By Herbert Snow, MD, 1905
The Germ Theory of Disease, so prominent in medical literature and practice, began with the unsuccessful efforts of the chemist Pasteur to apply to human maladies—which, not being a doctor, he only knew academically—deductions drawn from the phenomena he had observed in fermentation.
There has never been anything approaching scientific proof of the causal association of micro-organisms with disease; and in most instances wherein such an association has been pretended, there is abundant evidence emphatically contradicting that view. Yet most unfortunately, this lame and defective theory has become the foundation of a very extensive system of quackery, in the prosecution of which millions of capital are embarked, and no expense spared to hoodwink the public with the more credulous members of the Medical Faculty.
It may then not be out of place to survey, as judicially as may be, the position in which the Germ Theory now stands; with the ill-consequences very conspicuously resulting from its premature adoption as a proven axiom of Science. Those ill results are demonstrated and lucidly set forth in categorical detail, by the recently published Minority Report—whereof Dr. George Wilson is author—of the Royal Commission on Vivisection.
The subject naturally falls into two divisions: a) the Microbe or Germ as asserted to cause febrile and infectious maladies; b) the same as the supposed source of suppuration in wounds, and of the basis of Lister’s exploded “Antiseptic Theory.” The former appertains to Medicine, the latter to Surgery.
The majority of zymotic maladies are unquestionably due to some sanitary defect, as dirt, foul air, polluted water, innutritious food, deficient light, etc.; and when the fault has been remedied, the disease is prevented or cured. But these are its gross causes. Of the subtler agencies whereby illness is produced, our ignorance is crass indeed.
Hence a natural temptation, whenever a micro-organism is found in connection with a malady, to assume that the latter is directly due to the former, and to overlook necessary links in the chain of scientific proof. The Germ Theory offers such a simple explanation of so much that is profoundly mysterious and obscure that, in spite of every difficulty, belief in it has come to be with the bulk of medical practitioners—and so with the public who place implicit confidence in “Medical Science”—an obsession overwhelming and unapproachable by reason.
The first of these difficulties is the fact that in spite of the most diligent and persevering efforts, no investigator has ever yet been able to detect any causative germ whatsoever in some of the most familiar and prevalent maladies of this zymotic class. Vaccine lymph we have always with us, and in forms peculiarly well adapted to the methods of laboratory research. More than twenty years since, the Grocer’s Company offered a prize of $5,000 to the discoverer of its “germ.” That prize is still open, and has never been even claimed.
No one has yet discovered any micro-
organism in association with Measles, Scarlatina, Small-pox, Chicken-pox, and Mumps. One has lately been put forward as the source of Whooping cough, but proof of the statement is wanting; and the same with Pfeiffer’s Influenza-bacillus. Pasteur, the Apostle of the Germ Theory, could detect no microbe (in spite of assiduous search) in Hydrophobia; not of course a zymotic malady. Of Cancer, some 400 distinct micro-organisms have been proclaimed the cause; but no one beyond the discoverer has ever accepted this discovery.
Per contra, a micro-organism has been discovered in more or less frequent association with the lesions of Diphtheria, Tuberculosis, Cholera, Bubonic Plague, Tetanus, Typhoid Fever, Spinal Meningitis, and a few more. In each instance it has been put forward as the cause; and on that assumption a serum or vaccine has been commercially exploited as cure or as preventive of the particular disease in question. Let us briefly inquire into the credentials of some of these germs; and consider how they would satisfy the requirements of genuine Science.
But first it may be premised that germs in general are of extremely numerous varieties, and that morphologically these varieties often bear so close a resemblance to each other, that even a highly-skilled microscopist has the greatest possible difficulty in distinguishing one from another by its appearance under the microscope. Also the micro-organisms found in disease are commonly mixed and blended in almost inextricable confusion. Hence Professor Koch, of Berlin, the discoverer of the Cholera and Consumption bacilli, laid down five postulates with which any germ must comply, before it could be scientifically admitted the “vera causa” of any malady whatever. At the time Koch was practically the head of the Bacteriological world, and his dictum was unhesitatingly accepted by bacteriologists. Apart from expert opinion, it obviously appeals to commonsense.
In order that a micro-organism may be scientifically held causal, it must—
- Always be discoverable in association with the particular disease.
- Never occur under conditions of health, or in other disease than the one indicated.
