What is this laboratory and why was it adopted in the first instance? For those who are particularly interested in the technique and nomenclature, details will be found in the Transactions of the Eleventh Congress of the international Homeopathic League which was held in Glasgow in these rooms, August 1936.
The choice of sugar to constitute the test in any instance is purely an arbitrary one, and thus it follows that if one group of carbohydrates is used, one classification is obtained : if another group of sugars is selected an entirely different calcification is possible hence the confusion in assessing the pathogenesis of any named organism and comparative analysis between different teams of workers.
Even with the adoption of agreed standard sugars it was found that many factors caused variation even with the most rigid control of purity of sugars, temperature and time factor, and all possible extrinsic factors. There still remained an intrinsic factor with caused variation in fermenting powers.
“The only justification for founding a classification upon one series of experiments rather than upon the other is the fact that the classification so obtained corresponds more closely to differences brought out in other ways, such as difference in agglutinations or pathogenicity “- so writes Gurney- Dixon in his very excellent book The Transmutation of Bacteria.
“The day has passed when agglutination tests with the patient’s serum can be accepted as diagnostic evidence ” states modern writer on the Bacteriology of the Typhoid Salmonella.
The justified for the arbitrary choices of sugars in any work on the clinical observations of pathogenesis for each type.
One important factor, namely the source from which it comes, in other words the nature of the media from which it is isolated, may determine certain variations -the organism carrying, as it were the imprint of the media. Conversely the sugar reactions of an organism immediately it is capable of being isolated may give the bacteriologist the clue as to whence it has come, a fact sometimes of value in tracing epidemic outbreaks.
It was with this fact in mind that a departure was made from the more usual seventy-two hours incubation period and an eighteen hours period adopted as the standard time for identification and naming. It was hoped that variations in fermenting power at this stage might have some pathogenic significance. So it proved to be, as in the case of the sub-types of the Morgan (Bach) group.
It is now recognized that the fermentation of any particular carbohydrate is dependent upon the activity of a particular ferment or enzyme, indeed the splitting process takes place in three stages with a particular enzyme responsible for each phase. Failure to produce either acid or gas may be due either to the absence or the inhibition of a particular ferment. The is some support for the theory that the loss of power to split carbohydrate compounds is in direct ratio to the increase of pathogenicity.
Variations in sugar reactions may then be considered to have biochemical significance, since enzymes are known to be very complex protein substances, and this in turn must be considered to have relationship to pathogenesis. The study of the biochemistry of the bacterial cell thus becomes of prime importance to the modern scientist in bacteriology.
I confess I am unable to follow the chemical formulae which is to be found in the very recent publication The Chemical Kinetics of the Bacterial Cell, but I am encouraged to know that this work is being undertaken.
I would, however, draw your attention to the list of organisms of the bowels flora with their associated remedies, and explain to your that they have been placed there because, in each case, the respective bacillus has appeared in the stool of a patient subsequent to the administration of that particular remedy. The remedy was chosen according to HOMEOPATHIC principles, i.e., because it was known to have pathogenic power to produce symptoms similar to those observed in the patient.
Looking down this list one is struck by the varying degrees of chemical combinations varying from a simple element like Sulphur, through slates, carbonates and chlorides, to complex substances from the vegetable and animal kingdom. Their association in this grouping must have some significance since they have relationship to a common organism possessing specific fermentive power. It is now recognized that a sequence of cell reactions may begin with very simple chemical substances, and that from this raw material complex and varied products can be built up.
“A natural hypothesis is hat compounds similar to these various growth factors are intermediate in the chain of processes occurring in cells which can start with similar material”- so says the author I have just mentioned, and he further offers a useful analogy by asking the reader ” to think of the chemical operation of the cell less as the piecing together of a jig-saw cut into large fragments which will fit together only in one way, than as a formation of a mosaic from simple units which can be combined in innumerable ways.”
I find this hypothesis very attractive as it affords me a basis upon which to formulate my theory regarding the appearance of these non-lactose fermenting bacilli following the administration of a remedy. I can conceive that such an elementary remedy as Sulphur may set up a chain of reactions which ultimately results in the formation of a complex substance- an enzyme- and it is known that the bowel mucosa has its peculiar enzymes which act as a barrier to the bacterial invasion of the body proper.
It is reasonable to presume that the chain of reaction set up may affect these enzymes and thus finally affected the BOWEL FLORA. In the laboratory the change would be noted by the peculiar sugar reaction, which we have noted is due to specific enzyme action. From the sugar reactions of the gram negative non- lactose fermenting bacilli it is possible to formulate not only the degree of pathogenesis but also to recognize something of the biochemistry of the process.
On this hypothesis each of the bowel nosodes-products of bacterial cell activity – can be assumed to be a very complex structure of the nature of mosaic with each of the remedies in each of the particular groups forming the units which make the pattern. It matters not if they are simple or compound, animal or vegetable, each has a part in the completed structure.
In my paper “Sycosis and Sycotic Co.” published in B.H.J., April 1933, I made the statement that “as the result of one’s observation there is warrant for making as very definite statement of great importance to Homeopathy and to Bacteriology – that Homoeopathic potencies are capable of altering the flora of the bowel”. I would add a quotation from a further contribution “The Potentized Drug and its Action on the Bowel Flora” published three years later (1936). “It is a doubtful compliment to one’s work that so far such a definite claim for the potentized remedy given according to the laws of similar has remained unchallenged.
Homoeopathy has something to offer to the modern research worker in the bacteriological field and to the student of biochemistry. The work on the bowel flora has opened up a new approach, and I have tried to indicate that in modern scientific literature there is accumulating evidence to offer some explanation for the clinical observations I have made, and which I trust will give some satisfaction to the modern scientist who demand such evidence.
I have no doubt that I shall be met with criticism that is generally accepted that diet can alter the bowel flora, and that my observation might have been influenced by that fact.
Since the days of Metchnikoff (about seventy years ago) many attempts have been made to change the bowel flora-all of which had some success, but all had the same fault, the change achieved was of a temporary nature, and persisted only so long as treatment was maintained. Metchnikoff advanced his sour milk theory – that the B. Bulgaricus found in sound milk could alter the flora of he bowel and by supplanting harmful organisms promote good health and long life. It is I think, rather of interest to note, that although his clinical observations were sound, as proved by the fact that the sour milk treatment is still accepted as modern treatment, his bacteriological technique was at fault. He confused two very similar organisms. The B. Bulgaricus which he found in sour milk cannot live in the intestinal tract, whereas the B. acidophilus is an intestinal organism which can be trained to ferment milk. It was not the organism in the sour milk but the organism in the bowel which received dietary stimulus which caused activity and rapid increase in numbers to the exclusion of all other bowel organisms.
The is a record of some very detailed experiments to be found in A Treatise on the Transformation of the Intestinal Flora with special Reference to the Implantation of B. Acidophilus, published by Yale University Press (19210. The work was conducted at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University.
John Paterson was President of International Homeopathic Medical League in 1939.
John Paterson wrote The Bowel Nosodes, and he was responsible for introducing them into British homeopathy n the 1920s.