Several years ago Dr. Charles B. Reed of Chicago obtained considerable
notoriety by the invention of a cat-trap or gibbet to be baited with
catnip and operated in back yards. The accounts in the newspapers
related that he had found four dangerous kinds of germs on a cat’s
whiskers and was therefore urging the extermination of cats as a
menace to health; that Dr. William McClure, of Wesley Hospital, was
examining microscopically hairs from cats’ fur to ascertain how many
different kinds of germs there were on it; and that the secretary of
the Chicago Board of Health had issued a statement that cats are
“extremely dangerous to humanity.” From Topeka came the report that
six different kinds of deadly germs had been found on a cat’s fur and
that the Board of Health had in consequence issued a mandate that
Topeka cats must be sheared or killed! But why stop with shearing
them? There are germs on their skins. And now public penholders in
banks and post-offices are under suspicion; an investigation is being
made by the Kansas Board of Health, _The St. Louis Republic_ states,
and individual penholders may have to be supplied. From time to time a
health board official or some other doctor gives out a statement for
publication condemning handshaking as a dangerous and reprehensible
practice.
The hair of horses, cows, and dogs is full of germs, which they
disseminate. Germs are everywhere. Why should cats’ whiskers be an
exception to the rule? If Thomas and Tabby could retaliate and examine
doctors’ whiskers, doubtless numerous virulent varieties of germs
would be found there. Doctors are a menace to public health, for they
disseminate germs. Therefore, exterminate the doctors! But perhaps,
being doctors, they don’t carry germs. Their persons are sacred. Germs
are afraid of them and keep at a respectful distance.
All the leading works on bacteriology admit that a person may have
germs of diphtheria, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, pneumonia, or any
other disease within his body without having any of those diseases.
Since that is the case, it is obvious that germs of themselves cannot
cause disease. They do no harm in a body that is in a healthy
condition. But so prejudiced is the medical profession on the subject
of germs that the true causes of disease are overlooked and
disregarded.
Among the four kinds of germs found on a cat’s whiskers, Dr. Reed
mentions a germ “which causes a variety of infectious diseases,
including kidney disease.” As if any one ever got kidney disease
because he unwittingly swallowed some germs of the kind found in
diseased kidneys, if he had not abused those organs by gross eating or
gross drinking! But it relieves the individual of all responsibility
for his condition to put the blame on germs and the cat. There is no
personal stigma attached to such a cause; for it is commonly supposed
that anybody is liable to be attacked by germs, that, like rain that
falleth upon both the just and the unjust, germs attack both healthy
persons as well as those whose bodies are saturated with auto-toxemia.
An inspection of the family dietary usually reveals the cause of a
man’s untimely demise. But his death is piously attributed to an
inscrutable visitation of Providence. His wife drapes herself in
crêpe, observes all the conventions of grief, and overworks her
lachrymose glands for a season. His friends pass resolutions of
condolence, lamenting that their dear brother has been “called to his
eternal rest,” a flattering implication that he had so overworked
himself during his brief span of life that he needed an eternity of
rest in which to recuperate, and was entitled to it as a reward.
Whereas the only thing overworked was his digestive organs in
disposing of his wife’s cooking.
If deadly germs are found on cats’ whiskers, what of it? It is as
valuable a contribution to science to know how many and what kind of
germs are to be found on cats’ whiskers as to know how many devils can
be balanced on the point of a needle. Verily, a fool and his time are
soon parted.
That a cat has germs on her fur and whiskers does not prove that she
is a menace to health; but doctors are often a menace to life and
health. Much of the surgery performed is unnecessary and frequently
results in death. Vaccination and the administering of serums and
antitoxins are frequently followed by death or impaired health. One of
the gravest charges against the prescribing of medicines is that they
suppress or mask the symptoms and do not remove the cause of the
disease, but leave the patient to continue in the error of his ways
until overtaken again by the same trouble or an equivalent that has
cropped out in some other place; and by that time the malady has
perhaps reached a fatal stage.
In some respects doctors are like cats. They caterwaul, and
occasionally they purr. When a woman patient calls at a doctor’s
office and he does not know just what is the matter with her or what
to do to cure her, if he belongs to a certain type in the profession,
he holds her hand and purrs and is so sympathetic that she leaves his
office in a transport, walks on air, and goes home convinced that no
one understands her case as well as he does. Or else he tells her how
beautiful she looked on the operating table. After such a subtle
appeal to her vanity she pays without demur his bill of $300 or $400.
He takes great care not to offend his patients by telling them
unpleasant truths, but instead resorts to delicate flattery. If a
woman comes to his office suffering from some ailment brought on
chiefly by eating devitalized foods, he purrs softly while he
determines the latitude and longitude of her pain and gently inquires
if she has had a shock recently. She thinks hard for a moment and
recalls that she has had, that the news of the death of a child of an
intimate friend was broken to her abruptly. Yes, that must have been
what caused her condition.
Lacking the ability to direct patients headed for perdition by reason
of wrong living how to live so that they can regain their health while
continuing their work where they are, he sometimes recommends a change
of climate or that they take a rest. Change of scene or occupation
usually affords some slight temporary alleviation that the patients
regard as a cure.
