Nexus - 0207 - New Times Magazine-pages

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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. Béchamp'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.** Working with a class of organisms called molds, fungoid growths that disintegrate organic matter, Béchamp 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"). 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 Béchamp could find them 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."” 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, Béchamp, 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, Béchamp 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). promising approach for the alleviation of degenerative disease, has not come as close as anyone to unravelling the skein within which lies hidden the very mystery of the origins of life that has for so long continued to confound science, as it still continues to confound it. I use the qualification "as close as" because the next twist in my trail was to confront me with the realization that another French scientist of rare genius might have been unravelling the same skein a century before Naessens began to take up the task. 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 Béchamp, 1816-1908: The Man and the Scientist, and the Originality and Productivity of his Work. The disappearance of Rife's microscope, along with most of his tesearch 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. 1 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 Béchamp, 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, hie ileal . special category without analogue.” Through a physician in Brittany, Nonclercq came across a thick tome fi A ; on the history of a medicine* in which she read that, on his death bed, ea — a ck, tlh ip i 5a Louis Pasteur had declared: Claude Bernard was right ... the microbe is fully active 3 Soenten —— 88 in a biological care nothing, = a is everything. . q Lavoisier's chemical rule: "Nothing is lost, nothing is created ... all is In his recantation, the father of the theory - still enshrined as gospel - transformed," was to state: “Nothing is the prey of death .. all is the prey that the primordial role in many diseases is played by germs invading of life.” the body from without, seemed to be submitting to evidence that, in Thi to ress: thos eld bain "A, A L r hrase: "Ashes to ashes, and dust actual fact, that role is often played by the body's internal environment, ts hes jhe P ‘ its terrain, its "soil" if one wills, that, changing in nature due to various pitt at Se Rs Cot get Sie Sea, Seka es eee causes, fosters the development of germs from within. — . — ‘ A son had “After death, it is essential that matter be restored to its primitive What Pasteur omitted was that his confession bean, bevel art. om condition, for it has only been lent for a time to the living organised single insightful statement by France's leading physiologist, Bernard, being ... Living beings, filled with microzymas, carry in themselves the but by Antoine Béchamp, the man with whom he had been locked in elements essential for life, or for disease, Yor heection and for death. struggle for denncies. ee Dew This variety of results need not surprise us for the processes are the Nonclereq's painstaking digging into historical sources uncontestably same, Qur 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*” 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 Tesearch begun during World War I by German zoologist, Guenther Enderlein, whose discoveries were characterised by the book's author as “some of the most important ever made,"* sa <4 — Working as a bacteriologist in a military hospital on the Baltic Sea, CYCLE 34°NEXUS APRIL-MAY 1992 FOURTH STEPS ON THE TRAIL: BECHAMP AND THE MICROZYMAS FIFTH STEPS ON THE TRAIL: GUENTHER ENDERLEIN AND THE BACTERIAL LIFE