Third, the question about the negative characteristics of the prokaryotes was not resolved in the s. There was no such talk about a natural phylogeny or a superkingdom when Stanier and van Neil introduced the words procaryote and eucaryote to English literature.
To understand the evolution of their views on the matter, I turn to archival data and correspondence. In it, he referred to Lwoff's arguments about the difference between a virus and a cell and that bacteria and blue-green algae share a prokaryotic structure.
He sent an outline of his newly proposed paper to his mentor, van Niel, with a request to collaborate in the festschrift for famed Czech microbiologist Ernst Georg Pringshiem Stanier wanted the paper to be neutral with regard to taxonomic implications.
Van Neil responded favorably to the request to collaborate, but he doubted that the classifications of large groups in their paper had anything more than utilitarian implications: The proposition you made is certainly a most attractive one, and I should much prefer to have a joint paper with you for the Pringsheim volume than something else.
Hence, in principle, I should like to see what can be done, and how best to do it. Granted that separations of large groups can be made on the basis of the mechanisms of locomotion, and perhaps, of the Gram stain and its underlying chemical differences, would the resulting groups really have more than utilitarian significance?
I am not yet convinced that this would be so. And of course, as you say, the problem of the permanently immotile types remains an extremely difficult one; it has always been so. However, it is possible that matters of this sort will become clearer during the writing. Anyhow, I would personally consider it a great pleasure once again to do a joint paper with you C. Stanier gave van Niel a copy of his manuscript at the Chicago meetings in the spring of Van Niel later wrote to say that on the whole he found the paper to be excellent but was concerned with sharpening two key main points: the distinction between viruses and bacteria, and the homology of the structures of bacteria and blue-green algae: The first one is in connection with the distinction between bacteria and viruses.
While I agree that, on the basis of Andre's [Lwoff] definition, such a separation presents no difficulties, it seems to me that logically the approach could be improved. As is so often the case, a definition is very helpful, but only if it be accepted by others.
This implies that it might be better to lead up to the definition, rather than start with it, as is done in the paper. If it be further emphasized that the latter are duplicated by the host cells, rather than multiply as autonomous units, the distinction can be made even more clear-cut.
Once this has been done—it should not be hard for the reader to recognize the fundamental distinctions—the use of names and definitions can properly be advocated. On pg 8 you mention that the homology of structures in bacteria and bg.
Algae is supported by the impressive result of studies in the area of bacterial genetics. Later, however, it is stated that the latter applies virtually exclusively to E. Thus, it would seem wise not to make too much of that point at this particular place. Do you believe wholeheartedly that bacterial and bluegreen algae chromatophores will never be shown to be structures with a membrane?
Granting that such membranes have not been shown to occur, I nevertheless have certain reservations to make this into a sort of pontifical dogma. Would you agree to phrase this a little less absolutistically? Because at the moment I just can-not do more than jot down some notions that have occurred to me while rereading the manuscript, I hope you will let me know what I may expect next. Their paper was completed by October, and van Niel was delighted.
It does not seem likely that a final reading will cause me to change my mind about it, and I don't expect that I'll want to propose any significant changes. It thus appears that the procaryotic cell has provided a structural framework for the evolutionary development of a wide variety of microorganisms…. If we look at the microbial world in its entirety, we can now see that evolutionary diversification…has taken place on two distinct levels of cellular organization.
Yet Pringsheim's views differed from those of Stanier and van Niel in two fundamental respects. First, he believed that the taxon Monera was polyphyletic, and second, he continued to urge a natural classification. The main thrust of Pringsheim's extensive review of is the question of whether the Myxophyceae cyanobacteria are related to the Bacteria But Pringsheim was skeptical that the bacteria and the blue-green algae Myxophyceae had a common ancestor.
