The three principal causes of illnesses

What is man?… A composite of three essential principles: the Spirit, the perispirit and the body. The absence of any one of these three principles would necessarily lead to the annihilation of the being in the human state. If the body no longer exists, there will be the Spirit and no longer man; if the perispirit is lacking or cannot function, the immaterial being unable to act directly upon matter and, in this way, finding itself in the impossibility of manifesting, there could be something of the order of the cretin or the idiot, but there will never be an intelligent being. Finally, if the Spirit is lacking, one will have a fetus living the animal life, and not an incarnated Spirit. If, then, we have three principles face to face, these three principles must react upon one another, and there will follow health or illness, according as there is between them perfect harmony or partial discordance. If the illness or organic disorder, as one wishes to call it, proceeds from the body, material medicaments, wisely employed, will suffice to reestablish the general harmony.

If the disturbance comes from the perispirit, if it is a modification of the fluidic principle that composes it, which finds itself altered, a medication in relation to the nature of the disturbed organ will be necessary, so that the functions may resume their normal state. If the illness proceeds from the Spirit, one cannot employ, to combat it, anything other than a spiritual medication. If, finally, as is the most general case and, one may even say, the one that presents itself exclusively, if the illness proceeds from the body, the perispirit and the Spirit, the medication will have to combat at the same time all the causes of the disorder by diverse means, in order to obtain the cure. Now, what do physicians generally do? They tend to the body and cure it; but do they cure the illness? No. Why? Because, the perispirit being a principle superior to matter properly speaking, it may become the cause in relation to the latter and, if it is hindered, the material organs, which find themselves in relation with it, will likewise be affected in their vitality. By tending to the body, you will destroy the effect; yet, the cause residing in the perispirit, the illness will return again when the care ceases, until one perceives that attention must be directed elsewhere, treating fluidically the morbid fluidic principle. If, finally, the illness proceeds from the mind, from the Spirit, the perispirit and the body, placed under its dependence, will be hindered in their functions, and it is neither by tending to the one nor to the other that the cause will be made to disappear.

Thus, it is not by putting the straitjacket on a madman, or by giving him pills or showers, that one will manage to reestablish his normal state; they will only calm his revolted senses; they will calm his fits, but they will not destroy the germ except by combating through its likes, doing homeopathy spiritually and fluidically, giving the patient, through prayer, an infinitesimal dose of patience, of calm and of resignation, according to the case, just as they give him an infinitesimal dose of brucine, of digitalis or of aconite.

To destroy a morbid cause, one must combat it on its own ground.

Dr. Morel Lavallée.