Yellow Fever occurs on the Coast of tropical countries and, as a rule, is fatal, after a rapid development of from 3 to 7 days.
The explanation of the cause of the disease is comparatively simple: The air on the hot coast lands is highly charged with evaporated water. Heat and humidity have the effect of diverting from the human organism the electricity which, as already shown, constitutes its vital cohesion and the same influences likewise reduce the oxygen in the atmosphere. These are the two primary causes of Yellow Fever.
Pellagra (hook-worm or Lombardy Leprosy) is, according to the tenets of the Regular School, an endemic skin and spinal disease of Southern Europe. It is said to be due to eating damaged corn but dependent also upon bad hygienic conditions, poor food and exposure to the sun. Its salient features are weakness, debility, digestive disturbance, spinal pain, convulsions, melancholia and idiocy.
More recent investigation has judged it to be a deficiency disease, due to low and unvaried diet and consequent failure of metabolism.
In every case these climatic disease forms are caused by a combination of hot air, lacking oxygen, and evaporated water, including Cholera which also varies in intensity according to heat conditions.
Cholera and Plague originate on the coast of Bengal, India, where conditions are bad enough of themselves without the apology of the illusive bacillus as a causative agent.
That Cholera is contagious cannot be doubted and it is no superstition that fear predisposes thereto. For all emotions consume electrical power in the body and thus break down its power of resistance.
Infantile paralysis, Typhoid-fever, Small-pox, etc., are dealt with elsewhere and therefore need no mention here.
It is impossible to deal adequately with so wide a subject within the narrow limits at my disposal; but the full details and environment of each, together with the respective methods of treatment will be found in detail in the parent work "Regeneration or Dare to be Healthy."
In any attempt to unravel the tangled skein of cause and circumstance which surrounds the subject of the world-sweeping pandemic which masquerades under the misleading title of the "Spanish Influenza," the first and most important initial step must be a keen and careful sifting of the facts and forces, natural and artificial, which control or dominate the situation.