He noted that the kingdom Monera, which Stanier and van Niel had supported in , was defined negatively. It was entirely possible, perhaps likely, he argued, that the similarities between blue-green algae and bacteria resulted from convergent evolution. The issue here is not whether Pringsheim was correct about a lack of affinity between cyanobacteria and bacteria but his attitude about the need to demonstrate such relations.
Nonetheless, when the prokaryote was defined in , many microbiologists eagerly accepted it, not just as an organizational distinction, but as a phylogenetic one.
As formulated by Stanier and van Niel in , the prokaryote-eukaryote distinction was an organizational distinction, conveying the hierarchical nature of biological organization. However, the meaning of the prokaryote-eukaryote dichotomy quickly changed so as to signify a phylogenetic distinction.
The publication of the prokaryote concept was met with enthusiastic approbation, and leading microbiologists believed that the prokaryotes should be immediately recognized with their own kingdom.
Thus, some of the system builders, such as ecologist Robert Whittaker, changed their views about kingdoms based on Stanier and van Niel's paper. In , Whittaker had not included Copeland's Monera as a kingdom, and recognizing an ecological division between autotrophs and heterotrophs, he added the kingdom Fungi to that of Protista with subkingdoms Monera and Eunculeata , Plantae, and Animalia But a decade later, following the presentation of the prokaryote-eukaryote dichotomy, based on structural organization, he recognized the kingdom Monera.
Thus, adding Monera to fungi mycota , protists, plants, and animals, he advocated five kingdoms. Nuclear material is probably a single strand of DNA without histones, dividing by means other than mitosis; sexual reproduction is apparently both infrequent and incomplete in the sense that only partial recombination of genetic material of cells may result from bacterial conjugation and other processes.
Bacteria and blue-green algae also resemble one another and differ from other organisms in biochemical characteristics, including their method of ornithine synthesis, the apparently limited occurrence of sterols, sensitivity to antibiotics, and cell wall composition.
Whittaker made no apologies about defining the group negatively, nor did he query whether Monera was a monophyletic kingdom.
He did, however, question whether the other four kingdoms were monophyletic. Some members of the editorial board of Bergey's Manual were equally enthusiastic about the prokaryote-eukaryote dichotomy. Murray wanted the major structural or organizational differences between prokaryotes and eukaryotes to be recognized immediately by a taxonomic, phylogenetic separation. The same year that Stanier and van Niel introduced the terms, Murray had argued on the same morphological grounds that the Monera be promoted to the rank of a kingdom Mychota of bacteria and blue-green algae Murray to R.
All the introductory statement meant to imply is that both van Niel and I now consider detailed system building at the microbial level to be an essentially meaningless operation, since there is so very little information that can be drawn on for the purposes of phylogenetic reconstruction. Stanier to R. The monophyly of the prokaryotes was not an issue for Murray; the only real question was whether Monera or Procaryota should be used for the new kingdom.
The following year, A. Still, other members of the editorial board of Bergey's Manual were more cautious. Buchanan, chairman of the Bergey's Manual board of editors, had four concerns. First, he noted the almost entirely negative characteristics by which the group was identified; second, he was not completely confident that blue-green algae should be identified as prokaryotes; third, he was not certain how viruses could be completely distinguished from bacteria and as such would no longer be included with bacteria in the kingdom Protophyta , which Bergey's Manual had suggested in 2.
These concerns aside, the only remaining problem was what should be the correct name for the kingdom, Prokaryota or Monera. Buchanan wrote to Stanford botanist Peter Raven about these matters in , informing him that the next edition of Bergey's Manual was planning to introduce the bacteria with a concise statement of their relationships.
Raven agreed with Buchanan about the negative characterization of the prokaryote but noted that the ribosomes of prokaryotes were distinctive. Ribosomes were composed of two subunits, both of which contain RNA and protein. In prokaryotes the smaller subunit was 30S and the larger was 50S. In eukaryotes the two subunits were larger, 40S and 60S. The designations 30S and 50S refer to the rates at which each of these bodies sediment in an ultracentrifuge. Raven had explained this in his own book with Helen Curtis 40 and in consultation with his colleague Allen Campbell.