- Be capable of cultivation for many generations outside the body of the host.
- Always produce the same disease when subsequently inoculated into the body of another animal.
- Then always be found in the second animal host.
Not a solitary germ yet discovered has succeeded in fulfilling all these conditions. In fact, no single microbe put forward by bacteriologists as the cause of a disease has yet complied with more than one, and—which is a point of particular significance—that one is the third of the above.
In other words every micro-organism yet found in association with disease has utterly failed to fulfil four out of five tests which the leading bacteriologist of his day laid down as absolutely essential before it could be counted a genuine cause, or held in any sense etiological. Witness the following examples.
The microbe to which Diphtheria has been for the past seventeen years attributed and whose presence in the throat-mucus now constitutes the official and sole acknowledged test for the presence of that malady, was discovered by Messrs. Klebs and Loeffler and is called their name. They could not detect it in 25 per cent (one in four) cases of undoubted Diphtheria. See also Osler’s Practice of Medicine, page 138 where Osler, practically the leader of modern Medicine, admits its frequent absence even in bad cases.
Since its discovery as above the bacillus has also been found in abundance in the throat-mucus of innumerable healthy people; and this by many independent observers. Ritter detected it in 127 perfectly healthy school children. Hewlett and Murray found it in 15 per cent of children in hospital with various maladies other than Diphtheria (British Medical Journal, June 15, 1901).
The organism has a very wide distribution. It has been detected microscopically in the contents of vaccine vesicles, in tuberculous and emphysematous lungs, in mucus from ordinary catarrhal sore-throat, in stomatitis, rhinitis, conjunctivitis, in eczema and other skin eruptions, in gangrene, noma, ozcena, etc.
Injected into the body of another animal the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus invariably fails to produce disease in any way resembling human Diphtheria. The horses so treated for the purpose of manufacturing Diphtheria-Antitoxin from their blood-serum show no symptoms, apart from general malaise, of that malady. (See evidence of Professor C.J. Martin, Proc. Royal A-V, Commission, Q. 11897.)
The Tubercle-bacillus was discovered by Professor Koch in 1881. He endeavored to prove that it is the cause of Tubercular Consumption, but entirely failed to do so; all his conclusions were promptly contradicted by Professor Middendorp and others. Nevertheless, this microbe has since been elevated to the baleful potency of a malignant African fetish. It has caused unhappy consumptives to be shunned like lepers; is now dangerously threatening the milk trade, the agricultural interest, and even the general arrangements of industry at large.
The germ does not make its appearance in the sputum of consumptives until that disease has continued for several months. Dr. H.J. Loomis (Medical Record, July 29th, 1905), gives the average date of its detection at three and one-third months from inception, as fixed by the physical signs. Dr. Muthu’s extensive experience at the Mendip Sanatorium enables him to affirm that it is not infrequently absent from the expectoration of patients with very advanced disease and “extensive mischief in the lungs” (Pulmonary Tuberculosis and Sanatorium Treatment, 1910).
Professor Middendorp denies that the bacillus exists in any tubercular nodules of recent formation, and prior to the onset of degenerative processes. Spina, Charrin, and Kuskow failed utterly to detect it in Acute Miliary Tuberculosis, wherein, were the causal theory of Koch genuine, it must needs be specially abundant.
A noteworthy element of fallacy in reference to the value of inferences from experiment with the Tubercle-bacillus upon the lower animals lies in the fact that most of such experiments take place with the guinea-pig.
In 1868 Dr. Wilson Fox proved that it was easy to produce Tuberculosis in that animal by almost any tissue-irritation, and by inoculation with miscellaneous substances very varied in character. Eleven of thirteen guinea-pigs became tubercular through the subcutaneous injection of pneumonic lung-substance, four out of five by that of putrid muscle, others by the insertion into their tissues of silver-wire, cotton thread, and the like (Lecture Royal College Physicians, May 15th, 1868).
Dr. Fox’s conclusions were confirmed by Dr. Waldenburg and have never been contradicted. They appear to invalidate the bulk of the “scientific” researches including those most elaborate and prolonged investigations by the Royal Commission on Tuberculosis.
The Times of January 13th, 1896, quotes a Report to the Plague Commission at Agra, by Mr. Hankin, Bacteriologist for the North-West Provinces. “There was no doubt that cases of Plague occurred among human beings in which no microbes were visible at the time of death. This fact was first proved by the members of the German and Austrian Plague Commission.”
