When an injury is healed, an illness has been cured. Like all status cures – injury cures are on-time cures.

Lifestyle Causes: Life consists of many processes, including the intentional avoidance of specific processes, in diet or environment, that, for the most part are healthy. Lifestyle or process causes of illness can be present in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. When a life process has negative consequences, we might judge an illness to be present. To cure requires a change to the life process cause. Process cures require ongoing curative action (or ongoing intentional inaction). If the cure process is stopped, a new case of illness might occur.

There are gradations, but no clear distinctions between the different types of causes of illness. An injury is a present status. A status might be a measure of a process, and a process cause might alternatively be seen as a series of status causes. In addition, as an illness persists or grows it can cause changes to present status, including injuries, as well as changes to lifestyle processes. As we improve our practices of curing, we can improve our understanding. The simplest distinction between a status cause and a process cause of illness is simply that illness resulting from a status is cured by changing the status, but to cure an illness caused by a process requires an ongoing process.

This next image illustrates the two causes of illness, status and lifestyle causes, in relation to each other.

STATUS CAUSE: A negative status or attribute can be

– a thing or status that causes illness

– the absence of something that causes healthiness

– an injury.

The cure is to change the status, a one-time change.

LIFESTYLE: A negative process or lifestyle can be

– an ongoing life process

– the absence of a process

– a process might be periodic, seasonal, or otherwise repeating

– many of our life processes change over time.

The cure is to change the process, with an ongoing process.

Note: an attribute of a process that, once changed, does not require ongong actions is a status cause, not a lifestyle cause.

Three Types of Illness

There are three fundamental types of illness, based on these causes.

Status Illness: the signs, symptoms, and negative consequences of a status illness being caused by a present attribute of diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments, which can be accessed and changed to produce a cured status.

An Injury Illness was caused by a stress in the past. Injuries are also status illnesses. The injury is the present status, the cause of signs, symptoms, and negative consequences. Injuries are defined as illnesses cured by healing.

Lifestyle Illness the signs, symptoms, and negative consequences of a lifestyle illness are being caused and maintained by an ongoing life process of the afflicted individual’s diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments which can be addressed, changed to produce a cured state.

Note: An infection is a status illness, not a lifestyle illness – although it is a process of the infection lifeform, it is a status of the ill individual, cured with a one-time cure, not an ongoing process.

An illness can cause illness. Most status and lifestyle illnesses are not diagnosed as diseases until after they cause injuries. An injury illness can cause a change in life statuses or processes, causing additional status and lifestyle illnesses. A lifestyle illness can cause injuries or changes in status, leading to status illnesses. A status illness can cause us to change our life processes, causing a lifestyle illness.

An illness cause is a status or a process in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. The negative consequences of any illness cause might be present in body, minds, spirits, and communities of the individual. However, an illness is not something we can isolate to a specific domain or set of domains. The illness is a concept, the realization or conceptualization that the cause and consequences are linked. When the link is broken, when the cause in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities or environments is successfully addressed – the illness concept disappears.

This image illustrates the gradations of status illnesses, injuries, lifestyle illnesses.

Illnesses are defined by their cures. A cure proves the cause, proving the type of illness.

Status Illnesses: When an illness is cured by a one-time transformation of the cause, it was a status illness.

An Injury Illness: is a status illness, cured when the injury is cured by healing.

Lifestyle Illness: can only be cured by an ongoing process which must be maintained to maintain the cured status.

Any cause of illness might be cured by many different, many alternative cure actions. Cure actions consist of changes to attributes or processes in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. The cure proves the cause.

Just as there are no clear distinctions between different types of causes, there are gradations, and but no clear distinctions between injury illnesses, status illnesses, and lifestyle illnesses. We make distinctions by curing. Different cases of a similar illness or disease might be cured by a status change or by a process change. Only a cure proves the cause. Only a cured state defines the illness type.

The Three Cures:

Every cure is a result of a change to, a transformation of cause, in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. Cures do not need to transform the individual – only the cause of their illness. Of course, many changes that address the cause of an illness also change the individual in some way.

Radical Cures are one-time changes to specific life attributes or statuses that are causing an illness. The status cause is changed, transformed, to produce a cured state. Status illnesses might be cured by intentional actions of the individual, or their communities, or in severe, difficult, or risky cases by medical communities. Sometimes, a radical cure’s change occurs by coincidence, accident, or some random force. Once cured, the illness is gone. If the cause occurs again, a new case of illness might occur.

Healing Cures are the natural curative process present in body, mind, spirits, and communities. Healing cures injury status illnesses, curing most cases of bodily cuts, bruises, sprains, minor broken bones; most mental and spirit cases of depression, mania, loss of drive; and most cases of community caused illnesses like abuse and burnout. Life is naturally curative. Healing processes are generally based in growth, but healing often requires destruction or removal of unwanted attributes and processes. Most cases of injury illnesses are minor, easily cured without any intentional curative actions or processes. When an illness is cured by healing processes in body, mind, spirits, or communities, it was an injury illness.

When an illness is cured by a radical cure or by healing, it was a status illness.

Caring actions are ongoing processes of individuals self care, or communities that maintain life and healthiness and when illness occurs, are often able to cure. Most caring activities have no curative intent – and do not cure any illness.

Caring Cures can come from the individual, caring for themselves, or from our communities caring for individuals and communities. Our medical communities also provide care for those who are ill. Caring cures are preventative cures. They are ongoing processes (or the intentional absence of a process), that must be maintained to maintain the cured status and prevent future cases of illness. Once a lifestyle illness is cured, if the curative process stops or fails, a new case of illness might occur.

RADICAL CURING: consists of making status changes to body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments to produce a cured status.

HEALING CURES: make radical changes to body, mind, spirits, or communities to address an injury’s present cause, the injury.

CARING CURES: are changes to life processes of diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments to create a cured status of a lifestyle illness.

The success of a cure proves the type of illness.

The cure, a successful cure, proves the cause, because addressing, removing the cause has produced a cured state, cured the illness.

In the theory of cure, when an illness is cured by ongoing processes of caring for diet, body, mind, spirits, communities or environments, by self or by others, it was a lifestyle illness. Note: diet is a process, such that most cures brought about by changes to diet cure lifestyle illnesses, not status illnesses. Poisoned is a status, cured by a transformation, poisoning, however, can be a process illness, cured by a lifestyle change. This image illustrates the three cures and the gradations between them.

As with different types of causes and illnesses, there is no clear distinction between radical cures, healing cures, and caring cures. We can learn more by practicing curing than by complex theoretical analysis.

Healing, Caring, and Radical Curing

We can combine these three images into one to illustrate the entire theory, from causes to illnesses to cures.

It is important to understand that most causes of illness don’t cause illness most of the time. In addition, most cases of illness are minor and easily cured. Most healing cures, caring cures, and even radical cures, are not medical. This has always been so.

With this firm understanding of cause, illness, and cure, we begin a study of the concept of an elementary illness, an illness element, and use that concept to construct or model more challenging, compound and complex illnesses and to understand their cures.

Elementary Cause, Elementary Cure

An elementary case of illness has a single cause such that addressing that single cause produces a cured state or status. Most cases of illness start as elementary illnesses, and most are cured while they are elementary.

This next image illustrates a model illness element, the hole it creates, and the cure. Many variations are possible. This image illustrates a status illness, cured by a single cure action. Once cured, the cure process is no longer required. However, in the case of a lifestyle illness, the cure action might have been present before the illness, or not, and must be maintained after the cure is attained to prevent future cases of illness. After the cure, the specific level or levels of healthiness involved might not recover perfectly, or in some cases they might recover higher, healthier than before the illness. Every case is unique.

The illness cause is shown to be present with the illness. It does not cause the illness and then exit; that would be a past cause, no longer present to be addressed, not useful to cure.

Throughout a case of illness, the hole, the signs, symptoms, and damage caused by the illness cause often waxes and wanes over time due many factors. We might fight signs and symptoms with intention, or with medicines that do not cure, like painkillers. Healing is always active, always fighting injuries created by the illness. The illness cause might be present in diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. It might be a simple status or attribute, as illustrated in this image, or a complex process. Over time, the cause might be:

o temporary, such that no cure action is required

o repeating, not occurring and then reoccurring during the timespan

o periodic, repeating according to some specific pattern of the individual’s lifestyle, an environmental factor like the seasons, or some other repeating factor.

o chronic, an attribute or status that persists until it is addressed

o lifestyle, a chronic process that persists until a process is adopted to address the cause.

