If one's physical condition is ripe for the development of, let us say scarlet fever, he will develop it, even though there is not another case on earth. That is the way the first case developed. If his condition is not ripe for its development he will not develop it, even though there is a case in the same bed with him--there have been millions of instances like this.

It is our contention that the individual's internal condition is the important factor in these developments. Since Pasteur's time (about 1875) no regard has been paid to the internal condition necessary to evolve "infectious diseases" and medical men have been germ hunting and pushing the idea of the omnipotency of germ-activity into every department of medicine and seeking to attribute to it every "ill that flesh' is heir to."

Germs are ubiquitious--they are always with us and "carriers" are always present. If germs produce an epidemic, why do they produce an epidemic only at times and not at all time? If they are the cause of the epidemic, why does not everyone come down with the epidemic disease? Why does one have a cold, another pneumonia, another appendicitis, and another remain well during a small pox epidemic? All efforts to produce influenza on the basis of germ causation, in experiments carried out in 1918, were futile.

Whatever all the causes of an epidemic may be, it is absolutely certain that only those who are ready for the development of the "disease" will develop it. In all the epidemics, endemics and pandemics that have occurred in the world or any part of it, in any and all ages, "some constitutions have been," as Jennings says, "able to stand erect amid all the disturbing elements that have prevailed around them." Again: "Atmospheric revolutions, the vicissitudes of the seasons and sudden and considerable changes of the weather, affect persons with different predispositions, or that possess different structural proportions and endowments, differently"; but "a man with an iron constitution may fix his abode where he pleases and health will be his portion."--Philosophy of Human Life, p. 122.

Epidemics hold an intimate relationship to prostrating influences and to filth. Note the plague of Athens, the epidemics of the Middle Ages, the pneumonia-influenza pandemic of 1918-19. The great plague of London came in one of the hottest and driest summers in London's history, which followed immediately upon a dry winter. There was little water for drinking or cleanliness, and this was more or less stagnant. Fear, apprehension and dread were added to the prostrating influence of the long dry, hot spell, by the presence of many comets. The plague perceptibly abated when the first rain fell and almost died down when winter arrived.

In 1925 London suffered an epidemic of tonsillitis. It was an unusually hot and dry summer. But there was plenty of good water and the filthy, crowded, slum-like conditions of the Middle Ages were lacking. No plague would or could develop in the London of today.

Defective drainage and sewerage, cess-pools, open sewers, over crowding, and, in the country, cow lots, have all contributed to the production of epidemics. Humidity, damp cellars, damp houses, damp weather, etc., favor the development of diphtheria. Sussana W. Dodds, says: "When we do away with organic filth, banish corruption from the haunts of men, we shall put an end to epidemics of putrid diseases. Thorough sanitation is the one thing needed, first, last, and all the time."-- Drugless Medicine, p. 455.

But these things are not alone enough to account for epidemics. Most people living under these same conditions, "escape" the epidemic. Individual condition is still paramount. As Graham has it: "It may be confidently asserted that all the causes which obtain beyond the control of man, would seldom or never develop epidemic disease, without the concurrence of those causes which operate through his voluntary conduct."

Prostrating influences bring down only those whose resistance is already low--those who are enervated and toxemic. So far as the sufferers are concerned, all epidemics have the same basic causes--enervation, toxemia and gastro intestinal putrescence. Dealing with cholera, Graham says: "The propagation of the disease depends less on the absolute power of any pestilential or exciting cause, than on the predisposition of the human system." Consequently, "whether it will be taken by an individual, depends very much, if not entirely, on his own voluntary conduct."

As Graham said, people do not usually ask "What, and how much shall I eat and drink, and in what manner shall I live in order to sustain my body in its highest and healthiest condition? " but "almost every human being, rather, at least in practice, demand--How far can I indulge and live?" so that it should be "no cause for wonder that chronic and acute diseases, in all their dreadful forms and modes of destruction, should be multiplied throughout the human family, ***. Nor is it wonderful that some local, or general cause, not powerful in itself; such as exhalations of decaying vegetable or animal matter, the character and quality of food, a sudden change in the temperature, or humidity, or dryness of the atmosphere--or something else, equally simple and obvious in its nature and existence, should, in consequence of the peculiar condition of the human system, superinduce an endemic or epidemic disease, whose fatality corresponds with the reduced state of the vital power of resistance in man, the influence of moral causes cooperating, and the propriety or impropriety of medical theory and treatment."--Cholera, p. 17.

Most children are overindulged on feast days and holidays. Their stomachs rebel at the abuse and trouble develops. So-called epidemics of colds, sore throat, etc., follow. If there is over-indulgence in animal protein, as at Thanksgiving and Christmas, putrescence evolves and pneumonia, scarlet-fever, measles, diphtheria, etc., develop. This is the reason so many children in populous centers have these ills following feastings and this gives rise to the superstition that these "diseases" come in epidemics.

Even here only the enervated and toxemic are made ill. Even the "specific diseases" cannot develop except in toxemic subjects--those with a back ground of protein-poisoning, and who have suffered from putrescent intestinal infection until pronouncedly adenitic.

Epidemics thrive when conventionality is subjected to unusual depressing influences--wars, rumors of wars, financial depressions, atmospheric and climatic viscissitudes, etc.--and when more than the usual amount of enervation exists. It is then that the shock of a change of a few degrees in temperature, to hot or cold, or prolonged dry or wet weather, prostrates the most vulnerable. Excitement, fear and immunization measures of all kinds, force a few to go down with the epidemic, who would not do so otherwise, thereby prolonging the epidemic beyond natural limits. For epidemics end when they reach the resistant and poised of the community. There it stops, there it always has stopped, and there it always will stop; for, as the old Irish bull has it "Well people never get sick." The epidemic ends when there are no more subjects who are sufficiently enervated and toxemic to succumb to the prostrating influences.