Eric Graf von der Goltz, M.D.
If any one will take the time to scan over the three volumes of J.H. Clark’s Dictionary of Materia Medica he will find all that on record which at the present time fills the allopathic press as the newest gain of scientific researches. But it must be said that the statements of those old records show a greater clearness, a more simple language than the editorials and original articles.
The reader must recognize easily an old acquaintance in this opsonic treatment – isopathy, well known since Hahnemann’s time in 1833.
The writer cannot help but suspect when contemplating Wright’s opsonic theory and its manifold bacterial vaccines to have before him nothing else than a great analogue to the teachings of isopathy since the first beginnings with the English physician. Fudd, Dead since over 200 years, with his fundamental teaching: “Sputum ejectum a pulmonibus post debitam praeparationem curat Phthisim,” and later Lux, Swan, Burnett and others.
It must be said suspiciously analogous, as the thought cannot be put off, that the whole teachings of the opsonics should have arisen absolutely indepently and without any possible knowledge of the experiments and observations of all the isopathists.
The wonderful mathematical congruency between the opsonic theory and isopathy can even be followed further.
Not only is isopathy used in its remedies according to its name, but isopathic remedies are successfully used in different diseases with the theoretical consideration of possible constitutional taint, etc.
Exactly in the same line of arguing we observe the different allopathic writers publishing, for instance, the following essays:
I. Treatment of Pertussis with Diphtheria Antitoxin, by W.H. Deardoff, February, 08, American Medicine.
II. Treatment of Asthma with Diphtheria Antitioxin with Fatal Case, by P.N. Willis, March 08, Northwest Medicine, Seattle, Washington.
The writer could easily, if hunting through any index medicus, amplify at will those articles treating the application of the different serums of aetiologically most different diseases.
The opsonic and general vaccine treatment at the present time has its great drawbacks, and one especially, the great danger.
Every reader knows the great danger of sudden death after antitoxin injection, so more appalling if used as a prophylactic treatment in the office of the family physician.
Every unbiased reader must concur in the opinion that a treatment that should guard against a dangerous disease should under all conditions be free from being liable to deal unsuspectedly the death blow.
Such a remedy must be judged worse than the possible disease.
The sudden death till to-day after antitoxin injection after few minutes has been the cause of a considerable literature filled with conjectures, but without giving the least possible cause; one of the latest of such a publication is contained in the March issue of the Carolina Medical Journal, 1908, Charlotte, by Dr. T.F. Patterson, New Bern, N.C. – An attempted explanation of sudden death subsequent to injection of antitoxin.
The writer especially lays stress in the present paper on the fact that in all those years, since antitoxin (diphtheria), with all improvements of preparation, this sudden death neither has been eliminated nor understood and satisfactorily explained. A second grave danger of those sera (as also known from different disasters with antitoxin) has lately been warned against by Dr. Theobald Smith, of Boston, Mass., in an article in Journal A.M. A., Vol. 50, No. 12 – Some neglected facts in the biology of the tetanus bacillus; their bearing on the safety of the so-called biologic products. The essence of this article being that there practically up-to-date does not exist any reliable safeguarding in the manipulation in the laboratories against tetanus bacillus in animalized lymphs.
The third drawback, especially in regard to the opsonic treatment, is of minor gravity, and has been argued in the British Medical Journal, March 14, 08, by Dr. West, of London, that these individual toxins can be used only in chronic cases, as, for instance, in cases of pneumonia and other acute diseases it would take too long to prepare the sera – “the patient either had been convalescent or died.”
To be enthusiastic is one of the greatest blessings of life, but to be over-enthusiastic is decidedly wrong; the continuously going on of the congratulatory Chinese handshaking with themselves as done by the allopathic (scientific!) press and its spokesmen and leaders has not only become monotonous, but must be regarded skeptically as an alarming symptom of impending catastrophe – the bursting of a so long guarded and hedged soap bubble – the germ theory with its different branches of a more or less lucrative industry, the commercial output of all those sera, recommended and advertised in nearly all medical papers.
It is characteristic if suddenly in this prolific age of sera and antitoxins an allopathic physician writes as Dr. Herbert Snow of London: “It becomes evident that there are numerous facts throwing grave suspicion on the whole germ theory and discrediting the virulent properties ascribed to the micro-organisms identified with various diseases.”
The paradoxical behavior between infectious diseases and the finding of the germ, as the causal moment for the infection, shows clearly that the whole teaching must have somewhere a weak point.
The whole structure of the serum treatment, therefore, seems to be in danger of collapsing.
The reader especially must be referred to on editorial in the New York Medical Record, Vol. 62, No. 9 (August 30, 1902), coming to the same opinion held by the late Schuessler in 1897, to have in the dreaded germ rather the result than the immediate cause of the disease.
This was argued by English physicians in India shortly after Dr. Koch had isolated and charged the comma bacillus as the cause of cholera. This must be absolutely the reason of all negative results regarding all researches so lately-the Lancet, London, to claim anything specially as the agent of infection.
This manner in finding the specific agent, but on the other side, in the eyes of the writer of the present paper, must be received as the proof of the isopathic side of the infectious diseases, and of the products of the infectious diseases.
The sera must not be cultures of more or less fancifully isolated germs, but must be as done by the isopathists, the unchanged product in more or less potentized form, following the rational explanation of the chemical law of the minimum of the recognized chemist, Justus V. Liebig (Chem. Letters, Voll. II., p. 295).
This isopathic side to the question called formally genius epidemicus, is a true and simple explanation that one sera (diphtheria) is to the present day nearly the only serum to be called effective, where nearly all other antitoxins have proved to be with few exceptions failures.
We must say that the isolated culture of the diphtheria germ was not able to destroy the isopathic affinity (the genius epidemicus of the diphtheria), and that this isolation (Bein-culture) of all other germs so far was deleterious to the genius epidemicus of the individual sera with few exceptions, in which exception this isopathic property was too strong.
It must be mentioned in reference to the great cures of diphtheria antitoxin that many cases so simple tonsillitis follicularis have been pronounced diphtheria without the least truth, and then that the antitoxin, at best not harming the patient, was accredited with unmerited result.
Incidentally, the controversy between the New York Times and Dr. Mills, of the Hom. Co. Soc., the contentino of the New York Times must be refuted as erroneous and false. There two reasons that the New York Times editorial regarding the snake poison if taken per so is wrong, are first the letter written by Dr. H. Pratt, from the laboratory of the Board of Health, and in second line the following citation from a publication in the International Medical Journal, or Australia, Melbourne, February, 1908, by D.M. Paton, “New Generalication in Serum Therapy.”
The interesting passage reads: “Give by rectum or by mouth they act on all tissues physiologically in normal serum with increased power on tissues which have been pathologically affected.”
It is, therefore, evident that the New York Times in claiming that snake poison per so was so innocent like egg albumen was erroneous. The New York Times editor or anonymous writer should himself try the internal use of Lachesis (by the way not at all C. Hering’s Lachesis) in the form according to the once already mentioned law of the minimum, to find out the truth!
This ignorance of a layman cannot be accepted as an excuse for the behaviour of Dr. Morris.
To use abusive language instead of weighty arguments proves only to have no arguments, and, therefore, to be filled with impotent hatred and malignancy.
