Some YEARS AGO , when I was at a friend's house, another guest's young daughter was suffering noticeably from allergies. My heart went out to her. The next day, I began to have identical symptoms. That was odd. I'd never been allergic to anything. Besides, I knew that allergies weren't transmitted from one person to another. So, why the sudden attack? In a flash, I realized my sympathy for the girl was so strong that I had mentally "caught" the ailment. "How absurd!" I thought, and laughed out loud. Instantly, the symptoms vanished, never to return.

This episode convinced me that allergic reactions have a mental, not a physical, source. It confirmed that the cause of allergies is not cat hair, milk, mold spores, peanuts, or pollen. The real culprits?—accepting the premise that we are made of matter, and fearing that we can be harmed by material conditions. The provable fact is, however, that we are wholly spiritual and good—as "unmaterial" and untouched by matter or evil as our Maker is. When we reach out to God, His love lifts us out of fear and sickness. And this love can also keep us safe from contracting disease. When I forgot these spiritual facts and went along with the symptoms of allergy, I suffered from the symptoms myself. In the split second it took to see what was going on, I became free from suffering.

Does the same mental cause/ physical effect relationship hold true for contagious diseases? Can an understanding of God as Spirit and of God's creation as spiritual immunize us against viruses? People the world over who feel increasingly threatened by infectious substances are seeking an answer to that question. Anxiety runs high over diseases contracted from humans, such as a recent outbreak of bacterial meningitis near Houston that reportedly killed a two-year-old boy; and from other sources such as the mail (anthrax), mosquitoes (West Nile), vials (bubonic plague samples thought to be missing at Texas Tech University), food (E. coli, mad cow), and weapons (smallpox, ricin). Even unknown viruses ring alarm bells. Mystery illnesses have recently afflicted dozens of passengers on various cruise ships, and, in separate incidents, sent home hundreds of school kids in several Texas towns.

Although it may seem difficult for some people to believe, these contaminants are actually outward displays of vivid fears. Every communicable disease, whether an isolated case or an epidemic, can be thwarted by our replacing what amounts to a misperception with the right concept—by arming ourselves with a knowledge of the spiritual laws that govern health.

In the modern age, someone who fully grasped and proved these spiritual laws was Mary Baker Eddy. From youth through middle age, she pursued good health. Despite experimenting with the then-known conventional and alternative methods of defeating sickness, wellness eluded her. But she persevered and finally found a spiritually based, systematic way to prevent and eradicate disease, no matter what its name, symptoms, or fatality rate. She devoted the remaining 40-plus years of her life to validating her discovery by proving it repeatedly, healing hundreds of patients through prayer of all kinds of ills, including late-stage contagious diseases.

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, her definitive book on spiritual healing, Mary Baker Eddy targeted the real driver of disease: "Colds, coughs, and contagion are engendered solely by human theories" (p. 220). "Disease arises, like other mental conditions, from association. Since it is a law of mortal mind that certain diseases should be regarded as contagious, this law obtains credit through association,—calling up the fear that creates the image of disease and its consequent manifestation in the body" (p. 154). To illustrate this point, she related the true story of a man who "was made to believe that he occupied a bed where a cholera patient had died. Immediately the symptoms of this disease appeared, and the man died. The fact was, that he had not caught the cholera by material contact, because no cholera patient had been in that bed" (p. 154).

It is, of course, rational to defend oneself against someone or something believed to be dangerous. That's why people often get inoculations to avoid transferable diseases. But for some individuals, the problem with this strictly physical solution is that, even though they may be immunized against certain viruses, they continue to feel an underlying dread. This may take the form of fear for family members and friends who have not had shots. Or fear that a vaccine will produce the very infection it is designed to prevent.

The entirely mental nature of sickness is important to understand. After hearing about the little boy being stricken by bacterial meningitis, I wanted a clearer view of the "Truth, Life, and Love [that] give harmony" (see Science and Health, p. 169). I felt it would make my prayer for the grieving parents and panicked community more potent. I looked up the words contact, contagion, and contamination in the dictionary and found they share a Latin root word meaning "to touch."

The concept of touching made me think of Jesus, who showed that even the most gruesome plague of his time, leprosy, had no power over the child of God's creating. Instead of submitting to the common belief that whoever touched a leper would contract the disease, Jesus disproved the validity of that prognosis. Responding to a leper's plea for healing, he "put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed" (Matt. 8:3). To me, Jesus' gesture symbolized his compassion and signaled his awareness that divine Love can touch hearts, take away fear, and transform the body.

The same pure touch of Love is present today, everywhere. A solid understanding of this Love acts as a shield, making us mentally and physically invulnerable to infection, even in the midst of a pandemic. It confirms that the Psalmist's promise, "Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling" (Ps. 91:9), is as true now as it was in Bible times.

It's a good practice to find the "flip side"—the counteracting spiritual truth—about every contagion. This spiritual exercise helps to deflate fear. Consider the following ideas from Mary Baker Eddy's article "Contagion": "If only the people would believe that good is more contagious than evil, since God is omnipresence ...." If that were the case, she continued, "The confidence of mankind in contagious disease would thus become beautifully less; and in the same proportion would faith in the power of God to heal and to save mankind increase, until the whole human race would become healthier, holier, happier, and longer lived." How to achieve that goal—"A calm, Christian state of mind is a better preventive of contagion than a drug, or than any other possible sanative method; and the 'perfect Love' that 'casteth out fear' is a sure defense" (Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, p. 229).