The “Comma bacillus” was discovered by Koch, who proclaimed it to be the cause of Asiatic Cholera. Dr. Klein, who was about to proceed to India to investigate the origin of that disease, did not believe in Professor Koch’s statement and experimentally drank a wineglass of comma bacilli in “pure culture.” No effect followed; and Dr. Klein remains alive and well to this day. At Hamburg Pettenkofer and Emmerich swallowed that actual dejecta of a cholera patient with result similarly negative. Pettenkofer concluded that “the specific virus of cholera does not arise from the comma bacillus, but is evolved in the human organism.”
Cunningham (quoted by Granville Bantock, The Modern Doctrine of Bacteriology, p. 67) met with cases of cholera free from any traces of the comma bacillus. Bantock cites one of sudden death from this source at Paris in which none could be found. The micro-organism occurs in people suffering from nothing more grave than constipation. A Government Inquiry into the Etiology of Asiatic Cholera, 1896, says: “Organisms like comma bacilli. . . can have nothing definite to do with disease. . . . It is impossible to maintain that the evacuations of a person affected with cholera contain actually or potentially the cholera poison in the shape of an organism.”
Tetanus is ascribed to a microbe resident ingarden soil, which gains access to wounds. That cannot be true, because such wounds among gardeners and agricultural laborers must be most common, yet they are very rarely attacked. Also, tetanus not seldom occurs without external wound; and Dieulafoy has recorded thirty-five cases following the injection of highly sterilized serum. In India, Italy, and America, severe outbreaks of Tetanus have followed the use of Diphtheria Anti-toxin.
The bacillus typhosus, the pretended cause of typhoid fever, is found in healthy persons, and according to Major Horrocks, R.A.M.A. (British Medical Journal, May 6, 1911) has no specific character whatever. He finds that it is easily changed into other forms (B. Coli, B. Alcaligenes, etc.) by cultivation. It has never been found in the water, to which many virulent epidemics of typhoid have plausibly been ascribed. Dr. Thresh, the well-known Medical Officer of Health, told the jury in the Malvern Hydro case, that he had accidentally swallowed a wineglassful of the “pure culture” of virulent typhoid bacilli without the smallest ill-consequence.
On experiments involving the like conclusion, Dr. J. W. Hodge remarks, “In medical literature I find a number of recorded instances of the apparently healthy human body having been repeatedly inoculated hypodermically with pure cultures of the active bacillus typhosus, the supposed cause of typhoid fever. These fully virulent cultures have also been injected into the rectum of the human body, and applied to large abraded areas from which the cuticle had been removed. . . with no other effects that those resulting from the puncture or abrasion.” He makes a similar statement about the bacillus of Anthrax; and says that so far as his knowledge extends, all such experiments with other microbes reputed pathogenic have been negative (American Journal of Neuropathy, February, 1911).
These remarks are specially pertinent at the present time because of the recent official order that the whole United States Army is to undergo inoculation with Anti-Typhoid serum, a remedy resting in toto on belief that the B. Typhosus is the source of Enteric fever.
It is admitted that the microbes asserted to generate Spinal Meningitis, Anthrax, Influenza, etc., cannot be detected in all the victims of these disorders by the most careful search. No pathogenic germ has ever been found in the air.
The present position of the favorite official view of a germ as the cause of Malarial fevers, and conveyed by the mosquito, may be here glanced at. On the general theory, it may be remarked that Malaria abounds where the insects are entirely, or almost entirely, absent; as in the tropical highlands generally and the elevated regions of Rhodesia (Bantock). That the fever is at its maximum when there are hardly any mosquitoes about, and at its minimum when these are most numerous. That the malady is apt to follow a chill, after long years of immunity in temperate Europe.
Secondly, we note that although the theory has been current for nearly ten years, wherever it has been acted on, it has totally failed in actual practice. Wherever operations for the destruction of the mosquito (per se) have been carried on, as at Miam Mir, for seven or eight years (Lancet, April, 1909), they have proved useless. The malady is as prevalent as ever, in spite of the great labor and sacrifices involved. So far as it is possible to obtain unbiased official testimony, we learn that only the gross measures of sanitation count.
The Antiseptic System of Surgery, to the introduction of which the late Lord Lister owed his extraordinary fame, was based on the theory that certain specific micro-organisms cause suppuration in wounds; and that by destroying them before they could gain access thereto, suppuration was prevented.
