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FEBRUARY – MARCH 2002 www.nexusmagazine.com NEXUS • 43MONOMORPHISM AND PLEOMORPHISM In the early 20th century, fierce debates in biology took place between followers of monomorphism and those of pleomorphism —the monomorphists believing that bac- teria reproduce by single division, and the pleomorphists believing that bacteria couldchange into complex forms and transform through complex life cycles. The debates raged for decades and were finally won by the monomorphist schools. Their principlesare firmly planted in mainstream biology today. In an excellent research paper, Milton Wainwright describes how Virchow, Cohn and Koch proposed that bacteria divide transversely by binary fission to produce two newcells which eventually achieve the same size and morphology as the original. Exceptionsto this rule are accepted in certain so-called higher bacteria including some actinomycetes.In the other camp, Almquist, Bergstrand, Hort, Lohnis, Mellon and Enderlein led the pleo-morphists. Some were more extreme in their views than others. However, FerdinandCohn, known as a monomorphist biologist, published evidence in support of extremepleomorphism. According to Wainwright, by the early 1930s some extreme voices of pleomorphism, including Wade and Manalang as well as Swedish microbiologist Bergstrand, stated thatbacteria had a fungal phase. Monomorphists had a field day criticising the apparentlyabsurd claims made by the pleomorphists. Most notable of the continuing criticisms is aclaim that pleomorphists used poor technique and that their delusions were a result of con-tamination; they further arranged these contaminants into convenient life cycles. Henrici in particular objected to the criticism that extreme pleomorphism resulted from contamination. Instead, his opinion was that "anyone who will patiently study with themicroscope his own cultures which he knows to be pure can quickly confirm the generalobservation that rod forms may appear in cultures of cocci, spherical forms in cultures ofbacilli, lateral buds and branches and internal globular bodies". Today, this thesis is gen-erally adopted by notable homoeopathic doctors such as Harvey Biegelsen, Scott Moyer,Ronald Ulman and others. While many microbiologists hold that pleomorphism is a result of poor technique, a new description known as oligomorphism has been created (Frobisher). This describes the limited pleomorphic changes that can arise from meticulously produced, pure cultures. The debate continues but the tide has turned towards the pleomorphist school, and dark- field microscopy is the main instrument of the new biology. Conventional cellular biology has yet to acknowledge that micro-organisms, especially viruses, change form due to their environment or milieu. What is becoming increasinglyclear is that new diseases and variations such as VRE (vancomycin-resistant enterococ-cus) have developed. Is it possible that biology has been diverted down the wrong road,as predicted by Enderlein? THE FATHERS OF PLEOMORPHISM • Antoine Béchamp (1816–1908) Béchamp, a man virtually unknown today, was the most important microbiologist of the 19th and early 20th centuries. A clever chemist and microscopist, he made many impor-tant biological discoveries for which others took the credit. His main discovery wasmicrozymas : autonomous entities found in plants and animals. He further discovered that these are integral agents in decomposition and in pathological processes, and he believedSSUPERUPER-M-MICROSCOPESICROSCOPES ANDAND THETHE MMYSTERIESYSTERIES OFOFMMORPHOGENESISORPHOGENESIS Super-microscopes able to detect the morphogenesis of the tiniest micro- organisms offer a bright future for biology, despite their history of suppression by the medical authorities. by Greg Fredericks, ND, NMD © 2001 Director Nu-Look Biologics Perth, Western Australia Email: Nu-LookBiologics@bigpond.com