Experts have told us that the serum acts only if the tetanus poison has not yet affected the nervous system. This assertion is without proof. High authorities such as Eichoorst, Permin and others have declared that they have never seen any cures with anti-tetanus serum, but that they have noticed numerous cases in which use of the serum led to unfavourable results, of death.
Scientists have devised an “infallible” remedy for sleeping sickness. It is called Germanin. We have been told that its discovery would bring the greatest glory to the pharmaceutical science of Germany and that with that remedy vast districts of Africa could be made inhabitable. It is difficult to form a definite opinion about the value of this medicament.
Sleeping sickness is particularly frequent in Central Africa and the negroes who submissively allow themselves to be injected experimentally should be observed not only by representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, but also by independent scientists. At St. Louis there was as opportunity to put Germanin to the test. In that town there were several thousands of people suffering from sleepy sickness.
Germanin was lavishly used but without any success. Immediately the pharmaceutical interests declared through their scientific spokesmen that the sleeping sickness in St. Louis was not the genuine African sleeping sickness, and very promptly a Dr. Smith discovered the “specific organism” causing the “American Sleeping sickness.” Dr. Smiths discovery was not accepted by American scientists who asserted that the sleeping sickness of St. Louis was identical with the African logists of the serum industry will presently produce “an absolutely reliable serum” for the American sleeping sickness.
The disappointment caused by bacteriology have had much to do with the crisis of medicine. As the faith in microbic specifics has been badly shaken, scientists and the pharmaceutical interests have turned back once more towards potent chemicals, the danger of which was exemplified by the disasters caused by that chemical production called Salvarsan. The glamour of serum treatments is rapidly vanishing.
It is becoming more and more widely recognized that the diseases of human beings cannot be cured by borrowing health from horses, cattle, sheep and other animals. It would be a splendid thing if we could renew the health of the body by the injection of some serum. Unfortunately we cannot do so.
We can cure the sick only by strengthening their inborn vitality. Professor Much stated very wisely: “The body can cure itself only by its own reaction, by its own activities. This old verity which is old as civilization itself has been obscured of recent years, particularly through the misleading experiments made on animals.”.
If we wish to fight contagious diseases, we must improve sanitation. All transmittable diseases are more or less dirt diseases. Personal and public cleanliness are infinitely more important than the search for microbes and lavish disinfection with poisonous chemicals.
Schweninger, Lahmann and Rosenbach told us that it is very easy to declare that all diseases are due to micro-organisms, neglecting the innumerable factors of nutrition, occupation, housing etc., which really cause our diseases. They have told us that it is ridiculous to proclaim that it does not matter how people live as long as they avoid microbic infection.
The advent of the specialist is largely responsible for the crisis in medicine. Professor Schweninger, wrote in one of his classical reports:.
“Medical men who concentrate their entire thought and ability upon eyes, ears, nose, skin, nerves, or some other organ, lose the capacity to treat human beings. They cease to be physicians. They become narrow-visioned automate and his narrowness of his outlook will never be compensated for by the mechanical skill which they acquire by doing day after day the same operation, or treating the identical cases.
“The development of specialism in surgery has been a disaster. The surgeon-specialist does not ask himself: Is it necessary for me to operate in order to benefit the patient? The surgeon only too often asks himself, Can I operate without killing the patient ? Nowadays the physician modestly stands at the sick bed, afraid that he might miss the moment when he ought to call in the surgeon, for the surgeon can always show to the patient and his family his superiority over the physician by declaring”
The case ought to have been operated upon, but now it is too late. Every week surgeons publish articles, telling the doctors of the importance of an early diagnosis leading to an early operation. The surgeon is terrorising the physician, whom he treats as an underling. I do not deny that surgery has done great things for the sick, but I recognize that the numerous operations performed unnecessarily have been a curse to the profession. I have seen thousands of patients who were recklessly mutilated to their injury.”.
Schweningers criticism of surgery applies equally strongly to gynecology, to the treatment of womens diseases. Gynecologists favour the treatment of the sex organs by surgical means, with operations, cauterization, curetting, use of mechanical internal supports, etc. If it had not been for the gynecologist, the regulation of births, which in plain words means the prevention of births, would never have assumed such gigantic proportions.
Gynecologists have done their utmost to sterilize poor women by cutting through the Fallopian tubes, crushing them, dissecting part of the womb, excising the ovaries, burning the mucus membrane of the womb with steam, with strong caustics, such as chlorate of zinc, obliterating and destroying the openings of the Fallopian tubes with the electric cautery, etc.
Many of these gynecological treatments have killed the women on which they were performed. Many women who had suffered from the coarsest and most brutal ill treatment of their most delicate organs have become insane or have been driven to suicide. Artificial barrenness produced by X-rays has had similar results. These operations are a crime both from the medical and from the general human point of view.
No doctor would allow operations to be effected on himself similar to those which he does on women. During the last few years about 100,000 women have been surgically “sterilized,” probably to enable the husband to have enjoyment without consequences. The new “morality” or rather immorality, leads, of course, to the destruction of marriage. 40,000 divorces occur in Germany every year.
The female sex organs are mutilated and outraged by the gynecologists and we cannot wonder that these injured organs become the seat of cancer in innumerable cases. Besides, in Germany every year about 100,000 abortions take place and about 10,000 of these end in death. These abortions are effected largely by doctors and gynecologists. Of course from 15 to 20 per cent of women who have been caused to abort by medical or surgical means become permanent invalids with chronic diseases of the sex organs.
The abortion scandal cries to Heaven. Dr. Grotjan published in 1931 a book “Paragraph 218 and Its Lessons” in which he mentioned that a single doctor in 1927 effected 426 abortions.
A further reason for the crisis in medicine is to be found in the doctors dependence upon the great drug manufacturers. Doctors are becoming mere selling agents for the innumerable new preparations produced by the manufacturers of drugs, serums, vaccines, etc. The great drug houses are a danger not only to the race, but to the doctors themselves.
They freely advertise their productions, enabling everyone to treat himself and others. People carry with them Aspirin, Antipyrin, Migranin, Salipyrin, Pyramidon, Phenacetin, etc., and use these dangerous remedies on every occasion or hand them around in the mistaken idea that these remedies cure, or increase the energy of men. The great drug houses have promoted quackery on the largest scale. We can, therefore, not be surprised that the German consumption of Aspirin alone comes to from 300 to 400 tons per year.
Enormous fortunes are spent on sleeping medicines of the most dangerous type and the nation is becoming poisoned with these productions. The swallowing of large quantities of dangerous medicines cannot be good for us. They are more or less poisonous and their effect is due to the activity of the poisons they contain. Unfortunately doctors themselves fly far too readily to medicines which relieve pain, soothen the nerves, give sleep, etc.
Another reason for the crisis in medicine is to be found in vaccination. The injury done by vaccination had become clear to many thinking people for decades. The criticism of vaccination emanated mainly from laymen who had suffered in themselves, or in members of their family, from the consequences of vaccination.
Unfortunately the doctors unanimously replied to every doubt or criticism with indignation and contempt, treating anti- vaccinationists as cranks or criminals. Only a few doctors, apart from those who are interested in Nature Cure, dared to speak against vaccination, and especially against compulsory vaccination, because they recognized that vaccination is apt to produce serious injury, which eventually may lead to death.
