In the 1800’s there were two contemporary French scientists whose research contributed mightily to our views of how medicine and the public approach an infection or a health crisis like the pandemic we are seeing today. 

Our airwaves are filled with talk about immunology, viral shedding, PCR testing, and protocols such as social distancing and mask wearing requirements as a result from the emergence of the Covid-19 virus.  In large measure we have Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) to credit for this.  Pasteur is credited with the germ theory of disease.  This theory says that there are fixed, external germs (or microbes) which invade the body and cause a variety of separate, definable diseases.  To get well, you need to identify and then kill whatever made you sick.  Pasteur’s “monomorphic” germ theory required drugs, surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy as well as vaccines to keep germs at bay.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878), along with a more brilliant contemporary Antoine Bechamp (1816-1908) who built upon Bernard’s work developed his own theory of health and disease which revolved around “pleomorphism” which in contrast to Pasteur, contended that there were small particles in every plant and animal cell (microzymas) that could change form, function and create toxicity when the terrain of the body was in an unhealthy state.  Bechamp’s Biological Terrain theory also naturally becomes vulnerable to external harmful microzyma or germs, but he saw germs as opportunistic to a weakened terrain.  Bechamp’s biological terrain theory sees our bodies as mini-ecosystems, or biological terrains in which nutritional status, level of toxicity and pH or acid/alkaline balance, exercise, and fresh air play key roles in health.  Not surprisingly, Bechamp argued strenuously against vaccines asserting that “the most serious disorders may be provoked by the injection of living organisms into the blood”.  However, Pasteur and his like-minded contemporary Robert Koch won the propaganda war favoring the germ theory and what eventually became the foundation of medical thought including the widespread use of patented medications and vaccines.  

However, even though Pasteur and Bechamp were adversaries throughout their lives, it is known that Pasteur on his death bed said, “Le microbe n’est rien, le terrain est tout.” (The microbe is nothing, the terrain is everything).