The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-02-26

|
 previous case must have been the cause regardless of lapse of time anu without any certain Knowledge of .
 case ever having occurred in the ne1ghborhood. A recent example o1 similar absurdity is the case of the
 Egyptian mummy, which is charged with scattering the germs of con- i sumption (newly named tuberculosis, | and injecting the people of England and this after being buried thousands
 of years. The wonder is that intelli-
 gent people, will take any stock ir such nonsense, but. they seem as ready to swallow the doctors explan-
 ations and excuses as his medicine, all without question.
 How often do we not read of a so-called contagious disease afflicting
 some individual who has been found l at large and mingled with hundreds perhaps thousands of people before the dangerous condition of the in dividual was discovered, and the fear expressed by medical wises cres, usual ly those who serve on boards of health
 and can speak officially that an
 epidemic of the disease would be cer-
 tain to follow because of the large
 number of persons exposed. But,
 nothing of the sort happens
 This is due to the unconsciousness
 of the danger run, and the conse-
 quent absence of fear on the part of
 those who had come in contact with 1 the "dangerous' individual; an sex- ample of one case where ignorance is | bliss.'
 | Had they been aware of it, some of l them would very likely have developed | the disease; I say some of them" for not every one fears disease and con- | tagion, but those who have been edu- cated to believe in conta zion and dis !, ease germs" and by seeing houses placarded, and policemen standing guard in front of dwellings, have de- veloped a fear of disease. would be and like as not their sickness would | take on the symptoms of the particu- lar disease they feared. That disease can be induced by fear is a fact so generally known that no instances need be cited.
 The germ theory so-called, like the theory of 'contagion, is fallacious. By this do not wish to be understood to deny the existence of germs" or microbes or whatever they may be called, but I wish to deny the cor rectness of the theory that germs" found associated with disease, are. of themselves. able to infect others with the disease of which they are errone- ously asserted to be the cause. said "of themselves for there is a way by which they may be made to serve as medium of infection as, for instance, when they are collected, cultivated, inoculated into various am imals, for the production of serums, anti-toxins, vaccines, or viruses, and afterwards used to poison the life blood of sick, or well, human beings, in absolute violation and disregard of natures safeguards against such in- vasion. By such processes the mis- chief can be done, and more is the pity, is too frequently done; in fact, the tendency of modern medical prac- tise is toward treatment of every disease condition with serumS, anti tOxines vaccineS, or viruseS, all ob- tained and propagated in the way de- scribed. What the end is likely to be is rot hard to foretell, for if serum produce degeneracy of the entire hu- man race. There is hope. however, against such a terrible result, and rh~ leaven bids fair to come from within the profession itself, for the doctors are fast dividing into two battle is over "serum-therapy" vii have perished, one more error buried, and the profession will return purified to engage in more rational and natural modes of Urea tment.
 To any ordinary observer it looks as if the ultimate object of modern medical research and so-called s'pro-
 
 tagion and "disease germs,'' is to make the practice of medicine a me- chemical art. The symptoms, vitality, condition, age, sex will not need to be considered in connection with the pa- tient. The coming doctor in fact he is already here, will simply obtain a few scrapping of germs and perhaps a lock of hair, from his patient, send them to some meteorological labora- tory of diagnosis of the case and, hav- ing thus obtained information as to what ails his patient load his syringe with the particular serum warranted 10 kill the particular bugs with which the patient is infected and in ject the dose into the patient. Simple. isn't it? And not only that, but if a person is well, and wants to keep well, all he has to do is to apply to his doctor who will inject a quan- tity of the various serums, at fre- quent intervals until it takes" for inmunizing purposes that is, as pre- ventives. It seems too bad that the Almighty, with all His foresight, did not have one of our modern doctors at His elbow when He created this earth and all it contains. to warn Him of the dangers of humanity from dis ease germs'' so things could have been so arranged that when baby is born into the world it would come forth with a bottle of serum under one arn, and squirt gum under the other. No mistake about it, the modern doc- tor should have been created ahead of all other things not as one of my friends says, from all the scraps left over after all other things had been created.
 Fortunately, however these so- called disease germs" are the result. not the cause of disease. and we need have no fear of them except when some modern doctor insists upon in- jecting them into us. If we were a asked to swallow them in the ordinary way. even in good sized doses. we could accommodate with . isnpunity, but think not many would relish the taste or acquire an appetite for them |
 It is well-known medical fact that the particular germ" declared to cause the disease is very often entire ly absent in unmistakahle cases of the 1 disease. but, on the other hand, is found in abundance in the | well and healthy Bacteriologists ad- init that many eases of undoubted 1 diphtheria, for instance. are met with | in which not single Klebs- -Loeffler l bacillus was found after careful and l examinations by competent | while fully virulent" KIebs- Loeffler bacilli have been re- reatedlv found in the throats~of large 1 numbers of healthy children and 1 adults who had not suffered from | diphtheria and did not get it after | 
 From this condition of affairs it is |