Hence the invention of the Carbolic Spray, and all its accompanying cumbersome technique, which in the seventies of the last century wearied the heart of the surgeon, and not seldom killed the patient.
It was eventually discovered that no human power could possibly devitalise the millions of microbes which gain access to every wound during the briefest operation. Lord Lister had to confess at Liverpool, on September 16th, 1896, that his whole theory was erroneous, and that it was only “the grosser forms of septic mischief” which had to be reckoned with in surgery. The Carbolic Spray, and even the “Antiseptic washing and irrigation,” had been authoritatively abandoned by him six years earlier, with an expression of regret for the introduction of the former. “I feel ashamed that I should ever have recommended it (the spray) for the purpose of destroying the microbes in the air.”
Antiseptic surgery was then replaced by Aseptic; which being translated simply signifies careful and wholesome cleanliness—that and nothing more. Instead of striving to kill the germs, we severely let them alone, concentrating all our attention upon that cleanliness of patient, of doctors, of nurses, and of dressings, which assuredly in this matter is not merely next to godliness, but is infinitely preferable.
Lister was wrong, and frankly confessed it. Yet to the end of time should his fame continue, for he worked indeed a great miracle, which to those who, like myself, remember the days previous, would seem almost inconceivable. He actually made surgeons and dressers wash their hands and carefully cleanse their nails—a thing almost unknown before! A marvellous transformation there has been. Oh, the mal-odors of the wounds and the wards, and the busy hands of doctors, students, and nurses at work therein, during the pre-Listerian period! Oh, the foul black nails of justly celebrated surgeons, I can remember in that not very remote epoch!
But for the germs themselves, the “pyogenic” micrococci, the streptococci and staphylococci, “et iis similia”—these bogeys were quickly found to be unentitled to the high estate conferred on them by Lister; and had it not been for medical obsession by the Germ Theory, must have fallen into utter contempt. It was proved that in all the natural mucous secretions of the body they exist in myriads. They are perfectly normal inhabitants, to all appearance perfectly innocuous, of the bronchial tubes, nose, mouth, throat, etc.
Lister admitted that his carbolic sucked them into its vortex, carried them into the operation wound in far vaster numbers than would have penetrated otherwise, and was not strong enough to kill them. Lockwood found it all but impossible to sterilize the skin of his own hands, let alone that of the patient completely; and further that on areas such as the scrotum where micro-organisms specially abound his operation wounds appeared to heal the better for their presence.
Corrosive Sublimate, the most potent killer of germs known, entirely precludes healing as every surgeon knows; the wound obstinately continues raw.
Pus is known to be frequently present without any micro-organism, and to be readily caused by various chemical agencies such as painting the skin with iodine, rubbing it with mercury or Croton oil. Of fifty agar plates prepared from pustules produced in twenty patients by the last-named, forty-five were perfectly sterile (Kreiblich of Vienna Experiments in the Production of Pus, quoted by Bantock, Op. Cit., page 161; see also Medical Press and Circular, June 19th, 1901).
With Lister, Lockwood practically concluded that it was only “the grosser forms of septic mischief” whereof the surgeon had to beware, and that perfect sterility is impossible in surgery. With wholesome cleanliness, drainage, and careful subsequent precautions to maintain dryness—freedom from moisture—of the parts involved in a surgical operation no suppuration takes place—whether microbes are to a certain extent excluded (they cannot be entirely so)—or whether they are allowed to swarm in by the billion. Such is my own experience in a lengthy hospital career, and it concurs I think with that of every other practical operator, peritoneal or otherwise.
I mention this last because the rules of peritoneal (abdominal) surgery differ materially in detail from those of other departments (a point apt to be overlooked), and inference from one to the other is not always made. The peritoneal membrane it was that most suffered by absorption of the poisonous carbolic acid when the spray was in vogue. Probably it was for this reason that the great Lawson Tait persistently depreciated Lister. He ascribed the invention of surgical cleanliness to Lyme. With Bantock, he abominated the spray even when its vogue was overwhelming, and experience proved the justice of their contention.