When patients have a cold or the grippe, instead of making plain to
them what laws of health they have violated and that their illness is
a direct result, the doctor, it not infrequently happens, tells them
that it is “going around.” Colds and grippe are consequently in the
popular mind of mysterious origin, and the victims complacently regard
themselves as blameless but unfortunate.
It is because the medical profession teaches people to look outside of
themselves for the causes of their maladies that we see such
spectacles as Caruso, obliged to break professional engagements that
would have yielded him $100,000, ascribing his case of grippe to
external influences. “I like everything in New York except its colds
and grippe,” he is quoted as saying in an interview. “I think I can
boast that I have had the most expensive case of grippe on record. It
has cost me $100,000. The public says I am a great singer. I should be
a greater man if I were a scientist who could drive grippe out of the
country. See if you can’t drive it out of New York before I come
back.”
Note the boast. As if ill-health and operations were something to be
proud of! Instead of telling our acquaintances of our ailments in the
expectation of getting their sympathy, we ought to be ashamed to be
sick. They may understand what internal conditions colds, grippe, and
other ailments presuppose, and have a feeling of repulsion toward us,
not of sympathy.
The germ theory of disease is in great vogue at present with the
regular—or allopathic, as it is sometimes called—school of medicine.
Some of the leading physicians of other schools, however, predict that
the day is not far distant when the contagiousness and infectiousness
of disease through germs, vaccination, the injection of serums as
preventives or cures, and the resorting to the use of medicines by
deluded people as a substitute for correcting their habits of living,
will be generally regarded as superstitions. When that day comes, we
shall cease this Pharisaical self-righteous attitude, this dread and
suspicion of others as germ-laden, and face the truth that we build
our own diseases.
Even some of the regulars do not hold orthodox views; for instance,
Dr. Charles Creighton, an eminent English physician. He has made a
special study of epidemics and was engaged to write an article for the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_ on vaccination. At that time he was a
believer in it, but changed his views when he investigated the
subject. What he wrote was omitted from the American editions. “As a
medical man,” he once declared, “I assert that vaccination is an
insult to common sense; that it is superstitious in its origin,
unsatisfactory in theory and practice, and useless and dangerous in
its character.” He testified before the British Royal Commission on
Vaccination that in his opinion vaccination affords no protection
whatever. He has written several books on the subject.
If germs are not the cause of disease, then what is? To this Dr. J. H.
Tilden, of Denver, one of the most distinguished of those who do not
accept the germ theory of disease as true, makes answer as follows. I
quote excerpts taken here and there from his writings in _A Stuffed
Club Magazine_ on the subject of the causes and cure of disease, the
germ theory, contagion and infection, and immunity.
“Disease is brought about by obstructions and inhibitions of vital
processes…. The basis is chronic auto-intoxication from food
poisoning. It is brought about by abusing the body in many ways …
by living wrongly in whatever way…. Bad habits of living
enervate—weaken—the body, and in consequence elimination is
impaired…. The inability of the organism to rid itself of waste
products brings on auto-toxemia. This systemic derangement is ready at
all times to join with exciting causes to create anything from a
pimple to a brain abscess and from a cold to consumption. Without this
derangement, injuries and such contingent influences as are named
exciting causes would fail to create disease. This is the
constitutional derangement that is necessary before we can have such
local manifestations as tonsillitis, pneumonia, and appendicitis….
Every disease is looked upon as an individuality; which is no more the
truth than that words are made up of letters independent of the
alphabet. As truly as that every word must go back to the alphabet for
its letter elements, so must every disease go back to auto-toxemia for
its initial elements…. There can be no independent organic action in
health or disease.”
If drugs, serums, etc., do not cure disease, what does? Correcting
whatever habits caused it; for instance, eating too much, bolting
food, neglect of bathing, ventilation, and exercise, harboring worry,
jealousy, or other destructive emotions, and living on a haphazard
dietary of carelessly and ignorantly cooked foods. “Nature cures when
there is any curing done, but nature must have help by way of removal
of obstructions to normal functioning.” There is nothing spectacular
about a real cure. It means self-discipline.
“Germs are in all bodies in health and in disease…. I do not
recognize them as a primary or real cause of disease any more than
drafts or any such so-called causes; at most germs can be only
exciting causes…. They are innocent until made noxious by their
environment. They are victims and partakers of it. They act upon it
and are reacted upon by it. As they must be amenable to environmental
law, the same as everything else, they necessarily change when their
environment changes. Because of a change in their habitat, the germs
that are native change from a non-toxic state into one of toxicity….
They are not something extraneous to the human organism, but are the
products of lowered vitality in the individual, of lost resistance….
