(1) The fundamental causes that underlie the great-epidemics or
pandemics that the world experiences from time to time--the present
one in particular.

(2) The fact or fallacy of the germ as a causative factor or merely
an effect or product of disease conditions.

(3) The alternative course, origin and medium of transmission and
finally

(4) The soundness and efficiency or otherwise of the preventive and
curative measures with which the combined intelligence of the
Medical Faculty has risen to the dire emergency of the moment for
the protection of the people who have relied so confidently, as by
law compelled, upon the standard of their acumen and official aid
as competent guardians of public safety.

The findings, as to the first question, are to the effect that it
appears, from the earliest recorded annals of disease, that epidemics
corresponding to the present outbreak have occurred at irregular periods
all up the centuries under names and conditions peculiar to the times,
and following usually in the wake of some great social cataclysm, strain
or upheaval, the result of wars, persecutions, famines and
distress--causes which clearly illustrate the close reactive connection
between the mental and physical action of disease.

The great pandemics seem to have originated largely in the Orient--the
region of vast congested populations and racial struggles and
starvation--the advent of their apparent influence upon the western
world depending chiefly upon the rate of commercial or popular
intercourse, the movements of armies or the ingress or egress of
peoples. The logical establishment of direct proof of the connection
between these visitations and local epidemics in distant lands is a
problem as yet unsolved. The weight of evidence, at first sight, would
seem to lie rather in the other direction--to indicate that such
epidemics are the direct outcome of existing local conditions, mental
and physical.

For example: At the end of that strenuous period in England's history,
between the reign of the first Charles and the fall of the Commonwealth,
an epidemic broke out which, as the historian tells us, converted the
country into "one vast hospital." The malady--which by the way was fatal
to Cromwell--the Lord Protector himself--was then termed "the ague." The
term "Influenza" was first given to the epidemic of 1743 in accordance
with the Italianizing fashion