Complications in the respiratory system are all due to failure to properly treat the acute stage of the disease, and where the resistance of the patient has been sapped they usually end fatally. Complications in the circulatory system are subject to the same explanation as fever. Digestive complications are due to impaired metabolism brought on by loss of energy in the Vagus nerve. Complications in the nervous system are consequent upon the degeneration of the whole Vagus tract. Sensory complications are due to the disease attacking the "minoris resistentia," the point of least resistance in the patient.
This explanation of the real significance of the symptoms of Influenza should make it sufficiently apparent that its cause is fundamental, widespread and deeply rooted in the organism—a menace not to be lightly and tentatively treated with impunity. That the disease is not one that may be met—with any prospect of success—with febrifuges, drugs, serums and specifics—to say nothing of whisky and the like futilities, to use no harsher term, such as are said to have characterized the prescriptions of a very considerable proportion of the Regular Medical Profession and with such terribly disastrous results. What the liquor statistics show on our side of the line I am at the moment unable to say, but I see it reported in the press of an adjoining province that under nominally strict "Prohibition" the sale of liquor had increased no less than 900 per cent, largely upon doctors orders, and that the sales from the Government stores in one city, during the past month had totaled $50,000—as compared with $6,000 for the corresponding period of the previous year.
The Professor's elaborate diagnosis, from a physiologico-chemical point of view seems rather to point to a meaning which he has missed—to indicate a latent, more remote possibility behind the shy bacillus, as the primary cause of the disease.
Let us endeavor to read the riddle rightly. On scientific contemplation it at once becomes apparent that the symptoms as defined by Kuhnemann—and indeed all other observers—are confined to the regions traversed by the Vagus (wandering) or Pneumogastric nerve—a nerve of comprehensive scope and bi-functional activity, physical and psychic and in operation, remarkably in accord with the manifestations of Influenza.
Concisely stated, the physiological function of the Vagus nerve is to regulate the process of breathing, tasting, swallowing, appetite, digestion, etc.; and the result of its failure to function would create coughing, choking, indigestion—separately or in combination. Its mental functions include the expression of shame, desire, disgust, grief, torture, depression and despair.
The following is its academic description:
Vagus or Pneumogastric nerve (tenth cranial); function—sensation and motion; originates in the floor of the fourth ventricle (the space which represents the primitive cavity of the hind-brain; it has the pons and oblongata in front, while the cerebellum lies dorsal), and is distributed through the ear, pharynx, larynx, lungs, esophagus, and stomach; possesses the following branches—auricular, pharyngeal, superior and inferior laryngeal, cardiac, pulmonary, esophageal, gastric, hepatic, communicating, meningeal.
It is interesting to compare the scope and characteristics of the Vagus, as here defined with the details of Prof. Kuhnemann's diagnosis of Influenza and to draw conclusions.
In order to establish more unmistakably the symptomatic sympathetic connection between the Vagus and Influenza, it may be well to touch briefly upon the initial processes of metabolism and nerve production.
An inherent impulse in the ovum (protoplasm or egg cell) serves to separate the albuminous substance into groups of an opposite nature. Water is chemically separated from one portion, which results in thickening the albumen from which it was extracted, while the liberated water aids in liquifying another portion of the albuminous matter. Thus, on one side slender threads arise, termed fibrine or filaments, and on the other lymph fluid appears, which receives the particles of salts freed from the filaments during their chemical separation. When the fibrine and lymph are organized from the protoplasm, the remaining albumen is absolutely unchanged and ready to furnish material for the growth of either.