Disease resistance

“ All immunological studies are based on the known fact of the reinforcement of natural resistance to disease, as illustrated by serum therapy in diphtheria and by vaccine therapy in anthrax. The attempts to elucidate the principles underlying these two methods have led to the development of many fruitful hypotheses and theories, and many diagnostic and curative procedures of great value. It was early evident that the explanation of resistance to infection, either natural or acquired, must be sought in the cells or fluids of the body and especially of the blood. ”

“ In addition to its mechanical defenses against disease, the body shows a varying degree of immunity, or the power possessed by living organisms to resist infections. Immunity or resistance is the opposite of susceptibility. ”

“ This resistance of some individuals to disease has probably at all times attracted the attention of men, and very early in the history of civilization observations have been made which by gradual extension have led to some of the most striking triumphs of medicine. It will be my object in this lecture to show you how immunity to disease, at first supposed to be due to individual peculiarities or supernatural influences, has gradually become connected with certain external circumstances acting directly or indirectly. ”

“ THE term natural immunity is used to denote natural resistance to some particular specific disease. It may refer to race, or age, or individual idiosyncrasies. We not infrequently meet with examples of this freedom from disease. Certain races of men do not, as a rule, take certain diseases. For example, plague and leprosy, though endemic in some countries, fail to get a footing in England. ”

“ The elimination of the hookworm disease, the fight to control malaria, the {473} mastery of yellow fever, the promotion of public health, and the study of medicine, the courageous attack on tuberculosis, and the suppression of typhoid fever, all are for the benefit of the public. The war on disease and the promotion of public health by preventive measures have lowered the death-rate and lengthened the period of life. ”

“ While it is true that to the public mind there is a more lurid and spectacular menace in such diseases as small-pox, yellow fever and plague, medical men and public health workers are beginning to realize that, with the warfare against such maladies well or ganized, it is now time to give attention to the heavy loss from lowered physical efficiency and chronic, preventable disease, a loss exceeding in magnitude that sustained from the more widely feared communicable diseases. ”

“ The preventive method does not wait until diseases have fully developed and gained the ascendancy in the body, but concentrates its best endeavors on preventing, by hygienic living and by natural methods of treatment, the development of diseases. By these it endeavors to put the human body in such a normal, healthy condition that it is practically proof against infection or contagion by disease taints and miasms, and against the inroads of germs, bacteria and parasites. ”

“ We have learned to appreciate the true value of hygienic principles in the prevention of diseases of the epidemic type; and the medical profession, throwing aside all selfish recollections, has been the first to teach the practice of these principles and to prove their force and vitality. The next step in the way of advancement is to demonstrate that the same principles are as useful and as necessary in the treatment of actual disease as they are in prevention. ”

“ In most other lands, and particularly in the United States, public health has been regarded almost exclusively as a matter of protection against germs; but protection against germs, while effective in defending us from plague and other epidemics of acute [Pg 105] diseases, is almost powerless to prevent the chronic diseases of middle and late life. These maladies—Bright’s disease, heart disease, nervous breakdowns—are due primarily to unhygienic personal habits. ”

“ It is natural, perhaps, that this newly awakened interest in the prevention of disease should center in the infectious diseases, in which the relation between cause and effect is often so obvious and the means of prevention are so logical. ”

“ That its power to modify the character of the disease is also greatest in the period in which its power to protect from attack is greatest, but that its power thus to modify the disease does not diminish as rapidly as its protective influence against attacks, and its efficacy during the later periods of life to modify the disease is still very considerable. ”

“ These direct advantages in medical science are however but part of the great gift to modern methods of disease control, for the possibilities in the control of disease by sanitation, quarantine, vaccination, etc., and other methods are all based on biological data. ”

“ Modern methods of hygiene and sanitation as applied to public health have robbed smallpox and diphtheria of their death-dealing power; cholera and yellow fever have been forced to retreat before the victorious hosts of applied medical science; tuberculosis, the greatest foe of human life, is slowly but surely receding before the determined efforts of modern preventive medicine.
By nature man is endowed with resistive power sufficient to ward off most forms of disease, provided he keeps his health at a normal standard by right living. ”

“ The earliest history of remote ages describes methods employed in combating disease, and down through all the centuries the struggle against infection has been going on. The science of health as applied in recent years reveals wonderful progress in the avoidance of disease, and in the control of the violent epidemics by which in the past nations were almost exterminated. ”

“ It will transform the medical empiricism and confusion of the past and present into an exact science by demonstrating the unity of disease and treatment.
Applying the law in a general way, it means that all acute diseases, from a simple cold to measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, smallpox, pneumonia, etc., represent Nature's efforts to repair injury or to remove from the system some kind of morbid matter, virus, poison or microorganism dangerous to health and life. In other words, acute diseases cannot develop in a perfectly normal, healthy body living under conditions favorable to human life. ”

“ It follows also that, since the cure of advanced cases is impossible and since every case which exists is a menace to the health of the community on account of the danger of the spread of the disease, the prevention is far more important than the cure. ”

“ This involves, of course, the exclusion of the evil, that is, of suppressing the causes that produce disease, as well as in cultivating the resistant power of the human system. In sanitation, diet, and exercise are the great fields of medical enterprise and advance. I need not say that the physician who, in the case of those under his charge, or who may possibly require his aid, contents himself with waiting for developed disease, is like the soldier in a besieged city who opens the gates and then attempts to repel the invader who has effected a lodgment. ”

