Part~1
Pasteur or Bechamp? Pleomorphic Organisms
By Christopher Bird
Part~2
FOURTH STEPS ON THE TRAIL: BECHAMP AND THE MICROZYMAS
It was in France, in 1984, that I met a pharmacist, Marie Nonclerq, who
after a life spent practising her profession, was spurred to write an award
winning doctoral dissertation under the title: Antoine Bechamp,
1816-1908: The Man and the Scientist, and the Originality and Productivity
of his Work' (4)
The disappearance of Rife's microscope, along with most of his research
documentation, constituted what amounted to a lost chapter in the history of
microbiological science.
What Nonclercq had been able to dredge up from the annals seemed to be no
less than a whole lost book.
I had stumbled, again by happenstance, on a controversy involving a battle
between two scientific titans that had for so long been swept from memory
that several generation of scientists knew nothing about it.
One of the adversaries was Bechamp, the other, his nemesis, the world-famous
Louis Pasteur whose name is inscribed on the lintels of research institutes
all over the world. The controversy centrally involved their opposing views
about the genesis of microbe-fostered disease.
Through a physician in Brittany, Nonclercq came across a thick tome on the
history of a medicine (5) in which she read that, on his death bed, Louis
Pasteur had declared: Claude Bernard was right... the microbe is
nothing, the terrain is everything."
In his recantation, the father of the theory - still enshrined as gospel
-that the primordial role in many diseases is played by germs invading the
body from without, seemed to be submitting to evidence that, in actual fact,
that role is often played by the body's internal environment, its terrain,
its "soil" if one wills, that, changing in nature due to various causes,
fosters the development of germs from within.
What Pasteur omitted was that his confession had been based not on single
insightful statement by France's leading physiologist, Bernard, but by
Antoine Bechamp, the man with whom he had been locked in struggle for
decades.
Nonclercq's painstaking digging into historical sources uncontestably proves
that this battle was won, not on the basis of scientific facts, but by
Pasteur's being able to overcome his nemesis, a dedicated, but retiring,
searcher with no flair for self-promotion, with his highly developed skills
in what today is called "public relations."
If the justice of history prevails, the Pasteurian victory will one day
prove entirely pyrrhic, at least in terms of the staggering losses suffered
by medical science in having, for so long been constrained to follow the
Pasteurian track.
Bechamp's own trail of discoveries began when, attacking the problem of
fermentation - chemical reactions that split complex compounds into
relatively simple substances - he isolated from living organisms a series of
"ferments" he called zymases (R11).
Working with a class of organisms called
molds, fungoid
growths that disintegrate organic matter, Bechamp saw them to be formed by a
collection of tiny "granulations" which, because of their connection to
zymases, he called microzymas, or "tiny
ferments", lexical forerunner of Naessens'
somatids ("tiny bodies")
(6).
Very importantly, for the purposes of this narrative, he also found that
these granulations, under certain conditions, evolved into single-celled
bacteria and that, therefore "cells could no longer be regarded as the basic
units of life", there being something far smaller to replace them.
More than that, the microzymas were seemingly so indestructible that Bechamp
could find them even in limestone dating to a geologic period going back 60
million years during which the first mammals appeared on Earth. And he was
astonished that all his efforts to kill them proved fruitless.
As he was to write, in his third masterwork, The Blood "I am able to assert
that the microzyma is at the commencement of all organisation.
And, since microzymas in dead bacteria are also living, it follows that they
are also the living end of all organisations, living beings of a special
category without analogue."(7).
Because microzymas appeared at the inception of the life process -for
instance in an ovule that became an egg - and were also to be found, fully
active, in decaying life-forms, Bechamp, in a biological parallel to
Lavoisier's chemical rule: "Nothing is lost, nothing is created ... all is
transformed," was to state: "Nothing is the prey of death.. all is the prey
of life."
This seems to recall the old biblical phrase: "Ashes to ashes, and dust to
dust..." On the final page of The Blood, Bechamp was even more explicit:
"After death, it is essential that matter be restored to its primitive
condition, for it has only been lent for a time to the living organised
being ... Living beings, filled with microzymas, carry in themselves the
elements essential for life, or for disease, for destruction and for death.
This variety of results need not surprise us for the processes are the same.
