This diversion of intellectual ability from the true path of sanitation by an exaggerated search for bacilli leads directly to the dangerous practice of inoculation, which threatens the future deterioration of the human race. As one of the most distinguished of our hygienists, the late Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson, has pronounced, ‘inoculation is bad sanitation.’[8]
Sanitary law teaches us that disease is produced by many causes, not solely by a specific microbe.
These causes are insanitary conditions, which impair or destroy the agents required by our human constitution for its healthy growth, and which act with varying force according to individual tendency. These insanitary conditions, in the course of their operation upon varying individual constitutions, produce various forms of disease, as chill may produce rheumatism, bronchitis, or diarrhœa, according to idiosyncrasy. These varying idiosyncrasies of individuals, both in their physical and mental aspects, as well as the varying action of vital force in different classes of animals, will always vitiate the theories of materialistic investigators. Thus the same poison will not destroy all classes of living creatures. A healthy young dog has been known to resist for months strenuous efforts made to disease him in a particular way. The same disease germs produce quite different forms of disturbance in men and in rabbits.
‘We possess no clue to the immunity of certain animals from poison. Rabbits fed on belladonna show no signs of injury, although their flesh becomes poisonous to those who eat it. Pigeons and other herbivora may be safe from what will cause paralysis and asphyxia in other animals. The meat of goats may similarly become poisonous.
‘Chickens, cats, birds, rodents, are variously affected by poisons, some thriving on what will kill other animals. The whole cat tribe is said to be always proof against morphia.’
Drs. Hahn and von Bergmann, in attempting to justify their cancer-grafting experiments on hospital patients, affirm that ‘it was necessary to select human beings for experiment, inasmuch as none of the lower animals would have been suitable for their purpose.’
Sanitary law teaches us that unhealthy conditions vitiate the living micro-organisms with which we are surrounded, and which, naturally beneficial, may become, through violation of natural law, morbid germs, capable of spreading their various forms of disease amongst persons predisposed to such disease. Thus, according to sanitary law, the violated health conditions (vitiating naturally innocuous particles) are the primary cause of disease; the morbid germ or bacillus is only the secondary cause.
The new bacteriological theory directly contradicts this important law of sanitary experience, and in opposition to it authoritatively announces that contagious or infectious disease can never be produced without the antecedent microbe. It was in defence of this untenable theory that the distinguished professor claimed the ‘right of science to dictate.’
The great mistake, therefore, made by the Hygienic Congress was the neglect of mind as an indispensable and prominent factor in Health, and the exaltation of bacteriology, with the theories based upon it, into the chief point of interest and importance.
The modern exaggeration of bacteriology, with its theory of inoculation, must be steadily opposed by all who realize the power and growing influence of spiritual life. The injurious results of this exaggeration may be summarized as follows: