Bacteriophobia
The universal
acceptance of the germ theory, and the consequently widespread
bacteriophobia, resulted in a multiplicity of frenzied efforts to
escape from the threat of the dreadful and malicious germs by waging
a constant war against them in the belief that the alternative was
certain death.
The populace was
advised to cook all food and boil all water (with the inevitable
deterioration in health accompanying raw food deprivation).
The present-day
practice of killing germs (inside and outside the body) with poison
drugs was initiated, resulting in more and more degeneration and
iatrogenic (drug-induced) disease.
Various programs were
initiated to confer “immunity” against specific germs by means of
vaccines and serums, resulting in the monstrous inoculation
system—with horrendous effects, detailed in my book, Don’t Get
Stuck!
Fortunately, the
warning against, and horror of, all raw foods as dangerous and
bacteria-ridden, has been largely overcome, through the persistent
educational efforts of Hygienists and other knowledgeable people,
though the ban on unpasteurized dairy products still exists in most
areas in the United States.
The acceptance of
poison drugs, vaccines, and serums has not waned to any appreciable
extent.
Pasteur Changes His
Mind
As previously
mentioned, around 1860. Pasteur discovered facts which were not in
accord with his previous conception that disease germs were
unchangeable. He found that microbial species can undergo many
transformations; this discovery destroyed the basis for the germ
theory. Since a coccus (pneumonia germ) could change to a bacillus
(typhoid germ) and back again (and, indeed, since any germ could turn
into another)—and since their virulence could be altered, often at
the will of the experimenter, the whole theory exploded.
It is frequently
overlooked that Pasteur by then had changed his direction, and his
more mature conception of the cause of disease, as given by Dr.
Duclaux, was that a germ was “ordinarily kept within bounds by
natural laws, but, when conditions change, when its virulence is
exalted, when its host is enfeebled, the germ was able to “invade”
the territory which was barred to it up to that time. This, of
course, is the premise that a healthy body is resistant to disease or
not susceptible to it.
After the change in his
outlook, and numerous experiments along this line, Pasteur was at
last convinced that controllable physiological factors were basic in
the assessment of vulnerability to disease and concluded, “The
presence in the body of a pathogenic agent is not necessarily
synonymous with infectious disease.” (The presence of certain germs
is not proof that they are the cause of a disease.)
So Pasteur did finally
reverse his position and acknowledge that germs are not the specific
and primary cause of disease, and he abandoned the germ theory. He is
reported to have said on his deathbed, “Bernard was right. The seed
is nothing, the soil is everything.”
Although Pasteur
abandoned his early immature and erroneous theory in the 1880s, it
was accepted, developed, fostered, and perpetuated by others, and the
mischief, medical misunderstanding, and error continue to this day
(the ultimate irony!).
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