There is an episode and a bit of personal drama in the history of biological and medical science which needs to be retold once in a while so that the hero of it, or rather his memory,shall be credited again with the sagacity and practical excellence which he earned so well and for which he also endured unmerited disappointments. We refer, of course,to Antoine Bechamp, his work and his interpretation thereof. It was his interpretation thereof. It was his scientific ideal to discover, as well as could be, the organization of life so that it could be a guide for medical theory and practice, both of which at that time were almost as foggy and stumbling as they are now.
His discoveries were indeed of epochal significance,not only as a wall of defence for our homoeopathic tenets but as clearing away the fog from the benighted course of traditional practice., When, in the course of a not too distant day, the import of these discoveries and there sensational, revolutionary interpretation can be realized, they may become a solvent for the everlastingly willful pharmacal and professional prejudice which has always been the plague of the healing arts.
Present interest in this phase of theoretical agreement is stepped up by the news of studies of live blood cells now being made at Rutgers University for research in to the nature of leukemia, and to the partial verification there of the validity of Bechamps work through the rediscovery that the “origin” of polio is not through the orifices of the body but in the blood itself. These discoveries, made separately are nevertheless intimately related,though this may not be recognized by the modern actors in the play because they were no doubt pushed into it by the commercial vistas of chemotherapy; for there is now more interest in chemotherapy at the present time than in bacteria per se.
So, at the risk of winning comments like “old story,” et cetera, we will retell as briefly as an absorbing personal interest will allow, the story of Bechamp and Pasteur during the time of Bechamps work in the middle years of the nineteenth century.
Bechamp began his experiments with vital elements in 1857, using yeast for his purpose, although he had done notable work previously with albuminoids, chalk and what not. He used yeast at first because he believed that he could prove what others had already formed into an hypothesis,that yeast had in itself the living property of fermentation; in other words that it should have a live of its own and could itself cause changes without the presence of extraneous bacteria. For this delicate work he created a precise theoretical design and new methods of material research which, if his experiments should confirm them, would establish the truth strictly by induction.
He had previously demonstrated germs in the air. Both germs and all but a slight amount of creosoted air were therefore excluded from this proceeding. His thesis was rewarded by the development of moulds formed without bacteria. this proved that life is inherent in the years itself and that it has the vital properties of digestion, absorption, assimilation and excretion. His expectation was verified beyond any doubt.
At the time when Bechamp had discovered bacteria in the air, Pasteur fought the idea publicity but, a few years later, announced this feat as his own discovery. Also he bombastically declared that disease is caused by the invasion of living tissues by these bacteria. This was all swallowed whole by the public. A few years later, convinced by Bechamps work,he made an unsuccessful attempt to plagiarize Bechamps experiments and retracted the notion of infection. But the former theme had taken such a deal forward that it was spreading to all the corners, cracks and crevices of this old, superstition-ridden world, so ready to believe novelties that pass through the mind easily. It was too late.
Pasteur was adopted as an entertaining scientists scientist by the aristocracy-of course only the most hardly soul would oppose that element in those says. So his fame rode fast and high on the waves of commercial value. Clean up jobs were going on; the doctors were flushed with the happiness of a new pleasant theory; surgeons were attacking their patients with violent antiseptic although they were revolved later by the killings; citizens were humping their backs over the production of supplies.
Pasteurs fame had become so swollen,. You know, it is impossible to cope with a tidal wave, even of your own making, especially if it is a profitable one. So our germ hero recanted again and after his death accepted a monument of his puissant memory, false testimony though it bears. Fiction is often more easily blown up than truth and this one has proven to be of enduring quality according to appearances these hundred years later. But it is now on the way out, thanks to the circle around which research has been led.
It was in the fermenting yeast the Bechamp first discovered zymase,the unorganized ferment secreted in the cells. From that he went on with original, theoretical land laboratorial design to the minute organisms within the cells which secrete it. Be observed their varied shapes and noted their Brownian movements., He proved the fact of life with and without the microscope. He named these organisms”microzymes,” meaning small ferment. The term microzyme may be found in the medical dictionaries and the definition there given is historically interesting. It is this” “One of certain minute particles of living matter that are existence and which are the cause of normal and pathological fermentation; the real agents of the functions of the organism, the perversion of whose function constitutes disease.”
It is easy to see the influence of Pasteurism here; no mention or credit to the great scientist who discovered and named them, although the records in the scientific academies in france are definite, documented and dated as to the works of this genius,m including this, his crowning discovery Bechamps definition is as follows: “Microzymes are the commencement of all organization. They are physiologically imperishable but, when they become morbid, they determine special changes leading o disorganisation of the tissues. Microzymes when disturbed by external causes undergo morbid changes and evolve into bacteria,butt revert two their near original state as microzymes”.
Bechamp found these live bodies in calcareous rocks at least eleven million years old. He theorized that they were the remains of living organisms of the age. His acumen has been substantiated by the more recent discovery of similar lifting being in coal estimated by geologists to be two hundred and fifty million years of age. No wonder that Bechamp reversed the old saying that “life is the prey of death is the prey if life.”Where there is life, there are Microzymes. Where there are no microzymes, there is no life.
They are the living agents of all organization, also the agents of total destruction but are themselves imperishable.
Bechamp proved that bacteria in the air, earth or water are not preexistent,and are the living remains of organisms which have been destroyed or have disappeared. Normal air never contains morbid microzymes or so-called germs or microbes. Disease cannot be be taken from the air but may or not be from a patient at some certain moment of contact. Pasteurs ridiculous theory of invasion of living tissues and causing disease there was the beginning of the modern dark ages of therapeutics proliferation is not possible by innoculation.
During the years when Bechamp was getting this all straightened out, Pasteur was watching with great interest the progress of his own fame and plagiarizing Bechamps work. The only important discovery which he did not plagiarize was Bechamps work The Blood. Perhaps the fact that Pasteur was at that time resting quietly in his grave had something to do with it. Nevertheless, his fraudulent genius goes marching on at the head of the whole world, hunting and dodging germs. Pasteur was so ignorant in some ways that he misnamed “germ from the Greek, giving it the term “microbe,” which means short duration,He was they are4 of long duration.
He was never a physician but a chemist and a poor one at that according to the Academy of Science to which he was refused admittance until after many attempts and finally elected by only one vote. Bechamp, to the contrary, was exceedingly modest and high-minded. Like a true scientist with all his accomplishment in discovering the origin of disease he did not deny specific contagious disease like small-pox, but he noted that only a small percentage of people exposed ever take such disease because of their vital resistance.
At this point in my story a divergence seems necessary. My reference so far has been Bechamps The Blood, written, I think with English readers in mind. It is necessary reading for every physician. But it is not as simple in arrangement as might be and the author was so modest concerning his great accomplishments and,having an almost exaggerated sense of honor in dealing with his contemporaries, including his enemy, that is was a little difficult to dig out the full story of his career and especially the details of his relations with pasteur. Then something happened that took all the wind out of my sails. I chanced to get a book from the C.W.Nelson Co., England,written by E.Douglas Hume, 259 pages, fifteen shillings.
Born in Torrington, Litchfield, Connecticut, USA on 20 Oct 1871 to Royal Edmund Hayes and Harriet E Merriman. He had at least 4 sons and 1 daughter with Miriam Martha Phillips. He lived in Torrington, Litchfield, Connecticut, United States in 1880. He died on 20 July 1952, in Waterbury, New Haven, Connecticut, United States, at the age of 80, and was buried in Waterbury, New Haven, Connecticut, United States.