Whittaker's outline of five kingdoms. However, he objected to the term Monera for the kingdom, based on his own reading of Haeckel's writings. Finally, he inquired as to the fossil evidence about prokaryotic life. Raven replied that he still preferred the name Monera for the kingdom and explained that there was fossil evidence that prokaryotic organisms have existed far longer than any other kind; they were found in the oldest rocks known, some 3.
The Earth was considered to be nearly 5 billion years old, and life probably originated some 4 billion years ago. Therefore, prokaryotes would have existed for approximately 3 billion years, or three quarters of the history of life on earth, before eukaryotes evolved.
Raven suggested that viruses, probably as old as life itself, might be regarded as by-products of bacterial reproduction, in which segments of DNA or RNA protected with protein coats spread from cell to cell, directing the host cell's metabolism to reproduce more of the viral DNA or RNA.
Raven wrote to Stanier asking for his advice on the relationship between blue-green algae and bacteria. Stanier responded: As a matter of fact, we've been working hard for the past 5 years in the biology of blue-green algae, which has now become my principal field of research. All things considered, I think it is now quite evident that the blue-green algae are not distinguishable from bacteria by any fundamental feature of their cellular organization: their sole distinctive and unique property as procaryotes is the possession of a group-specific photopigment system, and of a photosynthetic machinery which contains type II, as well as type I, reaction centers.
Considered as procaryotes, they are just another specialized photosynthetic group, comparable to the green bacteria and to the purple bacteria.
Their major evolutionary interest, of course, is connected with the possible origin of the chloroplast. I think the evidence now points inescapably to the conclusion that chloroplasts and mitochondria had evolutionary origins distinct from that of the other components of the eukaryotic cell, having arisen from prokaryotic endosymbionts. The chemical resemblance between blue-green algae and chloroplasts suggest that the chloroplast in a few eukaryotic groups probably had a blue-green algal origin: specifically, in the red algae and the cryptomonoads.
I'm not so sure about other types of chloroplasts, and rather like the idea that the green algal higher plant chloropasts and the brown algal chloroplast may have been derived from other groups of O 2 -evolving photosynthetic prokaryotic ancestors, now extinct in the free-living state. As to what one might do about this situation in formal taxonomic terms, I don't really care very much, since taxonomic system-building especially in the realms of the [micro] biological world isn't an operation that seems very useful Roger Stanier to Peter Raven, 5 November , National Archives of Canada, MG 31, accession J35 , vol.
During the s and s, led by the writings of Lynn Margulis, much attention focused on the question of whether mitochondria and chloroplasts arose as symbionts 32 , The word cyanobacteria first appeared in the eighth edition of Bergey's Manual in Stanier's efforts, beginning in the early s, to change the jurisdiction over cyanobacteria from the international Code of Botanical Nomenclature to the International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria continued to the end of his life in During the s, Monera was frequently used for the name for a fifth kingdom, though the editors of the eighth edition of Bergey's Manual called the kingdom Procaryotae.
It is probably best to leave matters as they have been expressed above and only recognize, at the moment, the Kingdom Procaryotae. Gunther Stent used the superkingdom of Prokaryota and Eukaryota in his text Molecular Genetics and summarized the organizational differences between them. Prokaryotes were 1 to 10, times smaller, they have th as much DNA as a mammalian cell, the lack a nuclear membrane, the DNA is not combined with protein to form structures like eukaryotic chromosomes, they lack mitosis and meiosis, and they lack mitochondria and centrioles.
Before the s, there were few published criticisms of the prokaryote-eukaryote dichotomy. An exception was the bacteriologist K. Bissett at the University of Birmingham, who in questioned whether bacteria and blue-green algae were really prokaryotic organisms which lack a nuclear membrane and whether they really preceded eukaryotes 3.
