Secondly, the men who are engaged in the business of raising black foxes for their valuable pelts are not trained in the observation of symptoms. They are ultra modern in their training and methods of dealing with their animals, and modern veterinary science has little use for the symptoms of animals. Consequently little attention is paid to them. The business is new and has been “scientifically” developed. Nevertheless, it is full of difficulties, which breeders strive to overcome by closely following the instructions of “experts,” governmental and institutional. This works out fairly well so far as the general breeding, care and management of the animals are concerned.
But when it comes to observing and treating their diseases it is quite a different matter. “Like master, like man.” Modern veterinarians, like their brethren in human medicine, are obsessed by the spirit of bacteriology. They have eyes and ears for little or nothing but the micro-organism which is assumed to be the cause of the disease under consideration. Symptoms, representing the functional changes in the perverted vital process which we call disease, have little or no meaning or importance for them, except as general warning signals that something is wrong. Thereupon, they head for the laboratory, post-haste.
Treatment is not based upon symptoms,nor even upon ordinary pathological diagnosis, but upon laboratory findings in research directed principally toward the discovery and isolation of the presumably specific micro-organism. Even though the ultimate diagnosis is based upon the gross pathological lesions incidentally found by autopsy, these play little or no part in determining the treatment of the living animals, as they once did. All the emphasis is laid upon bacteriology, and treatment consists mainly in the use of the various serums, vaccines and bacteriology which have been elaborated.
As a matter of fact, (and this is a singular and suggestive fact) the foxes in this epidemic were found to have been affected by several different diseases. The reports show that besides the ordinary catarrhal “distemper,” foxes which died presented variously the lesions of pneumonia, laryngitis, enteritis and gastritis (with ulceration), hepatitis, meningitis, and an indeterminate disorder, characterized by the presence of colon bacilli, called by some “typhoid”.
The spleen was congested or inflamed in many cases. In some cases the liver was found to be so friable that it would fall apart when the attempt was made to lift it.
The coexistence of so many grave pathological lesions, all occurring at the same time, springing suddenly into existence as an epidemic of such seeming malignancy suggests, of course, the existence of a common cause, which might (also of course), be a germ. The idea is intriguing, but elusive. No new or unknown micro-organism or toxin has been found, or identified as present in all cases. Several investigators thought they had found such, but failed to prove it. Each of the serums derived from unknown specific organisms has seemed to benefit some individuals, but not all; and several of the more candid of the specialists have admitted that they were stumped.
And still the search goes on; for undoubtedly there is a common cause; or should we say, a common factor or element. Here, possibly, is a new idea. Let me try to work it out, but only suggestively. The subject is too large and two complicated for anything more than that here.
May not all these suddenly appearing epidemics be brought about by the operation of certain unusual environmental agencies or conditions, which, by lowering or destroying natural immunity or general resistance, render the subjects vulnerable to any or every specific organism which comes along? (Several foxes presented the lesions of two or more pathological entities.) In the crisis one yields to the pneumococcus, another to the colon bacillus, and so on. But all succumb in a mysterious way, and many die from what is regarded as the virulence or “malignancy” of the infecting organism, whatever it may be.
Does anyone know what virulence or malignancy really is?.
May not that which has been regarded as a positive entity be merely at least, in part, a negative condition or state?.
May not that in a disease or epidemic which seems so malignant be merely the absence or loss of the power of the victims to react or resist–the pre-existence of a strong tendency to dissolution in an organism which has become weakened and impaired by abuse of one kind or another, knowingly or unknowingly?.
If this be true, it is time we should know it and institute research along entirely different lines. It is time to again call attention to and emphasize a phase of the subject that has been persistently ignored by the bacteriologists, with tragical consequences to the people.
