Bechamp or Pasteur?

Ethel Hume’s pioneering book, subtitled ‘a lost chapter in the history of biology’, was published in 100 years ago, and Pearson’s in 1942. The critique of Pasteur in favour of the scientific priority of Antoine Béchamp is, if anything, even more significant today than it was at that time, given the crushing dominance of commercial interests in the health field and the corresponding marginalisation of holistic philosophies and approaches not only to health, but also to science more generally and agriculture. I outlined some of these parallels in the original edition of my book Radical Prince in relation to holistic science, integrative medicine, and agro- ecology. The cellular biologist Rudolf Virchow is quoted as saying: ‘If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat, diseased tissue – rather than being the cause of the diseased tissue.’ Interestingly, Florence Nightingale was another who shared a scepticism about ‘the specific disease doctrine’ when she stated that ‘there are no specific diseases; there are specific disease conditions.’ A corollary of this view is that one size does not fit all, or, as the famous physician Sir William Osler put it: “It is as important to know what kind of patient has the disease as it is what kind of disease the patient has.” Such positions are inclined to highlight the importance of natural rather than acquired or artificial immunity – a theme currently debated in the wake of mass Covid vaccination.

Both books within this volume cover research conducted by Béchamp and Pasteur on fermentation, silkworm disease, and theoretical differences between Béchamp’s notion of microzymas (literally small bodies) and Pasteur’s emphasis on microbes and the germ theory of disease. Hume shows in tabular form how Béchamp arrived at experimental conclusions prior to Pasteur and how the latter appropriated and plagiarised them as a consummate self-publicist. Béchamp was a pioneer in what has come to be known as cytology. Hume’s book was based on earlier manuscripts by Dr Montague Leverson, also quoted by Pearson. Like Chinese medicine, Leverson regarded disease as nature’s attempt to eliminate waste, recommending a wholesome diet and exercise, in other words a healthy lifestyle.

Béchamp’s colleague Professor Estor also realised that bacteria were not in fact the origin of mortification, but rather the mutation or change of function on the part of microzymas: ‘Bacteria cannot be the cause gangrene; they are the effects of it.’ Pasteur, on the other hand, thought of the body as an inert collection of chemical compounds, invaded from without by airborne germs. Béchamp’s experiments showed that microzymas are transformed into bacteria only in diseased and damaged tissue – this supports later work by Gunther Enderlein on pleomorphism. Béchamp’s view was that only when the medium has become unsuited to normal microzymas do they develop into bacteria, ‘thus proving the latter to be the consequence, instead of the origin, of the disease condition.’ (p. 307) This alteration of the functions of microzymas is indicated by the change that has taken place in that form. (pp. 219, 263)

At the end of his life, Pasteur admitted in relation to the work of Claude Bernard that ‘le terrain est tout, le microbe n’est rien.’ However, it is his philosophy that has prevailed both in terms of downgrading natural immunity and naturopathic approaches to health (and vitality), as well as the importance of the soil. There is a fascinating account of a debate in The House of Lords in 1944 featuring Lord Geddes, who had been Professor of Medicine at McGill as well as a Cabinet Minister and who realised the fundamental divide between the philosophies of Béchamp and Pasteur, in this case as applied to agriculture.

The origins of preventive medicine in its modern form can be traced back to Pasteur with his systematic development of inoculation. Hume comments that ‘the whole theory is rooted in belief in the immunity conferred by a non-fatal attack of the disease. The idea rises from the habit regarding disease as an entity, a definite thing, instead of a disordered condition due to complex causes… embodied in the germ theory of disease.’ (p. 267) An early critique was undertaken by Alfred Russel Wallace FRS, who controversially demonstrated statistically that smallpox and diphtheria mortality actually increased in the face of widespread vaccination (especially in relation to the Armed Forces). (pp. 268 ff.) Wallace also refers to medical evidence that zymotic diseases replace each other, and the book discusses modifications of tetanus resulting from vaccination – this has been case with Covid as a result of natural selection pressure - as well as increased susceptibility to other conditions, bringing one back to the current debate about the relative merits of natural and artificial immunity – also the logical necessity of carrier theory (p. 305) whereby healthy individuals can also be infectious.

The overall importance of this historic volume lies in its raising fundamental questions related to our philosophy of health, especially with the rise of chronic lifestyle conditions and the lack of emphasis on promoting vitality, natural immunity and systemic health in favour of centralised one size fits all approaches. The WHO concept of One Health is a front for industrialised approaches to health, food and agriculture dominated by large profit-oriented corporations rather than genuine healing and regeneration – living in harmony with nature rather than seeking to manipulate and control.