Again, patients ask us: "Through how many crises shall I have to pass?" We tell them: Just as many as you need; no more, no less. So long as there is anything wrong in the system, crises will come and go; but each crisis, if successfully passed, is another milestone on the road to perfect health. It is intensely interesting to observe how orderly and intelligently Nature proceeds in her work of healing and repair. One problem after another is taken up and adjusted. First of all, the digestive organs are put into better condition, because further progress depends upon proper assimilation and elimination. The bowels must act freely and naturally before any permanent improvement can take place. A treatment which fails to accomplish this first preliminary improvement will surely fail to produce more important results. In this connection it is a significant fact that nearly all our patients, when they come under our care, are suffering from very stubborn constipation in spite of (or possibly on account of) lifelong drugging. Neither medicines nor operations had given them anything but temporary relief and the trouble had grown worse instead of better. If the "Old School" methods of treatment were not successful in relieving simple constipation, what else can they be expected to cure, since the overcoming of constipation is evidently the primary necessity for any other improvement? A system of treatment which cannot accomplish this cannot accomplish anything else. It is strange, therefore, that a school of medicine which has not succeeded, with all its vaunted knowledge and wisdom, to cure simple constipation, flatly denies that natural methods can cure cancer, epilepsy, locomotor ataxy and other so-called incurable diseases. Our Greatest Difficulty The greatest difficulty in our work lies in conducting our patients safely through the stormy crises periods. The first, preliminary improvement is often so marked that the patient believes himself already cured. He will say: "Doctor, I am feeling fine! There is nothing the matter with me any more! I cannot understand why I shouldn't go home and continue the natural regimen there!" This feeling of mental elation and physical well-being is usually the sign that the first general improvement has progressed far enough to prepare the system for a healing crisis. Therefore my answer to the overconfident patient may be something like this: "Remember what I told you. The first improvement is not the cure, it is only the preparation for the real fight. Look out! In a few days you may whistle another tune."