Our cells - as can constantly be observed - are being continuously destroyed
by means of a fermentation very analogous to that which follows death. If we
penetrate into the heart of these phenomena we could really say, were it not
that the expression is a trifle offensive, that we are constantly rotting!"
(emphasis added).
FIFTH
STEPS ON THE TRAIL: GUENTHER ENDERLEIN AND THE BACTERIAL LIFE CYCLE
It was only in the 1990 that, a year after our sequel (R12) to
The Secret Life of Plants came out, and 22 years after
I began studying Reich and the bions, I finally had access to the work of
another researcher that made the chain of mountain peaks on the horizon of
pleomorphic microbial research stand out in clearer historical detail. This
access was provided by a book, the first in English on the subject, dealing
with the research begun during World War I by German zoologist, Guenther
Endedein, whose discoveries were characterised by the book's author as "some
of the most important ever made."
Working as a bacteriologist in a military hospital on the Baltic Sea,
Enderlein, in 1917, finished a manuscript heralded by colleagues as "opening
totally new observations of the microbe world." It revealed many different
pleomorphic development phases of bacteria and showed that illnesses and
their healing processes are bound to exact cyclical and morphological laws.
The manuscript was published as a book, Bakterien Cyclogenie, (The Life Cycle
of Bacteria) in 1925, shortly after its author's appointment as curator of
the Zoological Museum in Berlin.
For inspiring his work, Enderlein gives great credit to Antoine Bechamp as
well as several Germans who took up where Bechamp left off, including
zoologist Robert Leuckart, founder of the science of parisitology, and Otto
Schmidt, who first reported parasites in the blood of cancer patients as far
back as 1901.
Given the focus of interest at this meeting on darkfield microscopy, it is
of great interest to add here that only by working at this instrument did
Enderlein learn that microorganisms go through a forming-changing cycle
that, in his view, could take on countless variations leading him to label
the phenomenon a "1000-headed monster."
He unequivocally asserted, while different types of microorganisms normally
live within the body in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship, with
severe deterioration of the body's environment they develop into
disease-producing (!!) forms to create what he called
dysbiosis, or "a fault in
the life process."
Their action, said Enderlein, was not due to any perverse intent on the the
microbes part to harm it, but to the their urge to survive at its expense!
In their early development phases they lived in the blood to perform
functions beneficial to health, in the later ones, they abandoned that role
to assure their preservation.'
Since, today, Bakterien Cyclogenie has become
virtually unknown, it is curious to note that, before World War II, it
brought the researcher a modicum of international recognition. It was
apparently well received at an international biological congress held in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1930, and Enderlein's contributions were
recognised by his being honored, in 1939, at the Third Microbiological
Congress held in New York City.
Despite personal attacks on him by powerful members of the orthodox German
medical community, Enderlein was strongly supported by a few courageous
colleagues such as the physician and microbial researcher, Dr. Wilhelm von
Brehmer, who identified as causal agent in the uncontrolled and malignant
growth of Cancerous cells."
Enby's book also filled me in on historical aspects of how the doctrine that
microbes were monomorphic - as opposed to
pleomorphic- had risen to ascendancy, aspects which I had
missed while researching my paper on Royal Raymond Rife.
This rise can be attributed not only to the influence of Pasteur
(1822-1895), but also to that of Robert Koch (1843-1910), whose "principles"
are one of the "Ten Commandments" in microbial research, and his compatriot
the naturalist and botanist, Ferdinand Julius Cohn (1828-1898), who insisted
upon the constancy of bacterial types and their Classification into rigidly
set groups and species based on their structure and form.
Entrenched as dogma, the Cohn-Koch view was taught to many Americans who
went to Germany to study medicine after the turn of the Century and who, in
turn, brought it back to the United Stales where, becoming the ruling
outlook, it brooked no opposition.
IN LIEU OF
A CONCLUSION: THE TRAIL WINDS AHEAD
What I have presented to you is only an account of a personal trek into the
mysterious country inhabited by pleomorphic organisms. I gave it to you
"piecemeal" so that you could share the uncertanties and surprises met along
the trail that are normal to any exploration.
The country surveyed has been only superficially charted but, as a result of
my exploration, my knapsack is filled with a heap of sketches, that, given
the time necessary to accomplish the task, would one day allow me to prepare
a map of the territory in all detail.