As we can see in this image, it is possible to have an illness that does not reach the level of disease diagnosis. When we study all cases of illness, we will find that most are cured before they reach a level of diagnosis. Some might never reach a level of diagnosis, even as they are never cured.

A cure cause is a cause of illness which, when successfully addressed, results in a cured status.

A cure element is a process that addresses the present cause of an illness element causing the negative signs, symptoms, consequences and their progression to fade and stop, thus ending, curing the illness. Some negative consequences might still be present and might be judged as independent illness elements. Most cure processes function by improving healthiness. However, many cure actions trade one aspect of healthiness for another, often in the expectation that the decreased healthiness will recover. Sometimes a curative action that reduces overall healthiness is required, perhaps due to the belief or understanding that the risks presented by the illness are less than the risks of the cure.

Elementary cases of illness, while remaining uncured, can acquire more causes, becoming compound or complex, requiring multiple cure elements.

We can use the concept of an illness element to construct a model of any curable compound or complex case of illness. Of course, some cases of diseases or other medical conditions might not be curable, at which point they depart from the framework of the theory of cure.

When an illness has multiple cure causes, multiple cure elements are required to cure the overall illness. These cures might, depending on the case, be completed simultaneously or they might need to be completed in specific sequence.

Partial Cures – Complete Cures

When a cure cause is partially addressed, a partial cure might occur. A partial cure can also occur when some, but not all cure causes of an illness are addressed. It can be difficult to determine that a partial cure has occurred.

A complete cure indicates that all cure causes of the specific illness, which might be a set of illness elements, have been fully addressed.

No cure is perfect. Life goes on. No cure is permanent. Causes can reoccur.

Compound Illness

A compound illness case has multiple present cure causes producing similar illnesses, similar signs symptoms, and negative consequences, such that multiple cure processes are required to produce an overall cure. Addressing fewer than all of the cure causes – produces a partial cure. As previously noted, it can be difficult to prove a partially cured status. A compound illness might consist of any combination of each type of elementary illnesses: status causes, injuries, or lifestyle illnesses, each causing signs and symptoms considered to be a single illness.

A secondary illness is an illness that was caused by another illness. The primary illness might be past, such that the secondary illness has been caused by the primary, or in the present, such that the secondary illness is being caused by the primary, creating a complex illness.

Complex Illness

A complex illness is exists when one present illness is causing another. Curing the secondary illness often fails because a new case is constantly at risk of being created by the primary illness. Curing a primary illness, on the other hand, often facilitates a natural, or healing cure of the secondary illness. In some cases, intentional cure actions are needed for both the primary and the secondary illnesses.

Disease

Most elementary illnesses are cured so easily that there is no need for medical attention, much less a disease diagnosis, even when a diagnosis might be possible. Our medical systems routinely ignore elementary illnesses and their cures. They do not warrant medical attention.

As a result, most cases of disease are compound or complex cases of illness, consisting of multiple elements of illness, requiring multiple cures. Sometimes, an elementary illness is considered so severe that it is designated to be a case of disease.

Any curable case of illness or disease can be mapped to a set of curable illness elements, either an elementary illness or a combination of illnesses elements, possibly a compound or complex illness.

Cases of incurable illnesses are outside of scope of the theory of cure. Incurable is a belief that might be accepted but can never proven. Incurability is disproven by a cure.

Curing

Every cause of an illness might be addressed in many different ways. “One cure” is a marketing term, a marketer’s dream, not a useful concept in the theory of cure. From this perspective, we can see many different kinds of cures, which leads us to many ways to cure and many more ways to improve our cures.

Healing Cures come from nature and can cure injuries not just of body, but also of injuries to our minds, our spirits, and our communities. Healing is unconscious curing, not limited to simple physical concepts of injuries. When we are injured by many illnesses, from the common cold, influenza, measles, and COVID and many others, our natural healthiness cures the illness, as healing simultaneously addresses the damage.

When we are healthier, we cure our illnesses more quickly and easily. Healing is based not just on the healthiness of our bodies, it is also influenced and aided by the healthiness of our minds, our spirits, and our communities. When our bodies, minds, spirits, and communities are healthier, we cure our injuries – and many illnesses – faster, more easily, and more effectively.

When we act to make ourselves, our bodies, minds, spirits, and our communities healthier, we can improve all types of cures.

Caring Cures come from our communities. Caring is an ongoing process, not a single action. It is a statement of faith in each other, in the value of others. Our first community, of me, myself and I, takes its curative powers from our caring for self, from our spirits, our drive to live, to survive, to thrive. When we are ill, or when members of our communities are ill, we act as communities to cure and to make curing more effective. When we act as a caring community, we can see preventative cures as powerful curing force. A cure is the best preventative of further illness.

When we develop life processes to look after ourselves and others, we also improve our caring cures. When we build and support the communities around us, when we make our communities healthier, we improve our community cures. There is no “one community.” To improve our cures we need a science to improve all communities. When our communities develop processes to make all communities healthier – we improve our cures, we cure faster, more effectively, and our cures become safer.

Radical Cures come from healthy changes to the attributes and statuses not just to our bodies, but in every domain of health, of life – and of illness: diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. Radical cures can sometimes be accidental, coincidental, or random. When we take control, when we make it our intention to address present causes of illness – we cure more cases of illness, and can learn to make our cures safer and more effective.

Every curable case of illness can be cured. To cure is to successfully address the causes of an illness. There are many different ways to address any cause of illness. Many different cures. The search for “the cure for a disease” has long proven to be a failed concept. We might successfully address any cause of a case of illness, might cure any illness, with changes to our diets, our bodies, our minds, our spirits, our communities, or our environments. We can only know for certain when we succeed. We might cure by changing specific statuses, or attributes – one-time cures, or we might cure by changing our lifestyle, our life processes of diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, or environments. Limiting our cure actions to specific products, actions, or medical systems limits our ability to cure.

Some cases of illness cannot be cured. Sometimes, we die. Sometimes, it’s more effective to tolerate, to live with a specific illness than to risk a dangerous cure attempt.

Imperfect Cures are cures. No cure is perfect. No wound heals perfectly, but wounds are healed. No radical cure is perfect. No caring cure, no ongoing cure process is perfect. In many cases, we must accept partial cures. In other cases, partial cures are necessary steps on our path to a complete cure. Sometimes a failed cure points the way to a successful cure, by proving that our theory of cause was wrong, forcing us to look for a new cause or a new ways to address a cause.

No cure is permanent. Causes of health and illness are causes of life. Life goes on. Life is about change, not about perfection. Only death is permanent.

When we cure, we succeed. When we cure, the cure proves the cause.

Conclusion:

The theory of cure provides a clear framework for understanding the concepts of curable illnesses, their causes and their cures, beginning with elements of illness, of cause, and of cure that can be combined to understand compound and complex illnesses, to work towards their cures and understand when cured cases are attained.

“In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not the same.”

The theory of cure is a framework that can be used in practice, to explore the boundaries between cure theory and practice, to create more and better cures of any illness. But the theory cannot point us to cures for incurable illnesses. When we encounter an incurable illness, we need the serenity prayer.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can; and

the wisdom to know the difference.”

Incurable illnesses cannot be cured. Curable illnesses can be cured.

When we step back from specific illnesses to see the bigger picture, we can see that most illnesses are trivial, easily cure. Most cases of illness are curable, but incurable illnesses persist – so we see each of them for a longer period of time. When we move closer, each disease becomes a set of individual cases of illness. Each is unique, and therefore each cure is unique. When we step back and look at negative consequences, we see them in body, mind, spirits, and communities. When we step back and look at causes, we can find them attributes and processes of diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments.

Distancia meliorat visionem. (Distance improves our vision.)

When we step away from illness, to examine other problems in life, from our flat tire to our flagging economy, we can see similarities. Some cases can be fixed (cured) some cannot. Of those that can be fixed, some might be fixed with one-time cure actions – status changes, while others require ongoing actions, process changes, to maintain the cure and to prevent future occurrences. We step away to see the big picture, but we need to step closer to see individual cases. Both views are important.

The theory of cure can be applied to solving (curing) solvable (curable) problems in living and non-living systems.

To your health,
Tracy Kolenchuk,
Founder: Healthicine
Author: A New Theory of Cure

April 2026

What is the most important phrase in medicine? Many people might guess “YOU’RE CURED.” But no. Cured is not medical. How can I know this? Maybe it’s because I’m not a doctor? I know what happens when a case of disease is cured. Nothing.

Cured cases are no longer medical. Were they ever medical? They are cured.

We have is no medical definition of cured. We have no medical records of cured cases of any disease in medical practice. None. No doctor, medical clinic, hospital, medical system, nor medical insurance company documents, much less tracks cured cases.