Microbes are toxic when the fluids of their habitat have become
toxic—when the resistance of the body has fallen below the point at
which the fluids maintain their chemico-physiological equilibrium and
decomposition sets in; it is at this stage that germs multiply
rapidly; they absorb the poison that is generating, and it is not
strange that their products are poisonous, for the changed bodily
fluids on which they feed are toxic…. My theory is that the toxicity
of germs is due to being saturated with poisonous gases. The germs of
typhoid fever, for example, are not poisonous until the patient is
sufficiently broken down to cause the generation of toxic gases, after
which all the fluids and solids of the body take on a septic state,
poisoned by the absorbed gas…. Bacteria are not the cause of
disease; wrong living, which puts the system into such a condition
that the bacteria can readily multiply, is the real cause; the
bacteria are simply necessary results…. Germs are scavengers. When
an environment becomes crowded with them, it means that there is a
great accumulation of waste in a state of decay…. They are normal to
a certain limit in our bodies. If they become more numerous, common
sense and reason would say that they must be a necessary factor in the
process of elimination, or, if not a necessary factor, lost resistance
has permitted them to multiply beyond the restrictions set to them by
an ideal physical condition or normal resistance.”
To those who accept the germ theory, it seems that there must be
specific germs to account for the different types of disease. The
leaders among those who reject it are able to explain satisfactorily
without it why all sick people do not have the same disease. They give
as the reasons for variation geographical location, the domestic and
local environment, the season of the year, atmospheric conditions (e.
g., hot, humid weather favoring putrefaction both in the digestive
tract and in animal and vegetable matter outside it), defective
anatomism, congenital or acquired, injuries, age, occupation,
temperament, food, habits, and mode of living.
“Immunization means that normal alkalinity of the fluids of the body
exists…. Health is the only immunity against disease. If there is
any state that man can be put into that will cause him to be less
liable to come under disease-producing influences than full health,
then law and order is not supreme and the world must be the victim of
caprice, haphazard, and chance.”
“Epidemics and endemics feed upon the auto-toxemic and stop where
there are none…. The belief of the medical profession that contagion
and infection pass from one human being to another—from a sick man to
a healthy man—is an old superstition unworthy of this age. Disease
will not go from person to person, unless they are in a physical
condition that renders them susceptible and unless environmental
states favor decomposition—those of the household and the general
atmosphere where the proper amount of oxygen is deficient. So-called
contagious and infectious diseases are self-limited. If it were not
for this self-limitation, the world would be depopulated every time an
epidemic of a severe character succeeds in getting a start. But the
medical profession believes that vaccination and antitoxin do what
nature has been doing since the world began, namely, set a limit to
the spread of disease.”
“Tuberculosis is a seed disease. The seed must come _from a previous
case_,” Dr. J. N. McCormack, official itinerant lecturer of the
American Medical Association and “mouthpiece of 80,000 doctors,” as he
terms himself, is wont to declare in the plea that he is sent out to
make all over the country for the establishment of a “national
department of health and education to bring the benefactions of modern
medical science to every household.” But if one contracts tuberculosis
from the germs of another case and he in turn from some one else, how
did the first case that ever happened originate? ask the leaders among
those who reject the germ theory. Did the causes that produced the
first case of tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, measles,
diphtheria, or other diseases commonly regarded as contagious or
infectious, quit the business after producing one case, disappear, and
go out of existence, or do they still operate and cause all the cases
that occur? That troublesome first case is the missing link in the
chain of the theory; but it happened so long ago that it has been lost
sight of, and doctors are seldom embarrassed by being asked to account
for it.
I know a druggist’s family in which all of the six children had
adenoids. Adenoids are not regarded as contagious, so far as I have
ever heard. So contagion cannot be made the scapegoat in this
instance. The children had adenoids because the mode of living was the
same for all. In like manner, when several members of a family
contract tuberculosis, diphtheria, or measles, do they not get the
disease because they all lived in the same manner and were exposed to
like influences, instead of through contagion or infection with germs?
Disease is sometimes spread, however, through the contagion of fear
and suggestion.
The opponents of vaccination and serum therapy deny that the use of
vaccines and serums has served to check the spread of disease. They
hold that epidemics are less prevalent and less virulent now than
formerly because of improved sanitary conditions, such as drainage of
the soil, municipal disposal of garbage, street cleaning, water and
sewer systems, the consequent increased facilities for bathing and
household cleanliness, etc.
A false theory of cause not only leads to a false theory of cure, but
diverts attention from the real issue. For example, in the Middle Ages
and later, in England people used to empty garbage and other refuse in
the yards and streets, and in consequence a plague broke out from time
to time. Instead of attributing it to the accumulated filth, they
accused the Jews of poisoning the wells. So, too, in the case of a
girl on whose neck a gland enlarged to the size of an egg; there was
at once talk as to whether it was tuberculous in nature. Her mother
wondered, if it was tuberculosis, if Minnie got it from the cat! She
had always played with the cat a great deal. In this she reflected
current medical talk in the papers. She could not understand how it
could happen. There was no tuberculosis on either side of the family,
and Minnie had always been so strong and healthy. Before she was
twenty-five there was nothing left of Minnie’s front teeth but a few
black snags—evidence of her having lived largely on sweets, starches,
and meat, and that she had not been healthy. But her mother never
thought of looking in that direction for the cause.
So long as people are led to believe that vaccines and serums are a
safeguard, they do not seek others, but continue to live in filthy
surroundings and to have injurious habits of living. In the mad chase
after imaginary protection, real immunity is overlooked and lost sight
of.