All theories of the last 500 years emerge from a Worldview based in Separation Consciousness
Predominant Theory of disease prior to Germ Theory – was that of Miasmas or Bad-Air Theory
Miasma Theory (1700s)
Miasma = pollution / heavy cloud of something unpleasant
eg Cholera or black plague were caused by noxious miasmas originating somewhere else (foreign country/place) and carried by the air
By late 1700s miasma/bad-air theory was being challenged by “contagionists”
i.e. disease was spread by human contact
Yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793 killed approx. 5000 people (10% of population)
Many people fled the city including George Washington however Dr. Benjamin Rush stayed to help. Rush angered his fellow MDs by arguing that Yellow Fever was NOT caused by contagion (person to person) but from poisoning by putrid matter. Rush was correct.
Yellow fever is NOT cause by infectious microbes. It is a water-borne disease caused by putrid matter or rotting substances i.e. dead animals in water.
The sanitation reformers of the 1850s in London adapted the viewpoint of the miasma origin of disease from bad-air to bad-water and nonexistent sanitation/waste disposal systems. Cholera also other “infectious” diseases were eliminated once the sanitary reforms were introduced.
Origin of Germ Theory of Disease
Around for 100 years prior to Louis Pasteur
1762 Marcus Antonius Plenciz, a viennese physician, 1st published a germ theory of infectious diseases which speculated that a special organism caused a particular disease and that these micro-organisms might be conveyed from place to place via the air – AIR_BORN micro-organisms.
These theories would have been widely discussed in Louis Pasteur’s time.
Germ Theory of Disease developed from Germ Theory of Fermentation
A strong idea at the time was that the process of fermentation or putrefaction and disease were similar.
If one understood the causes of fermentation then one would understand the causes of disease.
Antoine Bechamp worked on the phenomenon of fermentation.
Fermentation typically refers to conversion of sugar to alcohol using yeast or a chemical conversion of carbohydrates to alcohols or acids
Fermentation is a process we use to produce wine, beer and vinegar
Germ Theory of Disease – (Louis Pasteur 1822 – 1895)
Myth = Germs cause disease
Central Dogma of Modern Medicine = a specific external agent that causes a disease or cancer
Job of doctor = to eliminate the symptoms of disease and then the disease itself
the patient is not treated the disease is
the disease is perceived as an entity in itself & the job of the MD is to get rid of it
Germ Theory
a theory that proposes that micro-organisms are the cause of many diseases
Claims that fixed species of microbes from an external source invade the body and are the cause of infectious disease: i.e. the measles virus is the cause of measles
although highly controversial when first proposed this is now the cornerstone of Modern Medicine