Cured is not medical.

No medical researcher can track cured cases of any disease, because there is no data. Once a case of disease has been cured, the cases is simply ignored. Medical systems ignore cured cases and move on. They have work to do.

It’s worse. We have no recognized test of CURED for most diseases. Any disease.

The common cold is INCURABLE!

“There is no cure for the common cold…”

It’s a common trope. I’ve had lost of colds. So have you. All of them cured (unless you have one right now – which will be cured soon. It’s nonsense.

Cured cases are not medical.

CURED – is not Medically Defined

Old news and new. William Lewis’s A Complete Dictionary of the Whole Materia Medica, written in the late 1700s, does not contain an entry for cure, although the word cure appears over 100 times. A Medicinal Dictionary Including Physic Surgery Anatomy Chymistry And Botany, 1748, by R James, skips from curcuma to curmi, not defining cure or cured although the word cure appears many times. The London Medical Dictionary: Including under Distinct Heads Every Branch of Medicine, (Parr, 1809) skips from CURD to CURIMENTOS – having no entry for cure although the cure word appears hundreds of times in the text. Robert Hooper’s A Compendious Medical Dictionary published in 1809 skips from CURCUMA to CUTICLE, having no entry for cure, even though the word cure appears many times. Many, perhaps most medical dictionaries do not contain an entry for cure. Of course the word cure is used often in medical dictionaries, without a definition. Beeton’s Medical Dictionary, 1850 skips from curcuma to current. Cure is not defined. A Dictionary of Medicine, by Sir Richard Quain, 1880, does not contain an entry for cure, skipping from cupping to cutis. The words cure and cured are used hundreds of times. A Dictionary of Domestic Medicine, by John Henry Clarke, 1890, skips from crying to cuts. Although the word cure is used often, there is no entry for cure.

Two hundred years ago, cured was not medical.

A Dictionary of Medical Science, 1903, defines cure as “course of treatment; restoration to health; remedy; restorative,” but does not define cured distinguish between treatments that do not cure and any that do – and does not defined cured. The word cure is used often in the text.

James Burnet (m.d.) author of A Dictionary of Medical Treatment, 1922, does not make an entry for cure, skipping from CRETINISM to CYSTITIS. Longman Medical Dictionary, 1982, skips from cryptorchidism to Curettage, without an entry for cure.

Today, we see little change.

Black’s Medical Dictionary, 1944 skips from curdled milk to curette. The, 2008 – 41st Edition skips from Culdoscopy to Curette. CURE is not defined, although it appears dozens of times. Cured appears over 20 times, but is also not defined. Cured is not medical.

Dictionary of Medical Terms (Barron), 2004, does not contain an entry for cure, skipping from curare to curet, but incurable is defined, using the word cure, as being such that a cure is currently impossible within the realm of known medical practice.” Cured is also not defined, although it states “about one-third of patients with newly diagnosed cancers are ultimately permanently cured.”

Diccionario Medico, 2008 (the Spanish edition of the Concise Medical Dictionary of Oxford University Press – does not contain an entry for “curar” – the Spanish word for cure, much less the word “curado” Spanish for cured.

The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine 2017, Tenth Edition asks: “Illusory correlation: Associated events are presumed to be causal. But was it treatment or time that cured the patient?” and advises “Radiotherapy10 is used in >50% of all cancer and forms part of treatment in 40% of those considered cured.” – CONSIDERED CURED. There is no test, no possibility of PROVING CURED. Cured is not medical.

The Un Panda Concise Pocket Medical Dictionary, 2015 skips from curarization to curret. There is no entry for cure, much less cured. We might realize that the first language of the author is not English, when he defines Naturopathy as “A therapeutic system that employs natural forces as light, heat, air and water to cure ailments rather than drugs.” The only use of the word cured, is with Gonorrhea, where it advises “No sexual contact until cured.” But cured is not defined.

The online book: Coronavirus – A Medical Dictionary, Bibliography, and Annotated Research Guide to Internet Reference, 2023 contains the word cure exactly once, in the entry for “Palliative: 1. Affording relief, but not cure. 2. An alleviating medicine.”

Cured is not medical.

Nursing Cures?

Amy Elizabeth Pope, writing the A Medical Dictionary for Nurses, 1914, skips from curd to curette, with no entry for cure or cured although the word cure appears many times. Churchill Livingstone Nurse’s Dictionary, 2012, skips from curare to curettage, although it does define cure indirectly, through “healing the natural process of cure or repair of the tissues” – a non-medical cure. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursing, 2023, by Law, Jonathan; McFerran, Tanya A. & Tanya A. McFerran skips from curare to curettage, without an entry for cure, although the word cure appears several times in different contexts, the word cured appears only once – “the abnormal presence of blood or fluid round the heart – can be cured by cutting the pericardium.” Bethel Ann Powers & Thomas R. Knapp, writing in Dictionary of Nursing Theory and Research do not provide any definition for cure, and the only cure recommended is a cure for the Hawthorne Effect, a disease that infects clinical research studies, not any person.

In nursing, cured is not medical.

Epidemiology?

John Last’s A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 1995 does not contain the word cure once in the entire text. Porta, Miquel’s A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 2014 does not define cure, contains the word cure only three times, “no cure” and “insufficient bacteriological cure” and “apparent cure,” (not defined). The word cured only once, “considered cured” – also not defined. Cured is not medical.

Epidemiologically, cured is not medical.

Cured Mental Disorders?

In 1952, Philip Lawrence Harriman’s The New Dictionary of Psychology does not define the word cure, much less cured, skipping from cunnis to curve, normal probability. The word cure is used occasionally, but generally in cure dismissal or denial.

The 1974 book A Dictionary of Psychology by James Drever skips from curare to curiosity, without defining cure, much less cured, although he does speak of “Mental healing: used mainly of the curing of disorders by suggestion.”

The 1993 book A Dictionary for Psychotherapists: Dynamic Concepts in Psychotherapy has an entry for “CURATIVE FANTASY” but not for cure. It speaks of “cure hysterical symptoms,” “cure illness,” and “cure a disturbance,” “to be cured of neurotic difficulties,” “to cure him,” but not of curing any mental disorder or disease.

Campbell’s Psychiatric Dictionary, 2009, skips from curdling to cure, transference. Cure is not defined. The word cured is used a few times, largely in denial and statements like “Compensation neurosis has been defined as “a state of mind, born out of fear, kept alive by avarice, stimulated by lawyers, and cured by verdict” – presumably only by a verdict in the client’s favor.

The 2015 APA (American Psychological Association) Dictionary of Psychology Second Edition skips from curative to curiosity. Cure is not defined in psychology, although the word cure is used about 30 times. The word cured appears three times without a definition. Likewise, the Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology, 2009, skips from cupula to curare – no entry for cure. The word cured does not appear in the entire text.

Is Cured Defined sometimes?

Butterworths Medical Dictionary 2d ed, 1978, provides an entry for cure, but makes no distinction between treatment, remission, and cure, instead offering statements like “A particular method of treatment designed to restore health,” “The treatment of disease by starvation,” and “the sudden, unexpected remission in a chronic disease without any obvious explanation.”

Cured without understanding, is not cured, not medical.

Sometimes, CURE is defined

But the definitions are vague and unscientific.

Medical lexicon : A New Dictionary of Medical Science, 1842, by Robley Dunglison, defines cure as “A restoration to health; also, a remedy. A restorative.” Health is defined as “sanitas” – the latin word for health, and the entry for sanitas only makes the definition of cure less clear, and remedy is defined simply as a medicament with no requirement to cure. George Gould in Gould’s Medical Dictionary, 1935, defined cure as “The successful treatment of a disease,” without defining success, but then added, “also, a system of treatment,” without any requirement that the treatment actually produces a cured state. The beautiful text, Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 2012, by W. A. Newman Dorland defined cure as “1. the course of treatment of any disease, or of a special case. 2. the successful treatment of a disease or wound. 3. a system of treating diseases.” – managing to cover a number of bases, without providing anything useful to determine cured.

Cure, it seems, is sometimes medical, but cured is not.

The Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 2007, by British Medical Association by the British Medical Association) defines cure as “To restore to normal health after an illness. The term usually means the disappearance of a disease rather than a halt in its progress. Medication or therapy that ends an illness may also be termed a cure.” Quite a good definition of first glance, although it makes no reference to the cause of the illness, and the statement “the disappearance of a disease rather than a halt in its progress,” makes little sense.

The disappearance of disease – cured – is not medical.

The 2005 Merriam-Webster’s Medical Desk Dictionary defines cure “vb cured; curing vt : HEAL: a : to restore to health, soundness, or normality” apparently to cure the individual, without reference to illness or disease. But Webster’s New World Medical Dictionary, Third Edition, 2008, does not contain an entry for cure. Where did it go?

Cure, cures, curing, and cured, apparently, are no longer medical. (note; the word cure did re-appear in the next edition, but the definition was scrapped from non-medical dictionaries. Cured is not medical.)

Mosby’s Medical Dictionary 9th Edition, 2013, begins with a vague general definition of cure: “1. restoration to health of a person afflicted with a disease or other disorder” but then quickly degrades into vague, poorly defined nonsense with “a course of therapy, a medication, a therapeutic measure, or another remedy used in treatment of a medical problem, as faith healing, fasting, rest cure, or work cure.”

Honest Doctors Deny Cured

“Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients he has never seen, is a quack.” The Great American Fraud p. . Collier and Sons, 1905

Fear of Speaking the CURED Word

According to John Ralston Saul, writing in The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense “…doctors took to declaring that the world was cured. The surgeon-general of the United States in 1969: “The war against infectious diseases has been won.” These words were no sooner out than malaria, cholera and gonorrhea, all three theoretically beaten, began to mutate and so escaped the control of most drugs.”

Perhaps our medical systems fear speaking about cures, about cured cases, lest they disappear…

Saul also writes: “To cure is to eliminate. A good general knows that trying to eliminate the enemy simply causes the next war”

As Saul advises, we need to understand that we don’t cure diseases, no disease can be cured. We can only cure individual cases of disease. No disease can be cured.

Curing diseases is not medical.

When a case of disease is cured, it has been cured.
When a case of disease has been cured, it is cured.

It makes no difference if the cure was caused by a doctor, a medicine, a grandmother, or by the individual. Cured is not medical.

Wiener, Philip P. author of Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas also warns against the cured word, advising: “he who suffers from love finds no pleasure in being cured.” and “A psychoanalyst might have cured him, (Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita) and the novel would not have been written.”

And we can close with Francis Bacon’s famous warning “Cure the disease and kill the patient,” advising against focusing on the medical disease, and thus missing the reality of the patient’s overall health and illnesses.

What is the most important phrase in medicine? Many people might guess “YOU”RE CURED.” But no. Cured is not medical. How can I know this? Maybe it’s because I’m not a doctor? I know what happens when a case of disease is cured. Nothing.

Cured cases are no longer medical. Were they ever medical? They are cured.

There is no medical definition of cured. There are no medical records of cured cases. None. No doctor, medical clinic, hospital, medical system, nor medical insurance company documents, much less tracks cured cases.

Cured is not medical.

No medical researcher can track cured cases of any disease, because there is no data. Once a case of disease has been cured, the cases is simply ignored. Medical systems ignore cured cases and move on. They have work to do.

It’s worse. We have no recognized test of CURED for most diseases. Any disease.

Theory of Cure is reader-supported. To receive new posts, support my work, become a subscriber.

The common cold is INCURABLE!

“There is no cure for the common cold…”

It’s a common trope. I’ve had lost of colds. So have you. All of them cured (unless you have one right now – which will be cured soon. It’s nonsense.

Cured cases are not medical.

CURED – is not Medically Defined

Old news and new. William Lewis’s A Complete Dictionary of the Whole Materia Medica, written in the late 1700s, does not contain an entry for cure, although the word cure appears over 100 times. A Medicinal Dictionary Including Physic Surgery Anatomy Chymistry And Botany, 1748, by R James, skips from curcuma to curmi, not defining cure or cured although the word cure appears many times. The London Medical Dictionary: Including under Distinct Heads Every Branch of Medicine, (Parr, 1809) skips from CURD to CURIMENTOS – having no entry for cure although the cure word appears hundreds of times in the text. Robert Hooper’s A Compendious Medical Dictionary published in 1809 skips from CURCUMA to CUTICLE, having no entry for cure, even though the word cure appears many times. Many, perhaps most medical dictionaries do not contain an entry for cure. Of course the word cure is used often in medical dictionaries, without a definition. Beeton’s Medical Dictionary, 1850 skips from curcuma to current. Cure is not defined. A Dictionary of Medicine, by Sir Richard Quain, 1880, does not contain an entry for cure, skipping from cupping to cutis. The words cure and cured are used hundreds of times. A Dictionary of Domestic Medicine, by John Henry Clarke, 1890, skips from crying to cuts. Although the word cure is used often, there is no entry for cure.

Two hundred years ago, cured was not medical.

A Dictionary of Medical Science, 1903, defines cure as “course of treatment; restoration to health; remedy; restorative,” but does not define cured distinguish between treatments that do not cure and any that do – and does not defined cured. The word cure is used often in the text.

James Burnet (m.d.) author of A Dictionary of Medical Treatment, 1922, does not make an entry for cure, skipping from CRETINISM to CYSTITIS. Longman Medical Dictionary, 1982, skips from cryptorchidism to Curettage, without an entry for cure.

Today, we see little change.

Black’s Medical Dictionary, 1944 skips from curdled milk to curette. The, 2008 – 41st Edition skips from Culdoscopy to Curette. CURE is not defined, although it appears dozens of times. Cured appears over 20 times, but is also not defined. Cured is not medical.

Dictionary of Medical Terms (Barron), 2004, does not contain an entry for cure, skipping from curare to curet, but incurable is defined, using the word cure, as being such that a cure is currently impossible within the realm of known medical practice.” Cured is also not defined, although it states “about one-third of patients with newly diagnosed cancers are ultimately permanently cured.”

Diccionario Medico, 2008 (the Spanish edition of the Concise Medical Dictionary of Oxford University Press – does not contain an entry for “curar” – the Spanish word for cure, much less the word “curado” Spanish for cured.

The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine 2017, Tenth Edition asks: “Illusory correlation: Associated events are presumed to be causal. But was it treatment or time that cured the patient?” and advises “Radiotherapy10 is used in >50% of all cancer and forms part of treatment in 40% of those considered cured.” – CONSIDERED CURED. There is no test, no possibility of PROVING CURED. Cured is not medical.

The Un Panda Concise Pocket Medical Dictionary, 2015 skips from curarization to curret. There is no entry for cure, much less cured. We might realize that the first language of the author is not English, when he defines Naturopathy as “A therapeutic system that employs natural forces as light, heat, air and water to cure ailments rather than drugs.” The only use of the word cured, is with Gonorrhea, where it advises “No sexual contact until cured.” But cured is not defined.

The online book: Coronavirus – A Medical Dictionary, Bibliography, and Annotated Research Guide to Internet Reference, 2023 contains the word cure exactly once, in the entry for “Palliative: 1. Affording relief, but not cure. 2. An alleviating medicine.”

Cured is not medical.

Nursing Cures?

Amy Elizabeth Pope, writing the A Medical Dictionary for Nurses, 1914, skips from curd to curette, with no entry for cure or cured although the word cure appears many times. Churchill Livingstone Nurse’s Dictionary, 2012, skips from curare to curettage, although it does define cure indirectly, through “healing the natural process of cure or repair of the tissues” – a non-medical cure. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursing, 2023, by Law, Jonathan; McFerran, Tanya A. & Tanya A. McFerran skips from curare to curettage, without an entry for cure, although the word cure appears several times in different contexts, the word cured appears only once – “the abnormal presence of blood or fluid round the heart – can be cured by cutting the pericardium.” Bethel Ann Powers & Thomas R. Knapp, writing in Dictionary of Nursing Theory and Research do not provide any definition for cure, and the only cure recommended is a cure for the Hawthorne Effect, a disease that infects clinical research studies, not any person.

In nursing, cured is not medical.

Epidemiology?

John Last’s A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 1995 does not contain the word cure once in the entire text. Porta, Miquel’s A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 2014 does not define cure, contains the word cure only three times, “no cure” and “insufficient bacteriological cure” and “apparent cure,” (not defined). The word cured only once, “considered cured” – also not defined. Cured is not medical.

Epidemiologically, cured is not medical.

Cured Mental Disorders?

In 1952, Philip Lawrence Harriman’s The New Dictionary of Psychology does not define the word cure, much less cured, skipping from cunnis to curve, normal probability. The word cure is used occasionally, but generally in cure dismissal or denial.

The 1974 book A Dictionary of Psychology by James Drever skips from curare to curiosity, without defining cure, much less cured, although he does speak of “Mental healing: used mainly of the curing of disorders by suggestion.”