But unfortunately both in the medical and surgical departments of the healing art, powerful vested interests had by this time (i.e., 1890, when Lister at the Berlin Congress officially discarded his “Antisepsis”) arisen, and, in combination with still more powerful financial forces outside the faculty, were compelled to prop up the decaying Germ Theory by every possible method and at all hazard. Consequently, when Aseptic Surgery displaced Antiseptic, it was officially proclaimed publicly that the former was only the corollary of the latter—which it really negatived entirely. Lister was induced to ally himself with the successful new school, and to confer upon its edicts and practical prescriptions the unparalleled lustre of his world-wide reputation. At the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society on June 20th, 1901, the antiseptic method in surgery was solemnly buried in the presence of its author, but proclamation was also made that the new Aseptic “was the outcome of the Listerian method.” The proposition is ingenious; but one might as well describe the locomotive as the outcome of the stage coach.
So much for surgery. But in medicine, still greater forces were indissolubly pledged to the maintenance of the belief in special micro-organisms as the cause of specific diseases. Pasteur has invented Serum- Therapy, beginning with fictitious cures, whose validity he signally failed to prove, for Rabies and Anthrax. Millions of capital were being invested in commercial enterprises for the manufacture of sera to cure or to prevent human maladies, and sold on the credit of the Germ Theory. Hence it was impossible to suffer public belief in the evil potency of Germs—by this time thoroughly established—to be trampled out by the hard facts of Science.
So nothing was spared that could serve to prevent a perception of the actual truth. The total failure of every one of these nostrums to accomplish its ostensible object was concealed; their frequent dangerous effects disguised, and the statistics of disease manipulated towards the desired end, or often purposely falsified upon a most extensive scale. In the whole wide field of Serum-Therapy so far, not a solitary genuine success has been scored. The fact is categorically demonstrated by Dr. Wilson’s Report in the recent Blue Book. For all who can read between the lines it stands admitted to all intents and purposes, by the Majority Report of the Royal Commission on Vivisection (q.v.).
The most striking example of non-success in a supposed remedy introduced on the faith of the Germ Theory is afforded by the Diphtheria- Antitoxin now manufactured and sold in such large quantities throughout the civilized world. As with the other Sera in the markets it is not exactly what it professes to be. To the blood-serum of the inoculated horse must necessarily be added a small quantity of some chemical preservative—carbolic acid, iodine, formaline, etc.—to prevent that rapid decomposition which would otherwise quickly ensue. Hence each hypodermic injection of such agents involves the introduction into the blood of a minute dose of a powerful, commonly poisonous drug, having special effects for good or for evil, of its own. It can excite no surprise therefore when we find that nearly all are prone to cause sudden death, with a host of minor ill-consequences often of the graver character.
[Author footnote: For the many evil sequelae of the Diphtheria-Antitoxin see “The Bacteriology of Diphtheria” by Drs. Nuttali and Smith, Cambridge, 1908. For the danger of Tubercular treatment, “Serums, Vaccines, and Toxins,” by Messrs. Bosanquet and Kyes, 1909. For the bad results of Serum- Therapy in numerous. . . articles, “Serum Exhibition and Serum Rashes,” by Dr. James Dundas, “The Hospital,” August 29, 1909. At a discussion of the Royal Society of Medicine at Brussels, reported in the “Bulletin” for Nov., 1910, numerous deaths from the injections of various sera were referred to.]
To show a surplus of cures by the Diphtheria-Antitoxin it was only necessary to introduce an absolutely erroneous mode of diagnosis, which has since completely falsified all the published statistics of treatment. Instead of the white throat-pellicle and other obvious clinical signs whereby practical doctors who knew their work were accustomed to recognize a case of Diphtheria when they saw it, rarely making a mistake, the presence or absence of the aforesaid Klebs-Loeffler bacillus became the sole test. For obvious reasons no figures of successful treatment had under such circumstances the slightest pretensions to scientific accuracy; thousands of harmless sore throats being thus swept into the net, to demonstrate the beneficial effects of the Antitoxin.
In spite of this most unwarrantable and unscientific proceeding the annual percentage of deaths from Diphtheria has considerably increased, since the “cure” was introduced (in 1894). For the ten years previous it was only 205 per million persons living. In the ten following, the deaths rose to 235 per million, i.e., in England and Wales.
It only remains to add that Diphtheria is of all contagious maladies the most easily and promptly curable by simple and innocuous remedies, well-known to the faculty: Sulphurous Acid having been found the most efficient in the writer’s own hand. Two hundred and fifty-nine cases treated by other remedies without a single fatality are reported in the Journal de Medecine Paris, November 24th; 1894. So long ago as 1859, Markinder treated 400 cases of Diphtheria at Gainsborough with only a single death (Medical Record, May 27th, 1899).
