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We may, therefore, reasonably conclude that the lassitude, the diminished mental power, the excitability, irritability, restlessness, delirium, and unconsciousness which may be associated with acute infections, are due to physical changes in the brain-cells. Graves' Disease.
If we kept not only our wounds surgically clean, but our gums, noses, throats, skins, and fingernails, and burned and sterilized everything that came in contact with a sore, pustule, or scab, we should wipe out nine-tenths of our cases of wound-infection and suppuration; in fact, practically all of them, except such small percentage as may come from contact with infections in animals.
In this light let us now consider headache. Headache is one of the commonest initiatory symptoms of the various infections, especially of those infections which are accompanied by no local pain and by no local muscular action.
In the pyogenic infections, in order to protect the remainder of the body, which, of course, enjoys no immunity, every possible barrier against the spread of the infection is thrown about the local point of infection. How are these barriers formed?
The following causes may be mentioned: Inflammation of the spinal cord commonly occurs in influenza, strangles and mixed infections; constipation brought on by improper feeding and insufficient exercise is a predisposing cause; injuries such as strains and blows in the region of the back may also cause it; compression of the spinal cord by the vertebrae is no doubt a very common cause; dislocation, enlargement of the disks between the vertebrae, bony enlargements resulting from strains and injuries, rickets, tuberculosis and actinomycosis and tumors commonly cause compression of the cord.
The Reformation made no sudden change in the sacred theory of medicine. Pestilences were taught to be punishments inflicted by God on society for its shortcomings. Modern man has no conception of the ravages of infections and epidemics that swept over Europe in the Middle Ages, and to a lesser extent, until less than fifty years ago.
It would probably be safe to say that not more than one joint in fifty, attacked by rheumatism, is left in any way permanently the worse. But, alas! to counterbalance this mercifulness in the matter of permanent damage, unlike most other infections, one attack of rheumatic fever, so far from protecting against another, renders both the individual and the joint more liable to other attacks.
Whatever the local dietary, during thousands of years of eating that dietary natural selection prevailed; most babies that were allergic to or not able to thrive on the available dietary, died quickly. Probably of childhood bacterial infections. The result of this weeding out process was a population closely adapted to the available dietary of a particular locale.
The only explanation that seems in the least to explain is that colds, like other infections, confer an immunity against another attack; only, unlike scarlet fever, measles, smallpox, etc., this immunity, instead of for life, is only for six months or a year.
What is the adaptive advantage of fever in infection? The Purpose and the Mechanism of Heat Production in Infections Vaughan has shown that the presence in the body of any alien protein causes an increased production of heat, and that there is no difference between the production of fever by foreign proteins and by infections.
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