The 1993 book A Dictionary for Psychotherapists: Dynamic Concepts in Psychotherapy has an entry for “CURATIVE FANTASY” but not for cure. It speaks of “cure hysterical symptoms,” “cure illness,” and “cure a disturbance,” “to be cured of neurotic difficulties,” “to cure him,” but not of curing any mental disorder or disease.

Campbell’s Psychiatric Dictionary, 2009, skips from curdling to cure, transference. Cure is not defined. The word cured is used a few times, largely in denial and statements like “Compensation neurosis has been defined as “a state of mind, born out of fear, kept alive by avarice, stimulated by lawyers, and cured by verdict” – presumably only by a verdict in the client’s favor.

The 2015 APA (American Psychological Association) Dictionary of Psychology Second Edition skips from curative to curiosity. Cure is not defined in psychology, although the word cure is used about 30 times. The word cured appears three times without a definition. Likewise, the Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology, 2009, skips from cupula to curare – no entry for cure. The word cured does not appear in the entire text.

Is Cured Defined sometimes?

Butterworths Medical Dictionary 2d ed, 1978, provides an entry for cure, but makes no distinction between treatment, remission, and cure, instead offering statements like “A particular method of treatment designed to restore health,” “The treatment of disease by starvation,” and “the sudden, unexpected remission in a chronic disease without any obvious explanation.”

Cured without understanding, is not cured, not medical.

Sometimes, CURE is defined

But the definitions are vague and unscientific.

Medical lexicon : A New Dictionary of Medical Science, 1842, by Robley Dunglison, defines cure as “A restoration to health; also, a remedy. A restorative.” Health is defined as “sanitas” – the latin word for health, and the entry for sanitas only makes the definition of cure less clear, and remedy is defined simply as a medicament with no requirement to cure. George Gould in Gould’s Medical Dictionary, 1935, defined cure as “The successful treatment of a disease,” without defining success, but then added, “also, a system of treatment,” without any requirement that the treatment actually produces a cured state. The beautiful text, Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 2012, by W. A. Newman Dorland defined cure as “1. the course of treatment of any disease, or of a special case. 2. the successful treatment of a disease or wound. 3. a system of treating diseases.” – managing to cover a number of bases, without providing anything useful to determine cured.

Cure, it seems, is sometimes medical, but cured is not.

The Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 2007, by British Medical Association by the British Medical Association) defines cure as “To restore to normal health after an illness. The term usually means the disappearance of a disease rather than a halt in its progress. Medication or therapy that ends an illness may also be termed a cure.” Quite a good definition of first glance, although it makes no reference to the cause of the illness, and the statement “the disappearance of a disease rather than a halt in its progress,” makes little sense.

The disappearance of disease – cured – is not medical.

The 2005 Merriam-Webster’s Medical Desk Dictionary defines cure “vb cured; curing vt : HEAL: a : to restore to health, soundness, or normality” apparently to cure the individual, without reference to illness or disease. But Webster’s New World Medical Dictionary, Third Edition, 2008, does not contain an entry for cure. Where did it go?

Cure, cures, curing, and cured, apparently, are no longer medical. (note; the word cure did re-appear in the next edition, but the definition was scrapped from non-medical dictionaries. Cured is not medical.)

Mosby’s Medical Dictionary 9th Edition, 2013, begins with a vague general definition of cure: “1. restoration to health of a person afflicted with a disease or other disorder” but then quickly degrades into vague, poorly defined nonsense with “a course of therapy, a medication, a therapeutic measure, or another remedy used in treatment of a medical problem, as faith healing, fasting, rest cure, or work cure.”

Honest Doctors Deny Cured

“Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients he has never seen, is a quack.” The Great American Fraud p. . Collier and Sons, 1905

Fear of Speaking the CURED Word

According to John Ralston Saul, writing in The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense “…doctors took to declaring that the world was cured. The surgeon-general of the United States in 1969: “The war against infectious diseases has been won.” These words were no sooner out than malaria, cholera and gonorrhea, all three theoretically beaten, began to mutate and so escaped the control of most drugs.”

Perhaps our medical systems fear speaking about cures, about cured cases, lest they disappear…

Saul also writes: “To cure is to eliminate. A good general knows that trying to eliminate the enemy simply causes the next war”

As Saul advises, we need to understand that we don’t cure diseases, no disease can be cured. We cure cases of disease.

Curing diseases is not medical.

When a case of disease is cured, it has been cured.
When a case of disease has been cured, it is cured.

Wiener, Philip P. author of Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas also warns against the cured word, advising: “he who suffers from love finds no pleasure in being cured.” and “A psychoanalyst might have cured him, (Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita) and the novel would not have been written.”

And we can close with Francis Bacon’s famous warning “Cure the disease and kill the patient,” advising against focusing on the medical disease, and thus missing the reality of the patient’s overall health and illnesses.

Theory of Cure is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure

I am in the process of a total rewrite of the paper Theory of Cure, first published in 2022. I need people to review the revised paper for editing errors and also for content.

If you can help, drop me a comment and I will send you a proof copy for comments.

The revised version begins:

“As of 2026, it has been ten years since I began my studies of cure and three years since I updated this foundational paper on the theory of cure. In those three years, I have made several revisions to the book A New Theory of Cure and I am preparing to publish a second edition, simply titled Theory of Cure. There have been two major change in the language used in the theory of cure, and many minor changes that need to be attended to. The major changes are with the phrases “attribute illness” and “causal illness,” which have been replaced with “status illness,” an illness caused by an attribute, a status, a thing, a noun, which is cured by altering the status or thing; and “lifestyle illness,” caused by a life process, a verb, which can only be cured by an ongoing process.”

The draft paper is also available for discussion on Academia.edu at Discussion: Theory_of_Cure_2026_Update-DRAFT.pdf – Academia.edu

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure

What is an illness? What is a disease? What is the difference? What is a cure? This is an image I am working on to illustrate an updated paper on Theory of Cure. What do you think?

An elementary illness is a hole in a single healthiness. At first, our perception of the illness can be very weak, very fuzzy. As healthiness falls, we gradually become aware of a discomfort – and might immediately move to address it before any illness occurs. But sometimes, healthiness shrinks, unhealthiness grows, and we perceive an illness. When healthiness rises, the illness disappears, cured.

The illness has two components, the cause and the consequences. The illness is cured when the cause, either the drop in healthiness or the cause of the drop in healthiness is successfully addressed.

A disease is a hole in healthiness that is deep enough, well enough defined to be perceived and diagnosed by a medical professional. Doctors intentionally avoid diagnosing minor illness, often sending patient’s home with advice like “take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” Most cases of elementary illness cannot be diagnosed until they become severe enough to cause damage, to create additional elementary illnesses.

Is this image trivial? That’s what I’m looking for – clear, easily understandable views of healthiness, illness, and disease.

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure

From a cure perspective: there are two fundamental types of illness cause: those that “do you,” and those that “you do.”

Cause is the key to cure, and to cures.

There are two fundamental types of causes of illness, causing two types of elementary of illness, requiring two types of cures. The two types of causes are

• those that do you, and
• those that you do.

Is your illness doing you, or are you doing it?

Noun Causes – Do You Harm- cause Status Illnesses

Status illnesses have noun causes, attribute causes, causes that are things. Status illness are caused by things that “do you.” Things that are stressing you, harming you, eating you, killing you. The cure is to address the cause, to remove it, disable it, or kill it, so that it is no longer “doing you harm.” Remember, sometimes a status illness is caused by the absence of a noun cause.

A nutrient deficiency might be causing damage and holding back healing. A poison might be damaging you. Any essential nutrient might be deficient or toxic. A bacteria, a tapeworm, or a tiger might be eating you. Too much hard work, or too much stress might harm you or even kill you. The illness caused by a noun cause is a status illness.

To cure is to change the cause. With the right change to the attribute, the status, the present cause, the cause is neutralized and the illness will be cured.

Hippocrates advised: “Diseases which arise from repletion are cured by depletion; and those that arise from depletion are cured by repletion; and in general, diseases are cured by their contraries.” – he was speaking of attribute caused diseases – disease that DO YOU.

Noun cures are one-time cures. After the cure, if the cause occurs again, a new case of illness might occur.

Verb Causes – You Do Harm – Cause Lifestyle Illnesses

Process illnesses have verb causes, process causes. Process illness are caused by things that “you do.” Life processes that are stressing you, harming you, killing you. The cure is to address the cause, to remove it, disable it, or kill it, so that it is no longer “doing you harm.” Like noun causes, sometimes, a deficiency or absence of a verb or process can cause illness.