Haffkine’s “Vaccine” for Plague may be next considered in view of the grievous harm it has actually caused, both directly and indirectly. It is a culture of the bacillus pestis in beef-tea and came into active use under the inventor’s own superintendence on the outbreak of the epidemic which occurred at Bombay in September, 1896. A plague-epidemic dies out of its own accord, if not interfered with, in an average period of eight months. This one, however, was encountered with the above “Vaccine,” and has continued ever since, i.e., for fifteen to sixteen years. From Bombay it has spread over nearly the whole of India. In 1907, the official mortality return for the year amounted to 1,315,880—that was the high-water mark. From September, 1896, to the end of October, 1911, the total deaths from Plague—in this single epidemic—have amounted to 7,621,255. (See official returns.)
And the end is not yet. In 1911, to the end of the October nearly 800,000 victims perished. Recent accounts state that Haffkine’s Vaccine has at length been given up as useless.
With this ghastly result—from a practical application of the Germ Theory—may be contrasted the Plague-epidemic which broke out in Egypt in 1899. No inoculations were resorted to, but by isolation and commonsense measures of hygiene, the scourge was completely stamped out in six weeks (British Medical Journal, April 21st, 1900).
There is hardly anything to be said in favor of any one among the numerous other sera or vaccines which have been brought forward as remedial or preventive in human and lower animal disease, and are exploited commercially at a large advertisement outlay. Sir Almroth Wright (Studies in Immunization, page 301) affirms that Serum-Therapy in general is devoid of any rational basis.
The Royal Vivisection Commission has elicited from medical official witnesses an unqualified admission of the failure of sera or vaccine, introduced for Cholera, Consumption (Koch’s Tuberculin), Pneumonia (Marmorek), Anthrax (Pasteur), Dysentery, Puerperal Fever, and Tetanus. Statistics adduced as showing the value of the Typhoid-fever inoculations were completely balanced by others indicating their inutility, and South African doctors, with practical experience of the results, emphatically state that they do far more harm than good, delaying recovery, increasing the mortality, and in no way serving to prevent the disease (British Medical Journal, April 20th, 1901).
A very important misuse of the Germ Theory lies in the substitution, sometimes enforced officially, of artificial and unreliable diagnostic methods for the previous reliance upon clinical signs. This is in the highest degree prejudicial to medical education, tending to develop an academic race of practitioners devoid of practical acquaintance with their calling as healers of men, relying upon book-knowledge and artificial tests for disease, bigoted and narrow in an extreme degree.
The fallacy of a microscopic test founded on the presence or absence of a particular germ, for any special malady whatever, is conspicuous in every single instance already stated. No microbe can invariably be detected in cases indisputably of the malady with which its name has been associated. Every such micro-organism has been over and over again detected when there could be no suspicion of the malady it was supposed to bring. Also there is no badge whereby by a pathological microbe can be differentiated from one confessedly harmless. The former is always very closely simulated in appearance by sundry varieties or forms of the latter, and bacteriologists of the highest skill confess themselves liable to be deceived.
Thus the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus of Diphtheria cannot be morphologically distinguished, even by bacteriological experts, from Homann’s bacillus, confessedly innocuous, Koch’s Tubercle bacillus cannot be discriminated from the harmless Timothy-grass bacillus and the Smegma bacillus. It also closely resembles the Bacillus Typhosus of Typhoid, for which the Timothy-grass bacillus is again apt to be mistaken. The gonococcus is very like common micrococcus catarrhalis of the nasal cavity, and the diplococcus intracellularis of Weischselbaum, which is given out as causing Spinal meningitis, though Flexner himself confesses it is often absent. The Micrococcus Melitensis, the asserted cause of Malta Fever—said to be due to goats’ milk, though it prevails where goats are not, and in people who have never drunk their milk—is admitted to bear a highly suspicious resemblance to ordinary fat globules. And so on throughout the whole list. [Author footnote: Bacilli indistinguishable in size, form, and coloration by staining media from the tubercle-bacillus of Koch were found by Lydia Rabinowitsch (entrusted by Koch with the investigation) in every sample of butter purchased in Berlin and Philadelphia. They produced tuberculosis when injected into the guinea-pig. The only difference stated was that growth in cultures was quicker and more luxuriant. The fact is significant in reference to impending legislation on the milk traffic.]