They are alike mainly in their small size, and in the convergent adaptations that this produces. Positive grouping based on negative criteria, are seldom durable in biology, and separate creation, even of organs, must have some evolutionary background. Stanier also considered the possibility that eukaryotes preceded prokaryotes, at least in jest. In view of their similarities to mitochondria and chloroplasts, it could be argued that they are relatively late products of cellular evolution, which arose through the occasional escape from eukaryotes of organelles which had acquired sufficient autonomy to face life on their own.
This is a far-fetched assumption; but I do not think one can afford to dismiss it out of hand. It can be considered a relatively harmless habit, like eating peanuts, unless it assumes the form of an obsession; then it becomes a vice.
Though Stanier may have spoken for many microbiologists, the above assertion was short-lived. Statements about microbial phylogenetics as a failed, disreputable pursuit in and occurred at the very time molecular evolution was emerging 14 , In Emmanuel Margoliash and his collaborators had compared similarities and differences in amino acid sequences of cytochrome c molecules from horses, humans, pigs, rabbits, chickens, tuna, and baker's yeast to infer phylogenetic relationships Emile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling had also pioneered the use of amino acid sequence comparisons to infer evolutionary relationships in primate phylogeny with data from hemoglobin sequences.
Their famed paper of marked the gateway to molecular evolution for many who entered this field It can be argued that these sequences are the most delicate expression possible of the phenotype of an organism and that vast amounts of evolutionary information may be hidden away within them.
Peter Sneath added those new characteristics to myriad others he inputted into his computer-assisted numerical taxonomy It was nonphylogenetic, but it was the favored classification of microbes of the s and s. Stanier was attuned to molecular biology. While none of those molecular biologists applied those methods to bacterial phylogeny, Stanier himself remained relatively aloof from molecular biology. However, I should like to emphasize that there really were microbiological treasures, simply waiting to be picked up.
Let me recapitulate: the regulation of pigment synthesis by nonsulfur purple bacteria; the role of carotenoid pigments as agents of photoprotection; the life cycle of Caulobacter; the path of carbon in photoheterotrophy; the definition of bacteria as prokaryotes; the cyanobactacteria, like sleeping beauty, just emerging from a profound coma of years. All this was virgin territory. Stanier's interest in the possibility of recognizing natural bacterial groups was also reawakened somewhat by new molecular methods.
During the s he worked to devise a system for the classification of the pseudomonads and the blue-green algae. In he explained his research agenda to Glazer, who was interested in spending a sabbatical year working with him R. Such work has been conducted largely, though not exclusively, on the aerobic pseudomonads, an important group of gram-negative bacteria.
Even the formal phenotaxonomy of these organisms was chaotic when our work began, and we have had to do a great deal of purely descriptive taxonomic analysis in order to characterize the constituent species and species-clusters we then proceeded to ask what analyses at deeper levels—for example, the metabolic, regulatory and enzymological levels and the genetic level—would reveal about the relationships among the phenospecies.
Knowledge about these organisms had lagged, largely because so few of them have been isolated in pure cultures. We have been engaged for a number of years in isolating and purifying these organisms. As the philosopher G. Lichtenberg remarked years ago, there is significant difference between still believing something and believing it again.
It would be obtuse still to believe in the desirability of basing bacterial classification on evolutionary considerations. However, there may be solid grounds for believing it again, in the new intellectual and experimental climate which has been produced by the molecular biological revolution. New paradigms often emerge from outsiders, scientists who enter a field from a different discipline.
The renaissance of microbial phylogenetics in the s led by Carl Woese at the University of Illinois is exemplary. With the astute choice of the 16S rRNA as a phylogenetic probe and using the laborious molecular sequencing methods available in the s, Woese and his colleagues showed how one could achieve a comprehensive understanding of bacterial phylogeny and how to construct a universal tree experimentally In doing so, they revealed distinct, separate lineages among bacteria, the archaebacteria, and the eubacteria in addition to a separate eukaryotic lineage The rRNA method that Woese and his collaborators developed opened the whole field of microbiology to phylogenetic study.