Illnesses that have process causes, verb causes, lifestyle causes are illnesses causes that “you do.” They are only cured by changing what “you do.”

Unfortunately, from Hippocrates medicine to modern medicine, there is no recognition of illnesses that are cured by changing “what you do.” Legally, according to FDA rules, a cure must be a “product.” Lifestyle changes are promoted as preventatives – but ignored as cures.

Smoking too much can cause smoker’s cough. Coughing from a single inhalation is a status illness, easily cured. But an ongoing process of smoking — causes an ongoing cough, that persists even when not smoking. A lifestyle of eating too much and exercising too little can cause obesity. An illness caused by a verb cause is a process illness. With the right change to the process, the verb cause, the lifestyle cause, the illness will be cured.

Verb cures need to be ongoing. Skipping a meal, or a cigarette does not cure. Once cured, the curative action is a necessary preventative. If the process cause occurs again, a new case of lifestyle illness might occur.

Examples – Noun Causes: Causes that “do you”

Elementary dehydration is a status, a noun cause, a deficiency of water. It might be mild, moderate, or severe enough to cause an illness that is easily cured by drinking water. If the cause occurs again, a new case of illness might also occur.

A bacterial infection is an attribute, a noun cause, creating an infection that might be mild, moderate, or severe, judged a disease. It is cured by killing, removing, or disabling the bacteria. A new exposure to the bacteria might cause a new case of illness or disease.

Examples – Verb Causes: Causes that “you do”

Smoking is a process that can cause smoker’s cough. The cough will persist until the lifestyle, the process, is stopped – or at least diminished enough to facilitate a healing cure. If the causal process is renewed, a new case of illness might occur.

Gingivitis can be caused by an unhealthy diet, a diet lacking in nutrients essential to gum health. When the diet is healthed, the gingivitis will heal – cured. The healthy dietary process must be maintained to maintain the cured status, to prevent new cases of gingivitis. If the diet fails – a new case of gingivitis might occur.

In many cases, a lifestyle illness cannot be diagnosed until damage occurs. Most cases of lifestyle illness require at least two cures – a status cure to address the status illness and a process cure to address the lifestyle illness.

Injuries “do you”

Injuries are noun causes, attribute status causes that are present and causing signs, symptoms, and possible negative consequences. Injuries can be caused by external forces, or by internal forces including life processes. The injury persists until the cause – the injury is healed. Simple injuries have past causes – but those causes cannot be accessed to cure. An injury caused by a process illness might re-occur unless the process illness is also cured.

Injuries are cured by healing. We can improve the cures for our injuries with actions that health the injured area as well as our diet, body, mind, spirits, communities and environments – make us healthier, enhancing our ability to heal. However, these actions are not drugs, so they are generally ignored by medical practitioners.

“You do” Chronic Injuries

Sometimes, an injury is chronic because it does not heal. But, that’s a special case, a complicated case.

Most chronic injuries, like plantar fasciitis, shin splints or tennis elbow, are injuries are caused by a process, by a lifestyle, by what you do (or what you don’t do). The cure is to health the process. Once the causal process is changed – the injury can heal, cured. If the injurious process occurs again, a new case of the illness might occur.

Each Illness Element is cured by a Status or a Process

Which illnesses are status illnesses, cured by changing a status or attribute? How many illnesses are status illnesses? How many illnesses are lifestyle illnesses, only cured by ongoing processes, requiring ongoing curative actions?

We have no idea. At present, our medical systems ignore all cured cases. Modern medicine, often promoted as science based, ignores individual illnesses and individual cures. We can’t tell the cause of the cured, unless we study every cured case.

Domains of Cause

In life, for any life form – not just humans, there are six domains of cause. Elements or processes in these domains can cause healthiness, or when deficient, excessive, or inharmonious, might cause illness. Usually we are healthy – because life intentionally uses causes to improve healthiness. Sometimes we become ill. Sometimes even a cause of healthiness causes illness.

The six domains of life causes are diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. These domains overlap – environments overlap the most, so much so that our external environment includes our communities and our dietary environment, and our internal environments include our body, mind, and spirits.

To cure, we must identify individual causes – and the six domains provide a powerful framework to identify, isolate, and address causes of illness – to cure.

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An illness element, an elementary illness might be caused by the presence or absence of a cause, or perhaps the deficiency or excess of a cause in any of the six domains. The cause might be a noun, an attribute, or a deficiency, or it might be a failure caused by a process or the absence of a process. Let’s look at some examples:

Diet

We can suffer an illness due to a dietary status – deficient in Vitamin C, dehydrated, malnourished, or perhaps overweight, even poisoning, from a dietary excess. These are status illnesses, cured with the contrary, by consuming what is necessary, or by clearing the poison, often by the vomiting – an important detox cure.

Or, we might suffer from an ongoing deficiency of a Vitamin, an essential nutrient, more difficult to diagnose, or an ongoing general excess leading to obesity. Consuming a small amount of many poisons will not cause illness, but if a dietary life process contains a poison that accumulates – the illness will grow. These are cured by contrary processes.

Body

There is a gradation between a dietary cause and a bodily cause. When we are poisoned, the cause begins in our diet (although it might also occur on our skin) and affects the body, causes a status change in the body. How do we know if the cure-cause is in the body or the diet? If a dietary action cures the illness, the cause was in the diet. If a bodily action cures the illness, the cause was in the body. The cure proves the cause.

Our body can cause injuries or illnesses when we take risks – but once the illness is present, these are often past causes, which cannot be accessed to cure.

Body, Mind, Spirits, Communities

Bodies, minds, spirits, and communities can suffer injuries – cured by the natural forces of healing. In many cases, we can aid or promote the healing by improving our healthiness in many different ways. Sometimes, exercise intended to help the body grow stronger also heals the mind, the spirits, or our communities.

Our bodies, minds, spirits, and communities need exercise and rest. A temporary deficiency or excess of either can cause a temporary status illness. If we don’t sleep for many hours, sleep is the cure. If we work to hard, rest is the cure. When we rest too much, exercise is the cure. This can occur for physical work, mental work, spiritual work, and community work, leading to sloth or stress. Burnout, for example, might be mental, spiritual, or a result of overcommitting ourselves to our communities.

Mind

When the present cause of the illness is in the mind – the cure is a change of mind. Sometimes, a whack on the side of the head processes a cure. The mind changes, and an illness might be cured. Some mind cures are much more subtle. We go to the doctor and ask about a strange new appearance on our body, and the doctor says “Oh, that’s normal. Nothing to worry about.” There was no disease, but the illness is cured. When an alcoholic or drug addict makes up their mind, changes their mind, they can cure an illness that may have persisted for decades. This is a negative process cure. The individual STOPPED a process that was causing illness, and the stopped process must be maintained. If the process stop fails, a new case of illness might occur.

Spirits

When we lose our motivation, when our spirits fail, we might suffer illnesses of depression – might even give up and die. When our illness is cured with a change in life spirits, the cause was in the domain of spirits. This can also occur when our spirits become too powerful and we are consumed by mania. A spirit rest is necessary to cure. Spirit causes, like all causes of illness might be specific, individual occurrences, or they might be chronic, lifestyle causes. How can we tell? By the cure. When the cure is a result of a single action than changes a temporary spiritual deficiency or excess, the cause was a spirit attribute. On the other hand, when the cure requires an ongoing spirit action, the cause was an ongoing deficiency of spirit health. The cure proves the cause.

Communities

Communities are powerful causes of health and healthiness. Caring comes from communities – we naturally help each other when they are healthy and when they are ill. On the other hand, communities, and our participation in our communities can also be causes of illness. We might suffer community isolation – leading to depression, or community abuse leading to injuries of body, mind, spirits, and also our communities. How can we know if the cause is in the domain of community? By the cure. If changing our communities, or our interaction or participation in communities, and the result is a cure – that was the cause.

Like all causes – a community cause of illness can be an attribute, or a process. Being ejected from or rejected by a community might lead to mental or spirit illness – but it might also lead to physical abuse. On the other hand, an abusive family or marriage environment can be an ongoing process creating an ongoing illness. In these cases, we might be challenged to understand the cause and the cure. The abuse might be cured by a separation from the community, a one time status cure, or it might be cured by learning to stand up for ourselves, addressing the community cause on an ongoing basis.

Environments

Our environment might suffer a one-time, temporary change, creating an illness that is cured by a one-time cure action. Perhaps our office building has a faulty airflow, causing many staff to suffer headaches. When the airflow is cured – the illnesses disappear. This is a one-time cure. If the airflow fails again a year or a decade later, a new set of illnesses might occur.