Certainly, bacteriological research in the field of therapeutics, as now conducted, is getting us nowhere but deeper and deeper into mystery, confusion and trouble. If it were demonstrated that the micro-organism which are regarded as the sole of efficient causes of disease are merely accidental, incidental or conditional factors in its production, more attention would be paid to the preceding constitutional and systemic states of the victims and their causes, and a broader view taken of the whole subject. Emphasis would be transferred from the “germ” to the patient and his environment, which would be wholly in accord with the scientific principle of “conditional action”.
The dean of Cornell University Medical College has recently said that “any case of disease which recovers under serum treatment would have got well anyhow.” The leading pathologist of the United States, Professor James Ewing, has repeatedly called it in question and criticized it. Professor Ewing says: “There are limitations to the significance of the purely bacteriological knowledge of disease.
The old morphologists believed that bacteriology could never give a complete explanation of disease, a view which receives increasing support in modern times. Modern bacteriology is getting away from the study of bacteria themselves, and turning more and more to the questions of predisposing and contributing causes of disease. In other words, it is reverting to the field of general pathology. “The acute interest in immunology is not quite so intense as it was five years ago. When bacteriology takes refuge in almost invisible filterable viruses, it comes to a dead standstill, as in influenza and poliomyelitis.
“Much more can be accomplished by careful study of the clinical conditions under which disease develops”.
Reviewing the symptoms of the cases which I have studied, and taking into consideration the character of the lesions discovered by the pathologists, one word seems to me to characterize all the phenomena presented–septic, or septicemic.
But what is sepsis but a depraved, devitalized, negative, non-resistant state of the organism, plus the presence of an infecting agent?.
The “violence” of the inflammation of the various organs affected in different individuals; the “fulminating” character of the invasion, obscuring most of the early usual signs; the rapid invasion, in some cases, of a series of organs in the same animal; the destructiveness of the process and the rapid disintegration of tissues may all–do all–represent, not the inherent lethal character of a micro-organism so much as the inability of the individual, by reason of prior debilitation, to resist its invasion or the invasion of any pathogenic agent.
Such a state might have a gradual development from prolonged depressing influences, of it might arise from some sudden shock, as from fright, or fear, or great excitement. (Both the epidemics of which I am speaking followed by three weeks the annual public exhibitions, with all their attendant excitement and strain of training, preparation, travel, noise, bright lights, crowds, etc., profoundly disturbing and depressing to animals.).
Something akin to these conditions precedes the development of all human epidemics–cholera, influenza, typhus, typhoid, small-pox, bubonic plague, malaria, yellow fever, diphtheria, these diseases have certain general characteristics in common. A powerful psychological factor is always present in excitement and fear. All are adynamic; all tend to become malignant; all are destructive or disorganizing; all are infectious; all involve, to a greater or lesser degree, every vital organ and tissue of the body through the blood stream; all are essentially septic.
Epidemics, like sporadic diseases, do not attack all individuals, nor affect all individuals alike. They attack only those who are morbidly susceptible to infection by reason of some peculiarity or defect of function, structure of environment, natural or acquired, which lowers their resistance and increases the tendency to organic dissolution. Measurable morphological differences of organic development in individuals play an important part in epidemics as well as in sporadic cases.
Allan D. Sutherland was born in Northfield, Vermont in 1897, delivered by the local homeopathic physician. The son of a Canadian Episcopalian minister, his father had arrived there to lead the local parish five years earlier and met his mother, who was the daughter of the president of the University of Norwich. Four years after Allan’s birth, ministerial work lead the family first to North Carolina and then to Connecticut a few years afterward.
Starting in 1920, Sutherland began his premedical studies and a year later, he began his medical education at Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia.
Sutherland graduated in 1925 and went on to intern at both Children’s Homeopathic Hospital and St. Luke’s Homeopathic Hospital. He then was appointed the chief resident at Children’s. With the conclusion of his residency and 2 years of clinical experience under his belt, Sutherland opened his own practice in Philadelphia while retaining a position at Children’s in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department.
In 1928, Sutherland decided to set up practice in Brattleboro.