That technical knowledge was also used to investigate the origins of eukaryotes and the symbiotic origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts 22 , 41 , Woese was not immersed in the doctrines and dynamics of microbiology and the tumultuous discourse over the possibility of a natural classification of bacteria.
Educated in biophysics and molecular biology, his interest lay in the genetic code and how it evolved. In order to understand the evolution of the translation process indeed of any of the basic cellular machinery , he understood that one needed the framework of a universal phylogenetic tree.
His great insight, the use of rRNA for phylogenetic purposes, was born of his pursuit of the evolution of the genetic code. Ribosomal RNA had all the right attributes. The cells of all organisms from bacteria to elephants need rRNAs to construct proteins.
Therefore, their similarities and differences could be used to track every lineage of life. Ribosomes are also abundant in cells, so that their RNA was easy to extract. In short, the ribosome was of ancient origin, universally distributed, and functionally equivalent in all cells, making it the ideal organelle for following the course of evolution. The work on 16S rRNA led to an upheaval in bacterial systematics and to major revisions of textbooks.
Already by the end of the s, Woese and his collaborators had sequenced the 16S rRNAs from about 60 kinds of bacteria and arranged them by genetic similarity 20 , 64 , Their results tended to contradict the standard classification based on morphological similarities of bacteria. Bergey's Manual distinguished the gliding bacteria, the sheathed bacteria, the appendaged bacteria, the spiral and curved bacteria, and a host of families and such genera as Flavobacterium and Pseudomonas.
But Woese and his collaborators concluded that these groups had no phylogenetic meaning; they were not genealogically coherent monophyletic groupings. The reception of the new molecular approach to phylogeny and its findings was telling and is a story in itself.
Suffice it to say here that while the work was generally well received, this was not the case in some circles. Woese's approach to phylogenetics, the kind of data he assembled, and the conclusions drawn from them were met with great skepticism and apprehension by influential microbiologists and later when a formal taxonomy was adduced therefrom by some classical evolutionists, especially in the United States.
Wolfe received many phone calls on that morning. A front page article about a third form of life had appeared in The New York Times. I wanted to crawl under something and hide. Fortunately I was able to escape the hostility and left graduate students to cope, because my wife and I were leaving for Philadelphia to help celebrate her father's 90th birthday.
And as a result, prokaryotes had falsely been assumed to be a monophyletic group. Woese and Fox argued there was no monolithic group of bacteria leading to eukaryotes; there was no prokaryote in that sense. Based on their comparisons of 18S rRNA of eukaryotic translation mechanisms, Woese and Fox argued that there was a separate line of descent that led to eukaryotes apart from the symbiotic origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts.
All three lineages would have diverged early from primitive cells in the throes of evolving their translation mechanisms 66 , These primitive hypothetical cells Woese and Fox called the progenotes To emphasize that all prokaryotes do not share a common ancestry, in , Woese, Otto Kandler, and Mark L.
To gain a better understanding of the attitudes of microbiologists and classical evolutionists and of the conceptual dogmas that he confronted, Woese reflected more and more on the history of microbial phylogeny 38 , Yet the prokaryote-eukaryote dichotomy had become unquestioningly accepted. Indeed, the rub for Woese was that Stanier and his colleagues illogically denied the possibility of large-scale phylogeny based on cell structure but still had no doubts about the monophyly of bacteria the prokaryote on the same grounds.
Phylogeny by fiat had replaced experimentation and discussion, as he saw it. The monophyly of the grouping had been assumed in all conceptions of the prokaryote. By the end of the s, Woese suggested 65 that prokaryotes had been defined in some positive terms by using molecules and functions at the heart of the cell for which there were homologous among eukaryotes: chromosomal organization, regulatory mechanisms, and ribosome size.
