First, under adjustment, the acute or acutely increased impingement is relieved. The caliber of the blood-vessels is at once regulated and the destructive action of fever checked. At the same time the vitality of the local tissue in which the germs are active is suddenly increased and there ensues a struggle between the body, as represented by its phagocytes and auto-protective chemicals, and the germs, which if adjustments be continued results in the rapid destruction of the germ colony. Also the elimination of the toxins already in the body proceeds so rapidly that if the fever can be held in check it takes only a short time for the body completely to overcome and eradicate the germs.
Mental diseases--so-called--usually depend upon disturbance of the blood-supply to the brain, controlled by the Cervical sympathetic. Adjustments, relieving the pressure on the sympathetic ganglia or cord and perhaps the direct impingement from the vertebral arteries, restore a normal circulation to the brain. The time required by Nature to effect a cure depends upon the rapidity with which the impingement is removed and the amount and character of the damage to brain tissue which must be repaired. The cure often requires time for a change of materials in brain cells or fibre tracts, by which they are reconstructed and again become capable of expressing normal function.
When the subluxation is corrected, or partially so, the appetite changes and the craving for food becomes more normal. Adjustments may lessen a voracious appetite, increase a too capricious one, or abolish a perverted. At the same time the stomach is enabled to digest its contents more properly, the intestines to take it up and continue it, and the tissues to assimilate that which is brought to them. The body eliminates its waste with less effort and in some extreme cases the first effect of the adjustment may be to cause vomiting and diarrhea and thus purge the alimentary tract of materials which have become unusable.
If injurious diet be persisted in the effects of the adjustments will be partly counteracted, the tendency of the poisons generated within the body being to increase subluxation while the tendency of the adjustments is to correct them.