What is Contagion?

What is Contagion?

Note: With all this Cornova Virus going on, people are getting worried about contagion. But what really is contagious disease? Can you really “catch” someone else's garbage? Can you really “catch” a disease? Or, is it the same habits that you have like all around you that you get it?

This article is not about the Cornova Virus, but about catching ordinary diseases, like the flu and common cold.

Hygienic Review

Vol. XXIX September, 1967 No. 1

Herbert M. Shelton

We are frequently asked to explain epidemics and we are told stories about a child in a schoolroom developing some supposedly contagious disease and the disease sweeping the schoolroom like a wild fire. These stories are commonly greatly exaggerated, as it is very rare for more than a few children in the same classroom to develop the so-called contagious disease. We often hear, also, of every member of a family coming down with a disease following its development by one member of the family. This kind of story, too, is usually an exaggeration. It is rare that the whole family has the same disease.

These stories are told so regularly and the notion is so wide-spread that if one comes in contact with another person suffering with a so-called contagious disease, he is sure to develop it ("catch" it), unless he has been immunized, that it is difficult for the average person to reason logically upon this subject. The fact that stories of an opposite character could be provided in greater abundance, if one had the time to gather them.

It is commonly thought that the common cold is an infection and that one person may "catch" it from another. We are warned to beware of the person with a cold. Yet, every year many thousands of people are in intimate contact with those who have colds, often in daily contact for days at a time and do not develop a cold. On the other hand, every year many thousands of people develop colds who have not been in contact with someone with a cold. The total experience of the people of the country points clearly to the conclusion that one does not "catch" a cold from another.

In the Fall of 1914 a little 17-month old boy developed what was diagnosed as membranous croup. In two days he was dead. It was not the custom to quarantine children with membranous croup and during this child's illness a number of children (brothers, sisters and neighbor children) were in intimate contact with him. Not a single child that was in contact with the sick boy developed membranous croup. Membranous croup is now classed as diphtheria and cases are quarantined.

Two brothers, with four years difference in their ages, slept together in a double bed until the older one was 23 years of age. When the younger brother was about 14 years of age he developed chicken pox. The two continued to sleep together while the younger one had chicken pox. The older brother did not develop chicken pox. Two or three years later the older brother developed mumps. They continued to sleep together during the time the older brother had mumps. The younger brother did not develop mumps.

In the winter of 1918 five soldiers, stationed in Camp Travis at San Antonio, Texas, slipped through the guard lines at night and visited sick friends who were isolated and quarantined in a special section of the camp because they had influenza. They spent an hour visiting with and talking with their sick friends, then slipped back through the guard lines and returned to their barracks. Not one of the five soldiers developed influenza.

A number of experiments were made in the Naval Detention camps during the influenza epidemic of 1918-19 to transmit the disease from the sick to the well. Several such experiments were made on 68 volunteers from the U. S. Naval Detention training Camp on Deer Island.

Several groups of volunteers were inoculated with pure cultures of Pfeiffer's bacillus, with the secretions of the upper respiratory passages and with blood taken from typical influenza cases. About 30 of the men had the germs sprayed and swabbed in the nose and throat. The Public Health Report sums up the results in these words: "In no instance was an attack of influenza produced in any one of the subjects. "

Ten other men were carried to the bedside of ten new cases of influenza and spent 45 minutes with them. Each well man had ten sick men to cough in his face. With what results? "None of these volunteers developed any symptoms of influenza following the experiment. "

Some similar experiments conducted in San Francisco are described in another article. Here one group of ten men was given emulsifying cultures of Pfeiffer's bacillus with no results during 7 days of observation. Other groups of men, in all 40, were given emulsions of the secretions from the upper respiratory passages of patients in the active stages of influenza. These emulsions were sent into the nose by a medicine dropper and by an atomizer. The results are described in these words: "In every case the results were negative, so far as the reproduction of influenza is concerned. The men were all observed for seven days after inoculation. "

A little girl in an apartment building, suffering with scarlet fever, escaped from under the vigilant watchfulness of her mother and wandered down the hall and entered the room of a sleeping baby. Missing her sick child, the mother went in search of her and found her standing over the crib of the sleeping baby. The baby did not develop scarlet fever.

Two little boys, aged about five years, lived across the street from each other. Their mothers brought them together daily for play. One day one of the mothers and her boy failed to show up. The next day, also, they failed to put in an appearance. On the third morning the little boy, escaping from his mother's watchfulness, came out into the front yard for play. The other little boy, seeing him, crossed the street to play with him. After several moments of such play, the mother discovered that her son had escaped the house and was playing with the neighbor boy. In consternation she called the mother of the other boy and explained that her boy had whooping cough and she had been keeping him in the house, but that he had gotten out and she found the two boys playing together in the yard. The other boy did not develop whooping cough.

A mother with her three children visited relatives in a distant city. Arriving there, she found one of the children of her relatives down with measles. She did not panic, but remained for a week's visit, during which time her children were in daily contact with the sick boy, even sitting on the bed of the sick child and playing with the child's toys. Neither of the three children developed measles.

A young married man developed mumps. Inflammation of the testicles (orchitis) developed as a complication. He became very weak and unable to get about. His brother-in-law, a younger man, carried him from bed to bathroom and bathroom to bed five times each day for several days. The brother-in-law did not develop mumps.

A young woman, aged 20, suffering with tuberculosis of the lungs, married a young man two years her senior. Three children resulted from the union. The tubercular mother cared for her children and their father until her death from tuberculosis several years later. Neither the father nor either of the children developed tuberculosis.

Cases like the foregoing could be multiplied by the thousands. They have been noted for ages and with relation to every so-called contagious and infectious disease. In the Middle Ages, when the Black Death accounted for many deaths, there were great numbers of people who came in contact with patients suffering with Bubonic plague and did not develop the disease. The same thing was true of smallpox, typhus fever, cholera, English sweat and other so-called infectious diseases. There is actually as much evidence to indicate that these diseases are not contagious or infectious as to indicate that they are.

It is not enough to say that those "exposed" individuals who failed to develop allegedly infectious disease are immune. This merely says that they do not develop the disease because they do not develop it. It explains nothing. What is immunity? Upon what does immunity depend? It is customary to divide immunity into two types — natural and acquired. How does one build natural immunity? We have tried the acquired immunity programs sufficiently long and over a sufficient expanse of the population to know that it is a total failure. The serums and vaccines that are supposed to confer immunity often cause troubles that are worse than the disease they are supposed to immunize one against. It is important for us to know, assuming that there is such a thing as acquiring a disease from another person, how we can build genuine resistance and protect ourselves and our children. The vaccinating and inoculating program is merely a commercial one. While it nets huge profits to the traffickers in vaccines and serums, it provides no health for the people.