This might seem to make the old criticisms about its negative definition somewhat obsolete, thus confirming the prokaryote-eukaryote dichotomy as a true natural order of things. But there were problems. The confirmation of the prokaryote concept by molecular biology in the s turned on a very tight circular argument.
Belief in the prokaryote-eukaryote dichotomy fostered the notion that to understand bacteria, one only had to determine how E.
This is not the unifying principle that we all once believed it to be. Quite the opposite: it is a wall, not a bridge. Biology has been divided more than united, confused more than enlightened, by it. This prokaryote-eukaryote dogma has closed our minds, retarded microbiology's development, and hindered progress in general. Biological thinking, teaching, experimentation, and funding have all been structured in a false and counterproductive and dichotomous way. Although Woese argued against the prokaryote concept, others continued to use it; they simply included the Eubacteria and the Archaea within the old dichotomy 2.
The editors of the second edition of The Prokaryotes in offered historical comments similar to those of Woese when they introduced the new research and concepts in bacterial phylogeny based on 16S rRNA. No question that rRNA phylogenetics and subsequently genomics helped to radically shift interest from the few domesticates of genetics and molecular biology, such as E.
This dramatic difference is one of the chief characteristics of the era of genomics, which distinguishes itself from 20th century biology, a defining characteristic of which was progress through a few chosen model organisms. Those molecular biologists who used bacteria as a biotechnique were no more interested in the natural history and phylogeny of bacteria than Drosophila geneticists were interested in entomology.
Still, debates over the history of bacterial taxonomy continued. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Introduction In the last 50 years, we have experienced two pandemics, the human immunodeficiency virus HIV and the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 SARS-CoV-2 infections.
HIV transmission mechanism There are three transmission mechanisms of HIV-1 infection: sexual, parenteral and vertical HIV symptomatology The symptoms generated by HIV infection begin to appear between 2 and 6 weeks after contact with the virus and can be divided into early infection within the first two months after infection or chronic.
Treatment and vaccine development After the initial discovery of some drugs that had shown high toxicity and scarce benefit zidovudine, didanosine, zalcitabine , in the discovery of a combination therapy, which initially included antiprotease drugs indinavir, saquinavir was such a change that it was possible to significantly reduce mortality.
Studies searching for vaccines have not been successful yet. SARS-CoV-2 transmission mechanism The virus is transmitted through the air, mainly due to small drops of saliva from infected people by coughing or sneezing that can reach two meters Treatment and vaccine development COVID treatment initially included drugs previously used in HIV treatment, such as lopinavir; subsequent studies demonstrated its lack of efficacy Air by small drops of saliva. ACE2 receptor expressed in lung, heart, blood vessels, intestine, and kidney.
Difficulty breathing and fever. In the most severe cases, the infection can cause pneumonia, severe difficulty breathing, kidney failure, and even death. Days from infection with symptoms Between 2 and 6 weeks after contact with the virus. Between 2 and 14 days after contact with the virus. Open in a separate window. Similarities between both viruses Even though it may seem that these two viruses induced diseases are not very similar among them, they have some important points in common: a Fear in the population.
Conclusion As a conclusion, we would like to point that although at first sight these viruses do not resemble each other, the molecular mechanisms used are common: the increased of pro-inflammatory cytokine synthesis, the modifications in intestinal microbiota, the NETs formation. References 1. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med. A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin.
Cell Host Microbe. Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding. N Engl J Med. A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China.
Rein A. Trends Microbiol. Towers GJ, Noursadeghi M. Interactions between HIV-1 and the cell-autonomous innate immune system. Origin and evolution of pathogenic coronaviruses. Nat Rev Microbiol. A first step in understanding SARS pathogenesis. J Pathol. Tortorici MA, Veesler D. Structural insights into coronavirus entry. Elsevier Inc. Fusion mechanism of nCoV and fusion inhibitors targeting HR1 domain in spike protein.
