Prior History of the Germ Theory
If you back into the
history of the medical profession and the various ideas regarding the
cause of disease that were held by leading physicians before Pasteur
first promulgated his notorious "germ theory", you will
find convincing evidence that Pasteur discovered nothing, and that he
deliberately appropriated, falsified and perverted another man's
work.
The 'germ theory',
so-called, long antedated Pasteur - so long, in fact, that he was
able to present it as new; and he got away with it!
F. Harrison, Principal
Professor of Bacteriology at Macdonald College (Faculty of
Agriculture, McGill University), Quebec, Canada, wrote an Historical
Review of Microbiology, published in Microbiology, a text book, in
which he says in part:
"Geronimo
Fracastorio (an Italian poet and physician, 1483 - 1553) of Verona,
published a work (De Contagionibus et Contagiosis Morbis, et eorum
Curatione) in Venice in 1546 which contained the first statement of
the true nature of contagion, infection, or disease organisms, and of
the modes of transmission of infectious disease. He divided diseases
into those which infect by immediate contact, through intermediate
agents, and at a distance through the air. Organisms which cause
disease, called seminaria contagionum, he supposed to be of the
nature of viscous or glutinous matter, similar to the colloidal
states of substances described by modern physical chemists. These
particles, too small to be seen, were capable of reproduction in
appropriate media, and became pathogenic through the action of animal
heat. Thus Fracastorio, in the middle of the sixteenth century, gave
us an outline of morbid processes in terms of microbiology."
For a book published
more than three hundred years before Pasteur 'discovered' the germ
theory, this seems to be a most astonishing anticipation of Pasteur's
ideas, except that - not having a microscope - Fracastorio apparently
did not realize that these substances might be individual living
organisms.
According to Harrison,
the first compound microscope was made by H. Jansen in 1590 in
Holland, but it was not until about 1683 that anything was built of
sufficient power to show up bacteria. He continues:
"In the year 1683,
Antonius van Leenwenhoek, a Dutch naturalist and a maker of lenses,
communicated to the English Royal Society the results of observations
which he had made with a simple microscope of his own construction,
magnifying from 100 to 150 times. He found in water saliva, dental
tartar, etc., what he termed animalcula. He described what he saw,
and in his drawings showed both rod-like and spiral form, both of
which he said had motility. In all probability, the two species he
saw were those now recognized as bacillus buccalis maximus and
spirillum sputigenum.
Leenwenhoek's
observations were purely objective and in striking contrast with the
speculative views of M. A. Plenciz, a Viennese physician, who in 1762
published a germ theory of infectious diseases. Plenciz maintained
that there was a special organism by which each infectious disease
was produced, that micro-organisms were capable of reproduction
outside of the body, and that they might be conveyed from place to
place by the air."
Here is Pasteur's great
thought in toto - his complete germ theory - and put in print over a
century before Pasteur thought of it(?), or published it as his own!
Note how concisely it
anticipates all Pasteur's ideas on germs. While there seems to be no
proof that Plenciz had a microscope, or knew of Leenwenhoek's
animalcula, both are possible, and likely, as he was quite prominent;
and he, rather than Pasteur, should have any credit that might come
from such a discovery - if the germ theory has any value. This idea,
which, to the people of that time at least, must have accounted
easily and completely for such strange occurrences as contagion,
infection and epidemics, would have been widely discussed in the
medical or scientific circles of that time, and in literature
available to Pasteur.
That it was widely
known is indicated by the fact that the world-famous English nurse,
Florence Nightingale, published an attack on the idea in 1860, over
17 years before Pasteur adopted it and claimed it as his own.
She said of
'infection':
Diseases are not
individuals arranged in classes, like cats and dogs, but conditions
growing out of one another.
Is it not living in a
continual mistake to look upon diseases as we do now, as separate
entities, which must exist, like cats and dogs, instead of looking
upon them as conditions, like a dirty and a clean condition, and just
as much under our control; or rather as the reactions of kindly
nature, against the conditions in which we have placed ourselves?
I was brought up to
believe that smallpox, for instance, was a thing of which there was
once a first specimen in the world, which went on propagating itself,
in a perpetual chain of descent, just as there was a first dog, (or a
first pair of dogs) and that smallpox would not begin itself, any
more than a new dog would begin without there having been a parent
dog.
Since then I have seen
with my own eyes and smelled with my own nose smallpox growing up in
first specimens, either in closed rooms or in overcrowded wards,
where it could not by any possibility have been 'caught', but must
have begun.
I have seen diseases
begin, grow up, and pass into one another. Now, dogs do not pass into
cats.
I have seen, for
instance, with a little overcrowding, continued fever grow up; and
with a little more, typhoid fever; and with a little more, typhus,
and all in the same ward or hut.
Would it not be far
better, truer, and more practical, if we looked upon disease in this
light (for diseases, as all experience shows, are adjectives, not
noun-substantives):
- True nursing ignores
infection, except to prevent it. Cleanliness and fresh air from open
windows, with unremitting attention to the patient, are the only
defence a true nurse either asks or needs.
- Wise and humane
management of the patient is the best safeguard against infection.
The greater part of nursing consists of preserving cleanliness.
- The specific disease
doctrine is the grand refuge of weak, uncultured, unstable minds,
such as now rule in the medical profession. There are no specific
diseases; there are specific disease conditions."
Here you have Florence
Nightingale, one of the most famous nurses in history, after
life-long experience with infection, contagion and epidemics,
challenging the germ theory 17 years before Pasteur put it forward as
his own discovery! (See Ch.8, p.61).
She clearly understood
it and its utter fallacy better before 1860 than Pasteur did, either
in 1878 or later!
And, to see what a
parasite Pasteur was on men who did things, let us digress and go
back a few years, to the time when the study of germs was an
outgrowth of the study of fermentation.
