DO GERMS (BACTERIA, VIRUS) CAUSE DISEASE? The natural health view...

Germs are in the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink. We cannot escape them. We can destroy them only to a limited extent. It is folly to attempt to escape disease by attempting to destroy or escape germs. Once they are in the body, the physician has no means of destroying them that will not, at the same time, destroy the patient. We cannot avoid germs. We must be proof against them. We have to accept them as one of the joys of life, and if they are really causes of disease, we can avoid disease only by keeping ourselves in such a high state of health that they are powerless against us. Whatever part they perform in the production of disease, germs alone can no more produce disease than a seed alone can produce a tree. Just as a seed must have fertile soil, moisture, warmth, air and sunlight, if it is to grow into a tree, so the germ, if it is to produce disease, must find certain essential conditions existing in the bodies of those it enters before it can do the slightest harm. If the body is normal, if it has an abundance of nerve force, if its blood stream is pure, if there is prompt and vigorous action of all its essential organs, no germs coming in contact with it can grow and multiply. Good health is proof against germs of all kinds.

All the standard works on bacteriology state that a person may have germs of diphtheria, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, pneumonia or any other disease within his body, that is, in his mouth, throat, air passages, stomach and intestines, without having the disease these germs are supposed to cause. Why do not these germs produce disease? Isn't it obvious, that, whatever their part in the production of disease, they alone cannot produce disease?

If germs cause disease why don't they produce disease in a healthy body? Why must the body already be diseased and its resistance low before they can produce disease?

Investigations in the bacteriological laboratory throw no light on the conditions in the body which permit the germs to grow or which prevent them from growing. They tell us of a few germs which, it is claimed, are the active agents in disease but they tell us nothing of the conditions which permit these agents to become active. They grow in those conditions and only in those conditions of life which give rise to such complaints as indigestion, catarrh, etc.

The germs feed on the excretions. They are scavengers. They were never anything else and will never be anything else. They break up and consume the discharge from the tissues. This is the function ascribed to germs everywhere in nature outside the body and is their real and only function in disease. They are purifying and beneficial agents.

Germs do not, cannot, attack healthy tissue. If bacteria can attack and kill healthy tissues, organs and organisms, then it should not be long before these bacteria shall have destroyed all the higher forms of life and have the world to themselves.

From the stand-point of Natural Science, germs cannot be regarded as the cause of "disease" for, if they are, we should all be the victims of one or more germs at all times.

Disease is caused, not by the germ, but by the state of the body that allows the germ to flourish.

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