Cell Mol Immunol. Measures for diagnosing and treating infections by a novel coronavirus responsible for a pneumonia outbreak originating in Wuhan, China. Microbes Infect. Host Factors in Coronavirus Replication. Coronavirus transcription: A perspective. Curr Top Microbiol Immunol. J Virol. J Biol Chem. Roback JD, Guarner J. COVID patients' clinical characteristics, discharge rate, and fatality rate of meta-analysis.
J Med Virol. Virology, epidemiology, pathogenesis, and control of covid Ministry of Health, Spain. Int J Antimicrob Agents. Lake MA. A trial of lopinavir-ritonavir in adults hospitalized with severe covid Remdesivir in adults with severe COVID a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre trial.
Clin Infect Dis. Callaway E. The race for Coronavirus vaccines. Dysbiosis of the gut microbiota in disease. Microb Ecol Heal Dis. J Infect Dis. Clin Rheumatol. Gut barrier structure, mucosal immunity and intestinal microbiota in the pathogenesis and treatment of HIV infection.
Nat Commun. However, these new miasms mainly serve as categorisation models and hardly pay attention to the micro-organisms associated with them.
The better we learn to know a person, the better we understand him or her. So it is with any other living organism. Learning to know a bacterium, or a virus for that matter, seems less appealing than getting acquainted with animals, plants, or stones.
We may feel attracted to flowers, trees, animals, gemstones, metals, but we quickly develop a disliking, or even fear or repulsion for micro-organisms. Bugs bug us; we have bad names for them: germs, creeps, parasites, pathogens, in short: disposable creatures. What we cannot see with the naked eye, we tend to discount. For example, the body space of an average adult human being comprises approximately trillion cells — that is one hundred million separate units of living matter.
This is a fairly impressive number. Even more impressive, however, is the fact that of those trillion cells inside the average human frame, only 10 trillion are human cells. The other 90 trillion cells are bacteria [with a few other parasites, fungi, and miscellaneous riff-raff thrown in for good measure]. Inside our own bodies we are outnumbered by other species nine to one. They therefore cannot decide — on their own — to throw us out entirely [although on occasions they can cause a variety of expulsions and upsets and ultimately, if one cares to think of it that way, they can cause revolution, dissolution, and redistribution].
Yet, even accepting that some species have the potential for doing us considerable harm, we can perhaps afford to be a little fairer to many of the other less threatening species with whom we share our body [and, in some cases, our planet]. Not everything that is non-human is necessarily bad for us. The mood of recent times has been to regard every non-human species in or on our bodies as untrustworthy and threatening.
This is undoubtedly true of some species: there is no such thing as a friendly smallpox virus, and you cannot domesticate a malarial parasite and have it come when you call it. Hubris versus humus Bacteria are of major importance to Mother Earth. Some of the species are neutral guests, neither harming nor helping their hosts; others assist their hosts in digestion, excretion, and even the production of light. Although the vast majority of bacterial types remain unknown, bacteria are perceived as relatively well known because they are so important in medicine and ecology.
When in the s the idea was proposed that cell components, eg, mitochondria, originated as symbiotic bacteria, it was roundly rejected and ridiculed. Bacteria were agents of disease, dangerous pests, troublemakers, lying in wait to inflict harm on us. Spirochetes were transmitters of venereal disease, not the originators of motility and as such of the sperm tails of men.
In his Foreword to Microcosmos, an intriguing tale of microbial evolution by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Lewis Thomas brings the entire affair into the open. But now look at our dilemma. The first of us, the very first of our line, appeared sometime around 3. We go back to it, of all things. Moreover, for all our elegance and eloquence as a species, for all our massive frontal lobes, for all our music, we have not progressed all that far from our microbial forebears. They are still with us, part of us.
Or, put it another way, we are part of them. The word for earth, at the beginning of the Indoeuropean language thousands of years ago was dhghem. From this word, meaning simply earth came our word humus, the handiwork of soil bacteria.
