As an illustration, the difference of climatic conditions between the adjoining States of Washington and Oregon are a case in point.

Among other disturbing influences which effect the electro-magnetic forces of the body are overfeeding and underfeeding, too much and too little exercise, particularly too much or too little stimulation, or false stimulation, or excitement of a physical or mental nature.  Any one of these influences may produce disorder in the relations of the electro-magnetic forces of the body.  The positive or negative electrons may be abnormally increased or diminished or their location disturbed.

When the body contains too many negative, slowly vibrating forces, or electrons, and its aggregate of electron vibration is consequently diminished, the result follows that the feeling of strength—­the vitality, that is, becomes depressed; we feel weak, tired in the limbs; we possess little warmth and easily grow cold; metabolism falls below the normal; the skin becomes pale and so causes the overplus of negative electrons stored in the mucous membrane to set up a morbid action of that structure.  Catarrh sets in.  In short, negative diseases are the immediate result; such, for example, as nervous debility, anaemia, diabetes, catarrh of the stomach, intestines or air passages, influenza, cholera and diphtheria.  In these conditions the principles of physiological chemistry laid down by me may well be called into service and improvement effected by a correct adjustment of diet.

When there is an excess of rapidly vibrating, positive electrical forces, or electrons, raising the vitality of the nerves and blood above the normal, the sufferer becomes easily excitable; the body is hot and inclines to inflammatory, feverish or positive diseases, which take the form of inflammation of the lungs, measles, scarlet fever, chicken-pox, typhoid fever, etc.

As I have already remarked, in order to understand a disease and to undertake its cure, it is first of all necessary to form a clear mental picture of its course and origin.  With this purpose in view and a medical library at command I have honestly tried to formulate from the initial stages a mental picture of scarlet fever, measles, and kindred ailments; but the entire medical literature did not advance me further than pathological anatomy, which informs us that the original cause of disease is certain changes in the form of the cellular elements of different digestive organs, in the explanation of which the customary technical terms are used, such as atrophy, degeneration and metamorphosis.

By the aid of true physiological chemistry I have been enabled to trace these mysterious incidences in the life current, learning that the cellules—­the smallest elements in the human system—­require for their composition alternating quantities of different chemical substances.

Which of the chemical elements these are, what mutual relations exist between different organs of the body, and by what means they enter the organism, it has become my intricate and absorbing task to observe.