“ But in contrast to this slow, painful and halting advance in practical means for the relief of suffering, is to be placed the body of robust facts, acquired in a quarter of a century, during the present or bacteriological era in medicine, which enables us to view in some measure the mechanisms of disease and defense against it, and which has pointed the way to efficient modes of prevention, and, in a few brilliant instances, to the production of biologically perfect means of combating certain infectious maladies. ”

“ Ordinary cleanliness, good vitality, clean blood and tissues, the organs of elimination in good, active condition and, last but not least, a positive, fearless attitude of mind will practically establish natural immunity to the inroads and ravages of bacteria and disease taints. If infection takes place, the organism reacts to it through inflammatory processes, and by means of these endeavors to overcome and eliminate microorganisms and poisons from the system. ”

“ As already pointed out, these defensive forces are powerful or not, according as the general health of the individual is good or bad, and we see the familiar sight of persons said to be run down taking a disease, while those not so depleted of vitality are able to resist or remain immune. ”

“ Most of us, at one time or another, have had, unknowingly, mild cases of consumption. It would be strange, indeed, if we did not, in view of all the tuberculous infection flying around in the air. But most of us are able to successfully combat the disease, so that the germs are destroyed before they are able to affect the entire body.
The other part of prevention consists in building up and holding up the vitality of the individual to a point where the vital forces can successfully oppose the attacks of the germs. ”

“ Among the helpful germs are those that enrich the ground, and these should be protected; but all germs that cause disease should be destroyed as rapidly as possible. These germs are fighting all the time against our health. They are not armed with guns and cannon, neither do they build forts from which to fight ”

“ Obviously, if infectious disease be, as we say, "self-limited," that is to say, if the body will defeat the invaders with its own weapons, on an average in nine cases out of ten, our wisest course, as physicians, is to back up the body in its fight. ”

“ Recent scientific investigations in Great Britain and other countries prove that the power of resisting these diseases depends upon the purity of the air which has been habitually inspired. The human body gradually accommodates itself to unhealthful circumstances, so that people can live a long time in bad air. But the “reserve power” of the body—that is, the power of resisting disease—is under such circumstances gradually destroyed, and then an epidemic easily sweeps away those thus enfeebled. ”

“ PARKES, GUY, SIMON, AND PUBLIC HEALTH. “Prevention is better than cure” is the homely proverb which marks out a large proportion of the work of sanitary science. The prevention of disease and of its spread, and the promotion of the general healthiness of the people—these are objects which modern progress has brought into view. When they are completely attained we shall all die of old age unless cut off by accidents or violence; and this is a goal which many sanitarians of the present day have vividly before their mind. ”

“ In the two former examples, Thrale pointed out, and in many other diseases, infectious or contagious, or both, these pestilences had gradually lost virulence. By the elimination of those most susceptible to infection and incapable to resist the onslaught of the disease, and by the survival of those whose vitality was strong enough either to resist attack or to achieve recovery, mankind at last were gradually becoming immune against certain infections which had prevailed in the past. ”

“ During the past century, we have made significant progress in our fight against disease. Through public health campaigns and aggressive research, we have eliminated polio in the United States, reduced the harm of influenza outbreaks, and developed revolutionary new medications that provide relief and healing from many chronic and acute illnesses. ”

“ The recognition of this fact has enormously increased the efficiency of the medical profession in dealing with disease, by putting us on the track of imitating the methods which the body itself uses for destroying, or checking the spread of, invading germs and leading us to trust nature and try to work with her instead of against her. ”

“ A most important part of our modern plans has for its object not only the suppression of the germ cause of the disease, but also to afford the diseased organs favourable conditions for repair; not so much to endeavour to heal them as to give them the opportunity of healing themselves. ”

“ But you own that in a large proportion of cases the best cure of disease is less to deal with the disease itself than to support and stimulate the whole system, so as to enable Nature to cure the disease and restore the impaired equilibrium by her own agencies. ”

“ I will also propose the International Health Act of 1966 to strike at disease by a new effort to bring modern skills and knowledge to the uncared-for, those suffering in the world, and by trying to wipe out smallpox and malaria and control yellow fever over most of the world during this next decade; to help countries trying to control population growth, by increasing our research--and we will earmark funds to help their efforts. ”

“ But what permits a healthy body to resist its invasion by morbid organisms? What gives several animals immunity against certain special diseases? Why do rats resist anthrax, and dogs and monkeys resist the tuberculosis of fowls, while the same microbes are fatal to rabbits and guinea-pigs? And how can immunity against certain diseases be acquired either by vaccination or by previously having suffered the same disease? We know the microbes ”

“ These ancestral and experimental flaws, even when unrecognized and unguarded against, have probably not at any time been responsible for more than one or two per cent of the body's breakdowns; while, on the other hand, every process with which it fights disease, every trick of strategy which it uses against invading organisms, every step in the process of repair after wounds or injury, is a trick which it has learned in its million-year battle with its surroundings. ”

“ The same is true with regard to the treatment of germ diseases. As long as people persist in violating the laws of their being, and thereby making their bodies prolific breeding grounds for disease taints, germs and parasites which are bound to provoke inflammatory, feverish processes (Nature's cleansing and healing efforts) , combative measures will have to be resorted to by the physician, and precautionary measures against infection will have to be observed, but these should be in harmony with Nature's endeavors, not contrary and suppressive; they should tend to conserve and not to destroy. ”