An epidemic is mass sickness in which one form of biogony predominates, either actually or psychologically. One so-called "disease" is made the head-liner, and there is a tendency to diagnose all illness as the "epidemic disease." The so-called Pneumonia-Influenza Pandemic, of 1918-19 furnishes a striking example of this. The conditions diagnosed influenza and pneumonia are present every year. At that time they were merely present in much greater numbers.

The pandemic followed upon the heels of the war. Years of fighting, coupled with the fears, dreads, anxieties, griefs, sacrifices, deprivations, etc., had so prostrated the world--had produced so much enervation and toxemia--that there was simply an increase in the forms of illness that are always present at that season of the year. Influenza was the headliner and doctors and laymen alike had their eyes on this name. Thus pneumonia, pleurisy, colds, bronchitis, typhoid fever, appendicitis, sleeping sickness, menengitis, tuberculosis flare-ups, etc., were frequently diagnosed as influenza. The epidemic was a state of mind, a method of diagnosis, a panic.

There was, at that time, a great increase in all seasonal forms of illness. In the training camp where the writer was stationed, hundreds of cases of mumps developed during the influenza pandemic. But these did not make the front page. During this pandemic there were as many or more colds as ever, but almost nobody had a cold. Colds were influenza. Influenza was a blanket term that covered whatever the patient had.

When the Spartans beseiged Athens during the reign of Pericles, an epidemic "broke out" in Athens. The city was over crowded, the people from the outlying districts having retreated, with their cattle, within the city's walls. Water was scarce, food was scarce, the city became filthy. The stress and strain of war enervated the people and sickness developed. Such a plague was undoubtedly composed of many forms of "disease."

The "astounded and mystified" profession has been aberrant, or deluded, on the subject of germs, and has settled upon this one, out of thousands of influences that may be perverted into "disease" building influences, as the sole cause of all "diseases." Hence, when an epidemic or pandemic, or even an endemic or an unusual sporadic case, develops, these germ-deluded wiseacres get together and speculate on the identity of the germ, meantime prescribing a palliative that may kill the patient as surely as opium or its derivatives kill pneumonia cases. "There was an appalling mortality during the 'flu' pandemic. The reason for it was that the profession became hysterical, and prescribed all sorts of preventives and cures (?)--most of which proved detrimental, and many killed."

In all epidemics, the biogony is individual. By this, I mean that the individual and his body chemistry, determines the type of "disease." This is the reason no so-called epidemic "disease" ever comes alone. "Only those individuals in the peculiar physical condition causing the outcome of bubonic symptoms," says Dr. Page, "will have the disease; when the last of these is down the so-called plague is 'controlled.' "

When the laws of life have been broken and the people have become perambulating cess pools, they will suffer "zymotic diseases" of their own building. Vegetarians and fruitarians will develop the lighter forms of catarrhal inflammation; those who exceed their animal protein limitations will develop septic inflammations. Just what type of biogony will develop in a given case, will be determined by the most vulnerable tissue or organ. Like "diseases" develop in those who are similarly conditioned. Jennings explained the matter thus: "By reason of debilitating or health-destroying agencies on the one hand, and the rotary renovating operations of nature on the other, that are in ceaseless progress in most constitutions, the members of communities always stand in different and constantly varying attitudes in relation to all great and general causes of physical derangement, to which they are equally exposed; and when such causes sweep over them, they learn who of them, at those times possess similar local infirmities, so far as those cases can make the revelation. It is on this account and in this manner that the great periodic atmospheric revolutions prove such mighty revealers of secrets; that they disclose "the weakest parts of men, and make 'violated law speak out its thunder' in such terrific accents."--Philosophy of Human Life, p. 123.

What causes epidemics? The view that has prevailed since Pasteur is that germs are responsible. Epidemic "diseases" are said to-be infectious or contagious and are transferred from one person to mother in a variety of ways. Thus the "disease" spreads over the community or nation. So solid is the superstition built about epidemic contagion, and so profitable is the inoculation practice built thereon, that it presents a veritable Gibraltar, against the walls of which reason makes little progress.

During great epidemics some become ill and die quickly; others die more slowly; some become ill, but recover; some become slightly sick, but present no "specific symptoms," the great majority do not become ill at all. We must assume a certain amount of susceptibility, or even of unhealthiness both in the person originally "attacked" and in those who have been "infected" by him. There are those to whom "the pestilence that stalketh in darkness and the destruction that wasteth at noon day are not fearful. Though a thousand fall at their feet and ten thousand at their right hand, they are unscathed." It is an every day occurrence to find individuals passing unscathed through the most virulent epidemics. If the health of everybody were equal to the health of those who remain "immune," there could be no epidemic.

Hygienists do not believe in the contagiousness of any "disease." A healthy person will not "take" any "disease." No normal person is susceptible to the influence of any so-called contagion. We hold that to account for an epidemic it is necessary to take into consideration all of the responsible factors; that it is necessary to account for the first case of an epidemic.

It is not possible, for instance, that the first case of smallpox was "caught" from a prior case. The first case of measles, or of scarlet fever, or of bubonic plague, or other "infectious disease," was not developed by contact with a prior case. If the first case developed without contact with a prior case, then millions of cases must have so developed since. A cause or combination of causes, which is sufficient to produce a given effect once, may do so again millions upon millions of times. The law of parsimony demands that no more causes be admitted than are necessary to the production of any given effect.

The view that the so-called contagious and infectious "diseases" cannot arise de novo, makes it impossible for there to have been a first case of such sicknesses. Yet it is quite obvious that the first case of any so-called contagious "disease" could not have arisen from a prior case.