In discussing the causes of disease Julius Hensel lays great stress upon the emotions. He goes so far as to say that they "undoubtedly occupy the first place amongst the factors causing disease, and we must not evade the consideration of them. We shall find that their action also amounts to an electro-chemical process." I would not for an instant be understood to contend that the emotions alone are sufficient to explain the origin of disease—not at all. There are other factors—jointly or severally dominant—diet, occupation, changes of weather, climate, or conditions.
In the matter immediately under review, however, the world-wide pandemic of "Spanish Influenza," there can remain no shadow of doubt in the mind of any unbiased observer who follows the question fairly along the lines of electro-chemical biology, but that the general emotional disturbances incident upon the war conditions of the world, combined with the chaotic dietetic position with its anxieties and privations under strenuous and unwonted physical demands, do undoubtedly afford a sound and reasonable explanation of the cataclysmal outbreak which has recently fallen upon the nations.
The brazen blast of war, in 1914, with all its ruthless wreck and carnage, shook the universal fabric of the sphere. Fear, fraud and famine were met together, duplicity and greed had kissed each other. Short rations and with some, starvation, were soon the order of the day. The corners of the earth were swept of stale forgotten stores and profiteers waxed fat and prices soared, whilst the vitals of the working world were vastly underfed. The ranks of labour, depleted of its men, were filled by females uninured to toil and dangerous nerve racking environments. Relentless time brings its revenges fast; but still they worked and suffered while malnutrition sapped the life-blood of the race. In the homes of the fighting men fear reigned supreme—ever the sword of Damocles suspended at the hearth. And then the death lists came and the world was wet with human tears and all the furies flew the earth—grief, hatred, revenge, love, pity and remorse, but the wail of mourning was throughout all lands in all the "sable panoply of woe" attending fast lowering vitality, bred by force of pain and hope deferred. Pliny well said: "Dolendi modus, non est timendi"—Pain has its limits, apprehension none—and now as in his day, the latter bore the palm.
Such was the position when two years ago the world first felt the impact of the pestilence and millions withered up like blighted corn.
The Vagus nerve with which we have been dealing, is concerned with the expression of emotions such as these; and being so, was burned up rapidly with fervent heat—the flames of sorrow still with fasting fed. In the majority of human lives such was the case, while the sources of nutritive reserve force were depleted by lack of things of universal use and foreign substitutes for normal food. Small wonder then the once steady nerves soon buckled with the strain; that sickness followed swiftly with disaster in its train and that the death rate rose enormously, beyond recorded precedent. And then when seeming good succeeds the storm of ills a plethora of new-born cares arose and worse, more fatal still, reaction from the strain which with relaxing energy demands its deadly share. Here in America we meet our troubles with serener front, unawed by State-fed sacerdotal superstitions; but in England how the scourge has wrung from dire depression its full toll of death. There for the first time deaths exceed the births and for the final quarter of 1918, the deaths exceed those of the former term by 127,000 of which Influenza claimed one hundred Thousand dead. Similar conditions, it would appear, have been more or less general throughout the European and indeed all other Continents and the title "Pandemic" has been richly earned; but the term which would seem to me more descriptive still would be "Panasthenia"—the general loss of vitality.
The human organism is, as we know, electro-magnetic. The effect upon the fabric of abnormal disturbance is registered with infinite exactitude by electrons—atoms of electricity—which rise and fall in numerical vibration according to the positive or negative tone of the whole; and excessive manifestations in one direction or the other, indicate respectively, a condition of positive or negative disease.
When the slowly vibrating negative electrons outnumber the rapidly vibrating positive atoms the electronic vibration of the whole body is lowered. As a result, we become depressed, weak, tired and retain little bodily warmth. Digestion is upset, metabolism falls far below normal, and the skin becomes pale, because of the morbid action set up in the mucous membrane by the excess of negative electrons. Catarrh supervenes. This is the condition in which negative disease thrives best: Influenza, nervous debility, anaemia, sleeping disease, cholera, diphtheria and the rest, in all varied forms of negative disease.
The Vagus, or Wandering Nerve, permeates every vital section of the body, as the accompanying plate will show. It controls, as has been shown, all the highest functions, both mental and physical of human life—that life which depends for its well-being upon electro-chemical combustion, metabolism, and the fuel supply we designate as food. It is the first postulate of healthy vitality in the human frame that metabolism and catabolism—intake and output—shall go hand in hand—that the body must receive continually such fresh nutrition as may replace what it consumes in the process of muscular action and the exercise of mental and emotional activity, and we are consequently brought to the conclusion that such bonds of safety and provision being rudely and suddenly severed, all physical resistance must be quickly broken down, the latent reserve energy is used and disappears, psychic resolution—the immunity of mind—soon abdicates its throne and the depleted organism, robbed of all defense, falls victim to contagion when it comes to kill.
Treatment.
As regards the treatment, actual and preventive, applicable to Spanish Influenza, the methods employed under the Hygienic-Dietetic System of Healing have been already defined in a previous chapter on the subject of negative disease in general. Instruction, however, devoted to Influenza alone may be found in Chapter VI of the special pamphlet issued in that connection under the title: "Influenza, Cause and Cure,"[E] and also in my greater work: "Regeneration or Dare to be Healthy," now in course of completion.