Can you really “catch” a disease?
With this coronavirus going around, it's good to know about what contagion really is. This, you will not in the newspapers.
Dr Herbert M. Shelton
We are frequently asked
to explain epidemics and we are told stories about a child in a
schoolroom developing some supposedly contagious disease and the
disease sweeping the schoolroom like a wild fire. These stories are
commonly greatly exaggerated, as it is very rare for more than a few
children in the same classroom to develop the so-called contagious
disease. We often hear, also, of every member of a family coming down
with a disease following its development by one member of the family.
This kind of story, too, is usually an exaggeration. It is rare that
the whole family has the same disease.
These stories are told
so regularly and the notion is so wide-spread that if one comes in
contact with another person suffering with a so-called contagious
disease, he is sure to develop it ("catch" it), unless he
has been immunized, that it is difficult for the average person to
reason logically upon this subject. The fact that stories of an
opposite character could be provided in greater abundance, if one had
the time to gather them.
It is commonly thought
that the common cold is an infection and that one person may "catch"
it from another. We are warned to beware of the person with a cold.
Yet, every year many thousands of people are in intimate contact with
those who have colds, often in daily contact for days at a time and
do not develop a cold. On the other hand, every year many thousands
of people develop colds who have not been in contact with someone
with a cold. The total experience of the people of the country points
clearly to the conclusion that one does not "catch" a cold
from another.
In the Fall of 1914 a
little 17-month old boy developed what was diagnosed as membranous
croup. In two days he was dead. It was not the custom to quarantine
children with membranous croup and during this child's illness a
number of children (brothers, sisters and neighbor children) were in
intimate contact with him. Not a single child that was in contact
with the sick boy developed membranous croup. Membranous croup is now
classed as diphtheria and cases are quarantined.
Two brothers, with four
years difference in their ages, slept together in a double bed until
the older one was 23 years of age. When the younger brother was about
14 years of age he developed chicken pox. The two continued to sleep
together while the younger one had chicken pox. The older brother did
not develop chicken pox. Two or three years later the older brother
developed mumps. They continued to sleep together during the time the
older brother had mumps. The younger brother did not develop mumps.
In the winter of 1918
five soldiers, stationed in Camp Travis at San Antonio, Texas,
slipped through the guard lines at night and visited sick friends who
were isolated and quarantined in a special section of the camp
because they had influenza. They spent an hour visiting with and
talking with their sick friends, then slipped back through the guard
lines and returned to their barracks. Not one of the five soldiers
developed influenza.
A number of experiments
were made in the Naval Detention camps during the influenza epidemic
of 1918-19 to transmit the disease from the sick to the well. Several
such experiments were made on 68 volunteers from the U. S. Naval
Detention training Camp on Deer Island.
Several groups of
volunteers were inoculated with pure cultures of Pfeiffer's bacillus,
with the secretions of the upper respiratory passages and with blood
taken from typical influenza cases. About 30 of the men had the germs
sprayed and swabbed in the nose and throat. The Public Health Report
sums up the results in these words: "In no instance was an
attack of influenza produced in any one of the subjects. "
Ten other men were
carried to the bedside of ten new cases of influenza and spent 45
minutes with them. Each well man had ten sick men to cough in his
face. With what results? "None of these volunteers developed any
symptoms of influenza following the experiment. "
Some similar
experiments conducted in San Francisco are described in another
article. Here one group of ten men was given emulsifying cultures of
Pfeiffer's bacillus with no results during 7 days of observation.
Other groups of men, in all 40, were given emulsions of the
secretions from the upper respiratory passages of patients in the
active stages of influenza. These emulsions were sent into the nose
by a medicine dropper and by an atomizer. The results are described
in these words: "In every case the results were negative, so far
as the reproduction of influenza is concerned. The men were all
observed for seven days after inoculation. "
A little girl in an
apartment building, suffering with scarlet fever, escaped from under
the vigilant watchfulness of her mother and wandered down the hall
and entered the room of a sleeping baby. Missing her sick child, the
mother went in search of her and found her standing over the crib of
the sleeping baby. The baby did not develop scarlet fever.
Two little boys, aged
about five years, lived across the street from each other. Their
mothers brought them together daily for play. One day one of the
mothers and her boy failed to show up. The next day, also, they
failed to put in an appearance. On the third morning the little boy,
escaping from his mother's watchfulness, came out into the front yard
for play. The other little boy, seeing him, crossed the street to
play with him. After several moments of such play, the mother
discovered that her son had escaped the house and was playing with
the neighbor boy. In consternation she called the mother of the other
boy and explained that her boy had whooping cough and she had been
keeping him in the house, but that he had gotten out and she found
the two boys playing together in the yard. The other boy did not
develop whooping cough.
A mother with her three
children visited relatives in a distant city. Arriving there, she
found one of the children of her relatives down with measles. She did
not panic, but remained for a week's visit, during which time her
children were in daily contact with the sick boy, even sitting on the
bed of the sick child and playing with the child's toys. Neither of
the three children developed measles.
A young married man
developed mumps. Inflammation of the testicles (orchitis) developed
as a complication. He became very weak and unable to get about. His
brother-in-law, a younger man, carried him from bed to bathroom and
bathroom to bed five times each day for several days. The
brother-in-law did not develop mumps.
A young woman, aged 20,
suffering with tuberculosis of the lungs, married a young man two
years her senior. Three children resulted from the union. The
tubercular mother cared for her children and their father until her
death from tuberculosis several years later. Neither the father nor
either of the children developed tuberculosis.
Cases like the
foregoing could be multiplied by the thousands. They have been noted
for ages and with relation to every so-called contagious and
infectious disease. In the Middle Ages, when the Black Death
accounted for many deaths, there were great numbers of people who
came in contact with patients suffering with Bubonic plague and did
not develop the disease. The same thing was true of smallpox, typhus
fever, cholera, English sweat and other so-called infectious
diseases. There is actually as much evidence to indicate that these
diseases are not contagious or infectious as to indicate that they
are.
It is not enough to say
that those "exposed" individuals who failed to develop
allegedly infectious disease are immune. This merely says that they
do not develop the disease because they do not develop it. It
explains nothing. What is immunity? Upon what does immunity depend?
It is customary to divide immunity into two types — natural and
acquired. How does one build natural immunity? We have tried the
acquired immunity programs sufficiently long and over a sufficient
expanse of the population to know that it is a total failure. The
serums and vaccines that are supposed to confer immunity often cause
troubles that are worse than the disease they are supposed to
immunize one against. It is important for us to know, assuming that
there is such a thing as acquiring a disease from another person, how
we can build genuine resistance and protect ourselves and our
children. The vaccinating and inoculating program is merely a
commercial one. While it nets huge profits to the traffickers in
vaccines and serums, it provides no health for the people.