In book form, this map could easily provide a tale as exciting as any told
in the best detective thriller. All that is lacking is its ending, and the
ending "devoutly to be wished" is that the labors of so many stalwart
workers in the field of microbial pleomorphic research will find their
fruits in the acceptance of their findings - and the applications of
therapeutic modalities to which these have led - for the benefit of the sick
and the suffering everywhere.
The first chapter of Dr. Enby's book was entitled; "Origins of a Medical
Revolution." That revolution, still in progress is not over. Since
Enderlein's book came out 65 years ago, its conclusions, like those of
Bechamp before him, have continued to remain unacknowledged by the
scientific community as a whole. This is not because many other researchers
have not bent every effort to bring out the truth, to make the revolution
happen. Consider, for instance that, way back in 1927, an American
microbiologist, Dr. Philip Hadley, who much admired Enderlein's work,
published, in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, a 312 page
article, "Microbic Dissociation", based on work conducted at the Hygienic
L.aboratory of the University of Michigan. In this article, Hadley
foresightedly noted:
"It will probably be many years before a true appraisal of Enderlein's
contribution can be made. In the meantime, we may regard with not little
admiration his manifestly careful attempt to put a degree of order into the
chaotic state of the study of bacterial cells. I believe that Enderlein has
blazed a trail which, at least, in many lines of advance, other
bacteriologists sooner or later are sure to follow."
Those words were written 64 years ago, but few have been the bacteriologists
to take up Hadley's challenge.
One who did take up that challenge was born only three years before Hadley
laid it down. We are in his presence today. In a life of devotion and,
isolation, half of it in his native France, the other half in Quebec, the
land of his adoption, he has kept alight, and borne forward, the torch lit
and carried before him by Bechamp, Enderlein, Rife, Reich and so many
others.
Now he has emerged from cherished anonymity into the limelight at a
symposium of his summoning to which you have come, many of you from far
away, to bear what he has to say and to see what he has to show you.
It maybe that his discoveries will determine whether the field of microbial
pleomorphic research will at last emerge onto scientific center-stage.
Will that emergence soon happen"?
Is it "to be or not to be?" For that, as Hamlet put it in another context,
is the question.
Let us salute Gaston Naessens and his triumphant accomplishments.
REFERENCES:
RI The word 'orthodox', stems from Greek ortho . (meaning 'correct', or
'right', or even 'upright') mid doxa ('opinion), the latter coming from the
verb, dokein ('to think,' or 'to seem'). Traced to its roots, orthodoxy thus
connotes 'opinions that seem, or are though to be correct'
R2 Untranslatable into any other language, the word 'maverick' denotes one
who refuses to abide by the dictates of his group, in other words, a
'dissenter'. Most people do not know that its etymology comes straight out
of the cowboy culture of the 'Old West' where the term was applied to an
unbranded, or orphan, range calf or foal traditionally considered the
property of the first person who brands it. The English speaking word is
indebted to an early Texas cattleman, Samuel a Maverick (1809-1810) who did
not brand his calves, for involuntarily donating his name to its lexicon.
R3 The world, and perhaps the only, expert on Reich's bion research is Dr.
Bernard Grad, professor of biological sciences recently retired from McGill
University in Montreal. In his student days, Grad spent much time working
with Reich at "Organon" the home and research laboratory Reich bult in
Rangeley, Maine. Grad has research, still awaiting publication, on his own
bion research it relates to the origin of Life.
R4 Reich's private archives were sealed by the sole trustee to his estate.
His daughter, Eva, tried unsucessfully to unseal them through court action.
R5 Rife's genius also invented a camera which could clearly reveal the
letters and numbers of an auto license plate from a mile away!
R6 The Diving Hand: The 500 Year Old Mystery of Dowsing (E.P. Dutton, New
York, 1979; New Age Publications, North Carolina, 1985.)
R7 It was only through a fortuitous meeting in Kansas City that I was
finally led to the San Diego garage of one of Rife's lab assistants where I
found the "Universal Microscope" in dilapidated condition. The publication
of my article resulted in many phone calls from people who had been on the
hunt for the microscope for years. One of the most interesting and ardent
came from John Hubbard MD., State University of New York (Buffalo), who came
to my house in Washington D.C. to look at documentation on RifeI had brought
back from California. I had planned to write a book on Rife's life and work,
but other projects intervened. That book, The Cancer Cure that Worked,
(Marcus Books, Queensville, Ontario, 1987) was written by Barry Lynes.