Also, to teach us the lesson, humble, human, and humane. There is the outline of a philological parable here. Nosodes and vaccines Regarding nosodes and vaccines, invaluable work was done by the late French homeopathic physician O. Why French homeopathy in general appears to be favourably disposed towards the use of nosodes is an interesting question. To a lesser extent the same holds true for German homeopathy.
Here is a little history. The French, with Louis Pasteur as their champion, have done much to promote the germ theory of disease. To understand how influential the French have been, we only have to look at the number of micro-organisms or vaccines named after French researchers working at one time at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, eg, Bordet, Yersin, Calmette, Borrel, and Pasteur himself.
It should therefore not come as a surprise that French homeopaths, eg, Cartier, Vannier, Fortier-Bernoville, Sevaux, and particularly Julian, have introduced into homeopathy a fair amount of remedies derived from either micro-organisms or vaccines.
Disregarding such established ones as Psorinum, Medorrhinum and Syphilinum, the use of any other nosode in homeopathy is more or less tantamount to being a last resort. If used at all, their use seems to be confined to desperate cases, blocked cases, relapsing cases; no or insufficient activity of apparently well-selected remedies, or malignancies.
Accepting remedies from the microbial kingdom would seem to amount to accepting the germ theory as the cause of disease. Yet, irrespective of whether we believe microbes to be cause or result, homeopathy is based on similarity of phenomena.
Over time the established nosodes have grown into recognisable drug pictures for the simple reason that they have been used. Successful cases have been passed on and have helped to flesh out a better picture.
To be able to prescribe we need something on which to base the prescription. Some of the presented microbial remedies are, admittedly, still in their infancy, perhaps never to mature, whilst others have enough individual elements to enable recognition, provided we study them closely.
As with photographs, drug pictures also may be enlarged and refined. The sharpness or completeness of a picture depends as much on our focus as on the object. The dose makes the poison Paracelsus argued that the right dose differentiates a poison and a remedy, which is now known as the dose-response relationship, the Arndt-Schulz Law, a major concept of toxicology.
To this Paracelsian axiom homeopathy has added its two main concepts: susceptibility and analogy. Assuming that the difference between a virulent poison and a great remedy also lies in the combination of dose, susceptibility and similarity, it would seem unfortunate that certain biological agents have such a minor place in homeopathy.
Terror-stricken societies sought to diffuse the threat by either trying to appease the God who perceivedly had brought the plague upon them or by attempting to create a common bond of union among human beings. It would be a mistake to disregard plague because it occurred in medieval times and evoked what we now would consider superstitious reactions, if not mass hysteria. On the basis of analogy, plague represents as much as it causes. The possible use of biological agents as vehicles for terrorism has recently induced considerable fear and alertness in western societies.
Amongst such agents are plague, anthrax, brucellosis, smallpox and botulism. Aside from bringing up traumatic memories, and while not suggesting that terror is unique to plague, plague lives in the human collective subconsciousness as a miasmatic stain, which in remedy form, it might help to allay. Suppose that all those influences that we label as bad are indeed part of a perfect harmony. What then should our attitude be towards them? In general as a method of healing, homeopathy already provides an answer to this question.
We are not out there killing the microbes, but rather helping our patients to live in better harmony, both with themselves and also with their surroundings, including the world of micro-organisms. In daily homeopathic practice, there are nevertheless still a lot of issues concerning infectious disease that deserve thought, experiment and discussion. Do we have an alternative to them? What is the role of nosodes in homeopathic practice? What is there to know about lesser-known nosodes?
Is there room for isopathy in classical homeopathy? How to understand and deal with the miasms? Building blocks Will there ever come a time that we speak of a Staphylococcus-type, a Pestinum-personality, Salmonella-cravings, or Dysentery-characteristics?
Realising our attitude towards micro-organisms helps us to understand our vision of them as potential remedies.
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