The conclusions briefly summarized are as follows :
(1) B. acidophilus given in whey broth cultures in sufficient amounts (300 c.c) can alter the bowel flora by suppressing or supplanting other organisms.
(2) Lactose (sugar of milk ) when given in sufficient quantities,300 to 500 grams per day, can also change the bowel flora,.with the appearance and preponderance of B.acidophilus.
(3) Combining the administration of B.acidophilus with lactose, comparatively small amounts were required to maintain the change in the bowel flora – (150 grams lactose and 150 c.c. whey broth.)
“The simple character of the new flora persists so long as one or other diet or preparation is continued, but reverts gradually to the normal or usual mixed type within five or six days after a return to the basal diet.’
Keeping in mind the point made earlier in this paper – that bacteria are peculiarly adaptable to environment, and indeed must train themselves to utilize whatever media is available in order to survive, it is not difficult to explain the change of bowel flora under such a set of experiments. Of one made up a mixed culture of bacteria containing but a small proportion of B. acidophilus, and inoculated this into whey broth to which lactose had been added, there would be an immediate reaction. Subsequent plating would show that there was an overwhelming preponderance of B. acidophilus even to he suppression of all other types.
In these Yale University the intestinal canal used as a test tube, and it has to be noted that it required 500 grams of lactose daily in the human subject to maintain the B. acidophilus, and that Lactose was the only sugar capable of thus altering the bowel flora, the reason given being that this sugar is incompletely absorbed in the intestine and can be found in the large intestine and give reaction on test in the stool. The lactose thus acts as a particularly utilizable strength of all sugar solutions of the growth of organisms is only 1 per cent.
In these experiments the conclusions reached must be answer to the diet critic- that in a matter of days after the return to the normal basic diet, the bowel flora returned to what it was before. The changes was due entirely to the supply of sufficient pabulum.
Contrast the changes in the bowel flora which follows the potentized remedy. By no stretch of imagination can one suggest that the administration of a single dose of IM potency, say of Sulphur, supplied any pabulum for the production of B. Morgan.
Furthermore, the change dose not usually take place until after a more or less definite latent period of ten to fourteen days, and when the change does take place it may persist for weeks and even into months. There is record cases where the changes has persisted over fourteen months and in this phase my experience has been that nothing that I know of in diet or medicinal treatment will effect a change; it seems to run its own course. Such a change must be due to the the mere change of pabulum in the intestine, and must be attributed to some disturbance of the enzyme balance of the host which withdraws or inhibits the ferment responsible for splitting up of lactose-hence the change to non-lactose fermenting bacilli.
So much for the non-lactose fermenting bacilli of the intestinal tract and the role they play in the causation of chronic disease.
But the investigation should not stop there; the questions as to the type of bowel flora before the change -over, but in such small amounts as to escape attention?
I think the control examination made over considerable periods negatives this suggestions in numerous cases, and and the general opinion would be to accept the fact that the changes in an example of mutation of bacteria. The role played by the B. coli, generally considered to be a normal inhabitant of the large bowel, is little understood or even taken notice of. From the moment the infant is put on to other than mother’s milk, coliform organisms appear in the stool and persistent throughout life in great numbers. So long as the mucosa and its enzymes remain in a healthy state the B.coli cannot enter the body proper. They are considered non-pathogenic and their main function is to break down the waste material of the bowel into simpler substances.
As a class their variety is legion, the number of possible variants increasing in direct proportion to the number of fermentable substances used for classification.. It is calculated that with eight characters (sugar reactions) there are 256 possible variations, and the number rises to 65 536 when sixteen characters are taken as standard.
Is there any wonder that the bacteriologist has given up the seemingly hopeless task of attempting to classify fully the B. coli of the intestinal tract, and without classification the study of pathogenesis becomes – and here I had better add in parenthesis (so it would seem) as I am about to attempt the impossible.
In 1905 to 1909 MacConkey adopted as his standard a very simple classification which is now generally accepted and is to be found detailed in the System of Bacteriology, Vol. 4, published by the Medical Council.
It is encouraging to read that in the classification of intestinal organisms the fermentation tests have in practice proved to be sufficiently constant to be of great value”. There is something more than mere chance behind the fact that the majority of the pathogenic races are unable to ferment lactose.:
On the reverse side of the list of non-lactose organisms and the associated remedies I have copied out for you the MacConkey table, and underneath I have added for comparison, a table of members of this non-lactose group.
If you place a pencil over and down the lactose columns you will note that the tables become exactly alike. If by any disturbance the MacConkey group lost its power to ferment lactose B. Coli No.I would mutate to B.Morgan (pure); B. Coli, No.II to B.gaertner; B. Coli No.III to B. No. VII; B. Coli No.IV to B.Proteus.
Has this any significance or is it a mere coincidence? Since 1906 when Neisser called attention to a curious variant B. coli- mutabile -m the phenomenon has been noted as indicating that the B. coli which normally ferments lactose temporarily loses this power when first isolated from the bowel. on a lactose acid solid medium white colonic appear which after a time show small red daughter colonies, the redness indicating that the individual bacteria therein have regained their power to ferment lactose. If these colonies are replated they do not change but retain this property.
On the other hand if the white colonies are replated, again there will appear some white colonies which later give red daughter colonies.
From my observations on the plating of the non-lactose over several generations it would seem that each of the non-lactose types in this Bach-Paterson group tend to revert to lactose fermenters – that B. Morgan reverts to B. Coli I; B. Gaertner to B. Coli II; B. No., VII. to B. Coli III; B. Proteus to B. Coli
IV.
I put this forward not as an established fact, but as a possible avenue for further investigation by a team of laboratory workers. Meantime I offer you, like my predecessors in this work, a working hypothesis for you to test out as widely as possible as to my conclusions and practice.
It may come as a surprise to many of you to know that you personally have been assisting in working out and testing the soundness of this hypothesis. During the past ten years or so, those of you who have sent me specimens of patients stool for report may have noticed that in many cases the report definitely stated that -No non-lactose bacilli had been found in the specimens. But in each case you may have been given the suggestion to try the corresponding non-lactose nosode and its associated remedies. For example: if B. Coli was found Morgan was advised, if B. Coli II, Gaertner; if B. Coli III, No. VII; if B.Coli IV, proteus. With what success, or lack of success, I now await your verdict. From my own clinical experience I have found this working hypothesis of considerable value in the treatment of chronic disease.
Clinical observation makes me hazard the opinion that every organism found in the intestinal tract has pathogenic power, the bowel flora forms a physiological unit and is not a miscellaneous collection of germs.
I know that I shall be met at once by strong criticism that in the plating of a stool specimen, it would be a false hypothesis to assume that every B. Coli which forms a colony on a MacConkey plate has the same characteristic as evidence by sugar reactions, and hence has the same pathogenic power. How then can one suggest treatment from the isolation and identification of a solitary B.Coli colony.
In my working hypothesis I accept the fact that organisms which live together on the same media, in this case the intestinal tract, are in either symbiotic or anti- biotic relationship to one another and if one can isolate a single type of organism and from the culture prepare and administer the potentized remedy (nosode) it may be possible to disturb the balance and set up a chain of reaction in the manner I have already described.
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.