Or, the environment might be very unhealthy, dirty, conducive to the growth of bacteria, causing ongoing infections. The cure is not a simple cleanup. The environment must be cleaned on an ongoing basis – a lifestyle cure. The cure must be maintained.

Status Cures

Modern medicine is largely devoid of cures. Technically, an infectious illness is cured medically when the infectious agent, the infectious cause is killed, disabled, or removed by an approved medicine or surgery.

All other cures of infectious diseases are simply ignored. They have not been medically approved – and cannot be proven medically. But we should be aware that even cures that can officially recognized are rarely documented as cured. No doctor, no clinic, no hospital, no insurance company documents cured cases. Treatments can be billed -whether they cure or not. Cured cannot be billed.

Lifestyle Cures

Even when a lifestyle cure is obvious, it is generally ignored by medical practitioners. Nobody cares if you cure your smoker’s cough by stopping smoking. Officially, there are no cures for ANY non-infectious disease. If your arthritis is cured with diet and exercise – no cure can be prove.

Cured Cases are Ignored

Modern medicine has no test of cured for arthritis. The same is true of many illnesses. When a chiropractor, an osteopathy, or a physical therapist cures a person’s back pain or frozen shoulder with a one-time adjustment, we know it is a cure. But modern medicine cannot recognize the cured status, much less the cause of the cure.

Trivial cures cannot be recognized medically, much less the cause of the cure.

More complex cured cases cannot be understood without a basic understanding of simple cures.

It’s Time to Study Cures, Curing, Cured

We can create a science of cure from these fundamental concepts. We know how to cure the common cold, influenza, COVID, and measles. We know how to heal a broken arm. So we ignore these cures.

When we study cured cases we can learn to improve them, but only when cure is the goal. As we begin to understand simple cures, we can build our understanding to cure more compound and more complex cases of illness.

How can we know the cause of an illness? Only by a cure.

Health is the best preventative, the best cure.
The cure proves the cause.

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure

Which cures more illnesses? Drugs, or Healthinesses?

When we think of a cure, we almost automatically reach for drug. We’ve been well trained by drug salesmen and their followers. At the same time, we should know that most drugs make no attempt to cure any disease, that most drugs cannot cure any disease, and that most cures do not come from drugs.

Where do most cures come from healthing. Yes, health is a verb: to improve healthiness. Most cures come from improvements in healthiness. Most intentional cures come from intentionally improving healthiness.

Most cures come from healthing, from healthy actions; some come from healthy inactions.

What is a healthiness? According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, healthiness “the quality or state of being healthy,” a noun form of healthy. Oxford is less informative.* No examples are provided, because the term is rarely used identify a specific healthiness.

Examples of healthinesses include:

1. a healthy state of fitness – physical healthiness
2. a healthy weight, not overweight, not underweight – weight healthiness
3. a healthy state of mind – mental healthiness
4. healthy consumption of foods – dietary healthiness. Note: this noun describes a process, a verb.
5. having sufficient Vitamin C to meet the bodily needs – Vitamin C healthiness

The action, the verb, healthing, that indicates working to maintain a healthy level of a healthiness and also to regain healthiness, to health ourselves, when a healthiness is deficient, excessive, or otherwise out of alignment.

Healthing Cures

Healthing cures are “actions that improve our healthiness to cure illnesses.” We can see these for each of the above examples:

1. We can health our body by improving our physical healthiness with healthy exercise and rest. When our bodily healthiness is so low that it is causing an illness, healthing our body can cure.
2. We can health our weight by gaining or losing weight. When our weight is so out of balance that it is causing illness, this is a healthing cure
3. We can health our state of mind when our current mental status is so far out of balance that it is causing illness, a mind healthing cure.
4. We can health an unhealthy diet by choose healthy foods and avoiding unhealthy foods. When our unhealthy diet is causing illness, healthing our diet can cure.
5. when we don’t have enough Vitamin C for health, and illness occurs, we can health our body by consuming sufficient Vitamin C to meet the bodily needs – a nutrient healthing cure.

Healthing, healthiness cures can be slow. When our body is deficient in muscle tone – it can take months to health, to cure the body deficiency. In other cases, it can be quick. When our body is super stressed from overexercise, a short period of rest can cure. Note: both of these cases might occur without any judgement of illness – only judged an illness when more severe.

When we are dehydrated, drinking healthy water can cure our illness. This is a status cure – we change the status of our bodily healthiness and the illness is cured. Of course drinking healthy water does not cure every case of dehydration – only those that are cured by drinking healthy water. Although this seems obvious, it is important.

Healthing ourselves, improving our healthiness, can cure illness when an illness is present, when illness is caused by an absence of healthiness. When no illness is present, improving healthiness often prevents illness, but that’s a topic for another post.

It seems so simple, because it is simple. Cures of elementary illnesses, those with a single cause, are generally not medical. In most cases, no doctor is required to cure. Living things, dogs, cats, snakes, and trees know how to health their bodies without resorting to a medical professional. Our bodies are so sensitive that, in most cases, they remind us to drink water BEFORE any illness occurs. But sometimes, for many different reasons, we might fail to drink enough water. If we catch the problem, the illness before any further damage is caused, the cure is trivial.

This same model can be applied to thousands of measures of healthiness. In diet, there are over 100 nutrients essential to healthiness. If we don’t maintain a healthy level of Vitamin A, B, C, or any other vitamin, or of iron, or copper, or zinc, or proteins, or fats, or air or water – we can become ill, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.

But healthiness is much more than just diet and body. We must also constantly health – maintain our healthiness – of mind, of spirits, of communities and even of our environment. All six causal domains: diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments require healthiness, lest illness occur.

When our air is so unhealthy that it is making us ill, we need healthy air. In most cases, we correct unhealthy air before illness occurs and we act quickly to find healthy air and prevent the illness. This prompts us to ask:

When does an Illness Exist?

At what point does is unhealthy air just unhealthy air – like smoking, or standing by the campfire – and at what point does unhealthy air cause illness? The theory of cure uses a simple model.

An illness is present when we seek a cure.

When we accidentally breath in some heavy smoke, and cough and move away, we don’t see an illness, just a symptom cause. We don’t need a cure, because we moved away before any serious damage has occurred. The signs and symptoms of illness: coughing, sneezing, perhaps watery eyes, but if these disappear quickly because we moved away from the smoke – it’s not really an illness to be cured. It’s no longer present.

Is illness only present when damage has occurred? This is the model used by our medical systems. Most diseases cannot be diagnosed until significant damage has occurred. Many cannot be diagnosed unless there is significant danger of damage occurring. But this can miss many cases of illness, and their cures.

In the theory of cure, an illness is present when immediate actions are not enough to get relief from negative signs and symptoms. A cure is an intentional action with positive expectations.

For example, someone might suffer persistent headaches at their workplace. But there is no smoke. Analysis might reveal that there are high levels of carbon-dioxide at the workplace, perhaps only at certain times of day. These headaches don’t go away until the air is healthed. When the air is healthed, the headaches are cured. It might be that the level was never high enough to cause measurable damage, but it was high enough to cause persistent negative signs and symptoms.

False Cures

It’s too easy, and certainly too common that we confuse the words cure, cured and cures. Cure can be a noun, a substance or treatment, a solution to a problem (noun); or a verb, an action the produces a cured state, past tense: cured.

A false cure could be something that is marketed as a cure, but does not cure. A false “cured” occurs when the patient, doctor, or someone else believes the illness is cured, but it is not cured. These cases can be (falsely) declared cured with or without identification of the cure or cures.

A cure is an action that addresses the cause of an illness, producing a cured stat or status.

There are two types of false “healthiness cures” we need to be aware of.

The first is an actual cure – only our belief in the cause of the cure is false. The second is a partial cure, but one that misses the actions necessary for complete cure.

Wrong Cure-Cause

A false cure can occur simply because we are wrong about the cause and the cure. Maybe we improved our healthiness by specific actions – and the illness went away. But the cause was actually addressed by something else. These cases can be difficult to understand – but we might gain understanding when the illness occurs again and the false cure doesn’t work. Either we were wrong before, or we are wrong now. Unfortunately, healthiness cures are generally ignored by doctors and medical systems, or declared anecdotal, false. Every actual cured case is a real case, a story, an anecdote.

Note: this type of false cure is not as common as we might think. Most of the time, we can quickly figure out the cause of our illness and health the cause, producing a cure – so often, so easily that we ignore these simple cures. We are more likely to notice when a cure fails.

