Every life form, from the smallest to the largest, consists of a body, some kind of mind that remembers and decides, a life spirit, and lives in communities of like and unlike living entities. Every living individual eats and excretes and lives 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. The cure is to address the cause in the specific case.
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.
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. An illness is clear. A cure is clear. 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.
About the author:
Canadian-born Tracy D. Kolenchuk is a retired computer geek with many passions, from travel and learning a bit of Spanish to chess and studies of Healthicine: The Arts and Sciences of Health and Healthiness, which he founded.
While working to update his books on healthicine, he discovered that the word “cure” is not an entry in many medical dictionaries, even though some use cure to define “incurable”. This began a ten-year (so far) ongoing quest to understand and define the concept of cure, resulting in the publication of the books A Calculus of Curing and The Elements of Cure.
Learn more at tracykolenchuk.substack.com