R8 For enlightening answers to these questions, see The Cancer Industry
Unravelling the Politics, by Ralph W.Moss (Paragon House, New York, 1989).
R9 The word "artifact" stems from art, plus factum (the neuter past
participle of the verb facere, "to make"), or "something made". In biology,
it means "a structure or substance not normally present but produced by some
external agency or action." Most of us have forgotten that the basic meaning
of the word, art, is "human effort to supplement, imitate, alter or
counterfeit the work of nature." The facile use of the word, "artifact," in
addition to being able unjustly to dispose of new microscopic discoveries,
has a kind of "overtone" suggesting an attempt to trick, feign, dissemble or
to carry out a deception or engage in a fraudulent action. It fits well with
accusations against Naessens of having done all those things over the years.
R10 His experiments on rabbit-to-rabbit somatid transfer as they apply to
genetic characteristic change in living animals, and particularly to organ
transplant with potentially no "rejection syndrome", are described in part 1
of my book.
R11 Enzyme complexes found in yeasts, bacteria and higher plants. Credit for
their discovery went, not to Bechamp, but to a German scientist who was
awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907 for making it. Bechamp's conclusive paper,
justifying his priority, was published in 1897 and the word zymase is found
in the 1873 edition of the French Littre dictionary in connection with
Bechamp's first work on the subject.
R12 Secrets of the Soil, Harpercollins, New York, 1980.
1. Reich's first book on this, written in German, was Die Bione (The Bions)
published in Norway in 1939. English language treatment of the subject is to
be found in The Cancer Biopathy, (first published in the 1950's) 1973; and
The Bion Experiments on the Origin of Life, 1979, both published by Farrar,
Straus, Giroux.
2. "The New Microscopes"
3. "What Has Become of the Rife Microscope?" New Age Journal, Boston,
Massachusetts, 197(r, also reprinted in The Persecution and Trial of Gaston
Naesens, NJ. Kramer inc,Tiburon, California, 1991, as Appendix "A".
4. Published as a book: Antoine Bechamp, 1816-1908 L'Homme et le Savant,
Originalite et Fecondite de Son Oeuvre, Maloine, Paris, 1982.
5. Delhoume, Leon, De Claude Bernard a d'Arsonval. Lib Bailliere et fils,
Paris, 1939, 595pp~
6. Bechamp's two master works on this subject seer Les Microzymas, Blilliere,
Paris, 1883, 992pages; and Microzymas et Microbes, Editions Dentu, Paris,
1893, 346 pages.
7. From Le Sang et son deme element anatomique, Paris
1899, translated as The Blood and the Third Anatomical Element by Montague
R. Leverson MD., John Ouseley Limited, London 1912. In the 1980's Alan
Cantwell, M.D. reported that the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. had
informed him that the book was to be found neither in its collection nor in
any library in the United States. It has since been reprinted by Veritas
Press, GPO Box 1653, Bundaberg, QId 1988.
8. Hidden Killers: The Revolutionary Medical Discoveries of Professor
Gunther Enderlein, by Erik Enby MD., Sheehan Communications, 1990. The book
may be obtained from raum&zeit, Box 1508, Mount Vernon, Washington D.C.
98273; Pb: 2064246025.
9. Enderlein who like Bechamp, lived for 96 years (he died in 1968),
published many of his conclusions in Akmon - a journal he first issued in
1955.
10. In his book, Siphonospora polymorpha von Brehmer 1947, this researcher
also noted that cancer can be prediagnosed in its earliest forms by
measuring the pH value of the blood and the appearance in it of large
amounts of rod-shaped siphonospora, as viewable under a dark-field
microscope.
raum & zeit, VoLZ No.6,1991.
Pages 52 to 59. (raum&zelt is an excellent bi-monthly journal
published in the USA. Subscriptions are US $75- for six issues:
Dept. S.O.,PO Box 1508, Mount Vernon, Washington 98273.
(206) 424 6034 - Editor's Office
