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.