The illusive germ has come to be regarded by the layman with reserve—­nay more—­with suspicion.  The part of the bacteriologist has been somewhat overdone.  The conditions of popular credence are not what they were.  A great change has awakened the masses of the people and a new intelligence is born which now discerns that disease is one great Unity just as the body is one inseparable interdependent whole—­that the cause of disease is in the blood and dependent upon its nourishment and moreover, that the physical forces of the body can be exhausted as much by mental strain,—­causing the too rapid burning up of nerve fat (lecithin),—­as by excessive physical exertion.  For example.  Mental disturbance—­grief, worry, excitement—­produce immediate physical effect in headache, palpitations and the like.  Physical exhaustion—­privation, hunger and over-work—­on the other hand produce mental depression and collapse.  The inevitable law of compensation rules.

Thus the germ, bacillus, or microbe, as a direct cause of disease is an exploded fallacy.  They are now recognized as the result of disease—­not the cause:  releasing irritants perhaps and possibly carriers or transmitting mediums to other diseased or predisposed organisms.

It follows accordingly that Sero-Therapy or Inoculation with specific serums derived from such germs, as a preventative of disease is simply a pernicious farce; “pernicious,” since the introduction of such poisons by inocculation into the blood constitutes in itself a serious menace to life and health.

This has never been more clearly demonstrated than in the present singularly futile efforts of the Regular Medical Faculty to stay the on-rush of the Influenza Epidemic or to save or safeguard its victims—­a fact which compels the people in their thousands to turn to the less pretentious but more successful members of the eclectic or Irregular schools among whom both help and healing may be found.

And this is the history of the Influenza germ: 

The bacterial criminal was located.  We know it, for the discovery was officially proclaimed and vouched for by the press with all due pomp and circumstance.  True, it was “so minute as to be invisible to the most powerful microscope;”—­but it was sensed by science, none the less, and handed over captive, for “culture” to the manufacturing chemist.  Inoculation followed freely—­the people in their thousands and our gallant troops alike submitted to the mandate of the powers that be—­the soldiers voiceless and under penalty.

America breathless, awaited the result.  There was none.

Finally scare-heads in the Press astonished the land.  They were these:  “Medical World is Baffled by the ’Flu’.”—­“Exhaustive Experiments Leave Doctors Mystified.”—­“Every Test a Failure.”—­“Explosion of Accepted Theories Causes Science to Grope for Light.”