It may be noted that whenever a so-called “pathogenic” germ is closely mimicked in appearance by others against which no charge of morbific “lese-majeste” has been brought, and which are assumed to be harmless, the bacteriologist applies the epitheth “pseudo” to the latter. Thus we read of a “pseudo” Diphtheria-bacillus, a “pseudo” Typhoid-bacillus, and I know not how many more. The fact is significant as well as frequent; at once indicating the unreliability of current bacteriological tests.
Every practical surgeon or physician who himself works with the microscope—I fear there are not too many such—will admit the extreme danger of implicit reliance upon almost any microscopic test in the diagnosis of disease. Too many fallacies in every direction have to be reckoned with. I can personally testify to the numerous perfectly needless operations for supposed Cancer which have been performed in past years upon organs perfectly free from that fell disease, through the erroneous interpretation of microscopic indications. And in these last, resort to high powers of the microscope, such as used in Bacteriology, and which must obviously vastly enhance the sources of error, is rarely needed.
The Lancet of March 20th, 1909, in a powerful editorial confesses the inadequacy of the Germ Theory, and practically throws it overboard as a scientific explanation of morbid phenomena. It says: “It is not at all rare to fail to find the causal organism in an individual case of the disease. . . . Many organisms which are considered causal are frequently to be found in healthy persons. The organisms of enteric-fever, of cholera, and of diphtheria may be cited as examples. When a ‘causal organism’ is injected into an animal, often it happens that it gives rise to a disease bearing no resemblance to the original malady.”
No scientist has yet ascertained with precision what part in morbid phenomena germs really play. The most plausible view is that advanced by Dr. Granville Bantock in his admirable resume of the subject, to which, in compiling this article I have been greatly indebted (The Modern Doctrine of Bacteriology, 1902); that they simply act as scavengers, disintegrating the dead or diseased tissues into their component elements. We only know for certain that their presence in any given malady is by no means invariable; that in numerous zymotic diseases many years of assiduous research have failed to detect a solitary trace of any germs whose absence must therefore be inferred; that such as have been found cannot be causal, and can never be made to reproduce the special disease, when inoculated into animals, apart from the “virus” associated inseparably with them.
The editor of The Lancet states in the article quoted above that “in many instances”—for which we should read “never”—“the causal organism is not capable by itself of inducing the disease, and a ‘tertium quid’ must be assumed,” even in the relatively few maladies which bacteriology has plausibly associated with a special germ. There is always some unknown quantity beside this, the microbe per se is not enough.
That is the limit of our positive knowledge, which at present can deal with nothing beyond gross causes. We see the zymotic fevers always engendered by some obvious septic condition, or else by some conspicuous breach of hygienic law. We succeed in preventing them by sanitation, and by careful heed to the laws of nature. In what element the contagion which most of them exhibit resides we are absolutely ignorant; nor do we know anything in minute detail of their first origin. But however fascinating the hypothesis that they somehow are caused by the infinitely small organisms which swarm everywhere around, we cannot legitimately avail ourselves of it, for the simple reason that science cannot show any even plausible foundation for it, in ascertained facts.
Experimentation in the laboratory and elsewhere with so-called “pure cultures” of micro-organisms, casts no light whatever upon their real nature and functions. They are so infinitely small—many billions, or even trillions, to the cubic inch—that it is impossible ever to regard them as perfectly divested of the environment they have carried with them from the blood, or spinal fluid, or diseased tissues whence they were originally taken. And even with that the inoculations never succeed in reproducing the original disease—the inoculated animal may become ill; but it invariably fails to afford convincing or even plausible proof that it suffers from Diphtheria, or Malta Fever, or Typhoid, or whatever the special fever in question may be.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Summer 2025 🖨️ Print post
About Herbert Snow
Dr. Herbert Lumley Snow (1847–1930) was a well-known London surgeon. After working at other hospitals, he was appointed in 1877 to the world’s first hospital for cancer patients—the Cancer Hospital in Brompton, London (later renamed the Royal Marsden Hospital)—where he worked until his retirement in 1906. Wikipedia credits him as a “germ theory denialist” and “anti-vaccinationist” as well as an opponent of circumcision and vivisection.
