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Original Publication
HEAL Toronto

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How popular consensus and the medical establishment have often stubbornly clung to the wrong ideas.

Any medical dictionary will tell you that influenza is caused by a virus or that scurvy results from lack of vitamin C - both pieces of common knowledge. Less well known is the fact that the majority of doctors and scientists started out with the wrong ideas about these and many other diseases. It is often the case that what becomes common knowledge has first to be argued by a lone dissenting voice against huge resistance. Science is regularly reminded that Nature is oblivious to democracy. Derek Freeman, who challenged Margaret Mead on Coming of Age in Samoa, once said, " To seek to dispose of a major scientific issue by a show of hands is a striking demonstration of the way in which belief can come to dominate the thinking of scholars." The prevailing hypothesis, in the long run, is a matter of natural selection - not popular opinion.

Table adapted from: What if everything you thought about AIDS was wrong?
by Christine Maggiore

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• Disease is considered to be a harmful deviation from the normal structural or functional state of an organism. A diseased organism commonly exhibits signs or symptoms indicative of its abnormal state. Thus, the normal condition of an organism must be understood in order to recognize the hallmarks of disease. Nevertheless, a sharp demarcation between disease and health is not always apparent. -- [Encyclopedia Britannica 1996]

Scurvy

Hippocrates described Scurvy: bleeding gums, hemorrhaging and death, as early as the 5th c. BC. During the Crusades the disease became widespread. In 1250 it forced the retreat and capture of St. Louis with all his knights. It didn't become a major problem, however, until the age of exploration. Long sea voyages lacking in fresh food led to vitamin C deficiency.

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from: A Short History of Scury by Mark R. Anderson, M.D.

Puerperal or "Childbed" Fever

An infection, once prevalent in women after childbirth, most cases of puerperal fever occurred because aseptic techniques during delivery and occasionally during abortion and miscarriage were not used. Also called childbed fever, the infection in most instances was due to streptococci that entered the body during delivery. The efforts of the physicians Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis and Oliver Wendell Holmes brought about the adoption of rigid cleanliness and asepsis in maternal delivery procedures, and the mortality from puerperal fever was reduced more than 90 percent after their adoption. In addition to the use of strict asepsis in obstetrical procedures, the availability of modern antiseptics has made puerperal fever a rarity.

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Source: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Pellagra shown to be dietary disease

Joseph Goldberger (1874 - 1929) was born in the Austria-Hungary, in a town now located in the Czech Republic. In 1881, when he was six, his family emigrated to the United States. At age 16, he entered City College in New York, intent on studying engineering. After dropping in one day on a lecture at Bellevue Hospital Medical College, he changed his mind. He obtained a medical degree from Bellevue in 1895. He had a private practice in a small city in Pennsylvania, but after two years realized he was bored. He took the competitive exam to enter the Marine Hospital Service, and in 1899 joined its ranks.

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In 1937, researcher Conrad Elvehjem found that nicotinic acid, or niacin, prevented and cured pellagra in dogs. It works as well in humans. Niacin is one of the B vitamins. During the 1930s, great strides were made in understanding the way vitamins work in the chemistry of our bodies.

Source: PBS Online

The SMON tragedy

In 1955 a mysterious disease, in some respects resembling polio, made its appearance in Japan. The symptoms were a combination of diarrhea, internal bleeding and various signs of nerve degeneration.

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