Wrong Level of Cause

The second false cure occurs when we misjudge the level or layers of cause. In a previous example, we cured dehydration with water, but

We might be dehydrated because, every day, we don’t drink enough water. In this case, drinking water cures the current dehydration status, but the illness appears to return a few days later. What happened? An illness is not a thing, it cannot go away and return.

The cause reoccurred. A new case of the illness status occurred.

The unhealthy drinking (or not drinking) water process was never addressed. The fundamental cause of both cases of illness was the same, but it was a cause of a process illness – not just a status illness.

A process illness requires a process cure – drinking sufficient water every day. The illness was not just a status of “not enough water” it was a process of “not drinking enough water on a regular basis” This distinction is important, because a process illness requires a different healthing cure, to drink sufficient, healthy amounts of water EVERY DAY.

Domains of Healthiness

In an earlier paragraph, I mentioned the six domains of healthiness: diet, body, mind, spirits, communities, and environments. Each of these domains has many different healthiness factors which, when out of alignment or balance, can cause illness. In each case, if the cause is an elementary status that has not yet caused any damage, the cure is trivial. Health (improve the healthiness of) the factor that is out of alignment and the illness is cured. In each case, it is also possible to suffer from a process cause – where the cure is not just a simple change of status, but a change in life processes.

Lets look at some status and process causes of illness causal domain:

Diet

Our nutritional needs are extremely varied. In addition, our healthy bodies can tolerate wide variations in consumption of healthy nutrients. In many cases, our bodies have many systems to maintain nutrients for when they are needed. As a result, a simple deficiency of a nutrient does not cause immediate illness.

Water is essential and without water, most people suffer signs and symptoms of illness and might even diet within a few days. Note: it is possible for some people in specific circumstances, to survive for much longer periods without water.

When our water status is deficient, consumption of water provides a simple cure.

However, when our water consumption patterns, lifestyle, or processes are deficient, the illness can take much longer to create observable signs and symptoms, and the status cure might appear to cure and then later fail. The process cause requires a process cure.

Vitamin A is stored in the body for long periods of time without consuming Vitamin A does not cause illness. Illness occurs when our Vitamin A stores are used up. Ancient Egyptians, and many other cultures learned the cure – eating liver restores a healthy Vitamin A status, curing “night blindness caused by Vitamin A deficiency,” a status cure.

One of the classic dietary cures, the cure for scurvy, illustrates another important reality about healthiness cures. As James Lind famously said:

“I do not mean to say that lemon juice and wine are the only remedies for the scurvy; this disease, like many others, may be cured by medicines of very different and opposite qualities to each other.” (Lind, 1771)

Every illness has many potential cures. Our medical systems often want to find a mythical “the cure” for “the disease.” This can be a powerful tool for finding and promoting profitable treatments, but it is ignorant of most actual cures.

There are also many healthy negative action that can cure. Ongoing overconsumption of alcohol can lead to chronic hangovers. The cure is a negative process, to stop the ongoing overconsumption.

Body

Dietary consumption of alcohol can provide benefits in spirit and community healthiness, with little danger as long as we stay within our limits. However, if we have consumed too much alcohol, our body becomes toxic. The first cure is to vomit – to remove the alcohol from the body. We tend to think of vomiting poison as “being sick,” but it’s actually a healthy cure. We were already sick, the process of vomiting cures the illness.

The body is very active physically and this is where we most easily recognize the need for exercise and rest. When we don’t get enough exercise, the cure is exercise. When we don’t get enough rest, the cure is rest. Lack of exercise doesn’t cause illness until after it has continued for some time. Overexercise – absence of rest, can have negative consequences much more quickly. As a result, rest is often a status cure for an immediate problem – one we might not even judge to be an illness. Exercise on the other hand, is usually a slow process cure. Both exercise and rest are also important cure components of many injuries, where rest provides for recovery and exercise for rehabilitation.

Mind

Our medical systems currently try to treat (not cure) mental illnesses with drugs for the body – and give up on curing. There are many mental healthiness cures – and like all healthiness cures, some cases require immediate, one-time, status cures while others require lifestyle cure processes. In addition, however, because mental illnesses are rarely identified by cause, there is plenty of room for cure confusion.

Elementary depression – having a single cause, for example, might have a dietary cause, a physical – bodily status cause, a mental cause, a spirit cause, a community cause or a toxic environmental cause. In each case, it is labelled a symptom, or where severe and prolonged, a disease of the mind. Each different cause requires a different type of cure.

In the theory of cure, a mind illness has a cause in the mind, in our beliefs, our memories, or our mental calculations. The cure might be to change the belief, dismiss the memory, or repair the mental calculation.

Depression might be caused by a fatalistic belief – perhaps that our spouse is unfaithful, or that we are going to die, or that some irrecoverable disaster has occurred. These causes are in the mind – and the cure is to health the mind.

A person who believes they are going to die might fall ill and die – unless they can change their beliefs, change their mind. The change needed might be simple, short term, when a natural positive attitude takes over, or it might need to be an intentional action, supported by ongoing commitment to the battle.

One of, perhaps the most common mental causes of illness is belief in ourselves and failure to believe in ourselves. When our belief in ourself is too strong, we might take excessive risks and become ill. Is this the cause of some cases of “tennis elbow,” where the cure is simply “stop doing that?”

Spirits

In the theories of healthicine and of cure, spirits are the driving forces of life. All living things have the spirits of life, the spirit to life, grow, learn reproduce, and evolve. When individual loses these spirits, it dies. When an individual dies, it loses the life spirits. Like all aspects of healthiness, healthy spirits exist on a gradation from very near to death to so powerful that they create illness. Healthy spirits are somewhere in-between. Workaholism and burnout are spirit illnesses – that can often lead to other illnesses as well. Burnout can be a one-time, status illness, cured by simple removal from the situation or rest – but might lead to suicide if not attended. Workaholism might cause less severe illnesses, but these are often more difficult to cure, because they require the maintenance of ongoing process cures.

Communities

We seldom think of our communities as a domain of illness causes – until it happens. What is the cause of spouse abuse? Elder Abuse? Child abuse? The illnesses that result are often cured with medical attention and healing – as if they are simply status injuries. But these illnesses, when they are systemic in a local community, can only be cured by changes to the community. Sometimes, a one-time cure, like a divorce or other separation is sufficient to cure. In other cases, if separation from the community is not possible, an ongoing cure may be required.

In addition, communities can be afflicted by illnesses. Is war an illness? Is peace the healthy cure? Or is “agreement to tolerate each other” an ongoing cure, one that requires ongoing maintenance by both sides? We can expand our understanding of illnesses and cures and benefit from increased understanding.

Environments

When a mining company dumps poisons into a river – many people (as well as plants and animals) might fall ill. Curing the individual cases is important, but the higher level cause must also be addressed. And a process cure might also be needed to ensure such events to not occur again and again.

There are many simpler environmental causes of illnesses – illnesses with environmental cures.

SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder – can be caused by the absence of sunlight in winter. Many cases can be cured by simple daily exposure to a lamp that simulates sunlight. This cure can be viewed as a blend between the status cure and a process cure, because it provides daily relief that is no longer needed when spring comes and the sun improves our healthiness.

Summary

There are many healthiness cures, cures that are brought about by improving healthiness status or healthiness processes in our diet, body, mind, spirits, communities and environments.

Modern medicine ignores these cures – they are not “medical.” To study cure more effectively, more thoroughly, to learn to understand all cures for all types of illness, we need to begin with studies of the simplest, most common cures.

Health is the best medicine. Healthing is the best cure.

Note: Health is also the best preventative, but that’s another story.

to your health, tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure

* When Oxford’s online dictionary is queried for “healthiness” the response is: “Thank you for visiting Oxford English Dictionary To continue reading, please sign in below or purchase a subscription. After purchasing, please sign in below to access the content.”

In theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice, they are not.” – unknown.

Theory of Cure

An illness consists of a set of present causes and the negative consequence of those causes.

An illness element consists of a single present cause and the negative consequences of that cause.

A cure is an action, or a set of actions, that addresses the causes of an illness, producing a cured state or status such that the negative consequences are no longer present.

Cured is the status of the illness after the cause(s) of an illness have been successfully addressed. The individual, the patient, is not cured. The illness is cured. It was present due to the intersection of cause and negative consequences. Now that the cause has been addressed, it is no longer present.

Continue reading “What Does CURED mean?”

Why do so many die from non-deadly diseases? Most cases of disease are not fatal. Let’s look at a few, to round our understanding before we broach the question “Why do we die from disease?”

Three diseases, very different in nature -and provide a basis for studies of why diseases cause death.

Continue reading “Why we die from Disease”