In 1905 a farm boy made a cascading series of discoveries.  Farm boy is an infantilizing way to describe Erwin Frink Smith, for the “farm boy” didn’t even attend high school until he was 22 years of age.  Erwin Frink Smith serves as a witness to everyone who has ever dropped out of high school.  You were lied to and it is never to late to start learning. 

Of course, that was in 1876, just nine years before Robert Koch identified the probable link between bacteria and cholera, and eight years before Robert Koch offered the first hypothesis on acquired immunity.

Robert Koch was no slouch, but neither was Erwin Smith.  Erwin had a lot of catching up to do, but he followed his God given inspiration and caught up to Koch in no time at all.  It can properly be said Erwin Smith was a prodigy, despite his late start in academia.  Before even entering college, he published a catalogue of plants native to Michigan.  You learn more working on a farm than sitting in a classroom it seems.

Before graduating from Michigan Agricultural College, Erwin Smith had already been employed by the Michigan Board of Health, where he applied what he had learned from Koch’s papers on cholera and published a book of his own on water sanitation.  None could confuse Erwin Smith for anything other than an excellent student of Koch’s, albeit a long-distance student.

By 1886, Erwin Smith was working for the United States Department of Agriculture where he was put to work on identifying, documenting and researching plant diseases.  Scientifically, that made sense.  America’s scientific community was not above investigating human diseases, they were just more optimistic about making progress in plant species.  That only made sense.  Since every man, woman and child was one failed harvest away form starvation, the United States government’s focus on plant diseases was an initiative driven by existential concerns.

Malthus was not entirely wrong, you see.  There were a lot of mouths to feed, and more arriving every day.  Where Malthus was wrong was in concluding there were “too many mouths to feed”.  Malthus suffered from cognitive shock at the numbers and trends witnessed in his mathematical calculations.

Malthus panicked and screamed “We’re all going to die!” Darwin answered Malthus by suggesting existential competition was the mechanism by which evolution worked.  Marx improved on Darwin by proposing we should just exterminate the subspecies overloading the system.

Men like Robert Koch and Erwin Smith said “not so fast”.

Critics of my attribution of discovery to Erwin Smith are partially correct, Smith was just standing on the shoulders of a giant named Robert Koch.  Smith just published in volumes greater than, and to constituencies of more immediate consequence than Robert Koch.

Obviously, Robert Koch was still publishing in all the right places, for it was Koch who Smith was reading early in his career.  But Robert Koch received a fraction of the “clicks” that Erwin Smith received.  In modern terms, Robert Koch sent a few emails where Erwin Smith blogged all day and night.  

Between 1885 and 1890 both Robert Koch and Erwin Smith were trying to convince colleagues that bacteria caused diseases, but it was Erwin Smith who was doing all the heavy lifting.  In the 1890s, Smith finally convinced German biologist, Alfred Fischer, that Koch was correct in his earlier work.

Erwin Smith went on to publish his life’s work, “Bacteria In Relation To Plant Diseases” in three volumes, dated 1905, 1911 and 1914 respectively.  Technically speaking, the Peer Review process could not bless Erwin Smith’s research until 1914 when his submissions were complete.  Still, his work was subsequently validated and, as his work was completed in 1905, that is when history’s bell rang.

Still, all Erwin Smith succeeded in doing was establishing Robert Koch was correct all along, about bacteria and diseases.

In case you missed it, Robert Koch was also proven correct about potential cures.

In Robert Koch’s case, the latency between scientific discovery and endorsement through the Peer Review process is inexcusable, but understandable.  The scientific community itself was reeling from the shock.  Agnostics and Atheists had all long before agreed that disease processes had to be a function of a breakdown in cellular mechanics.

All the proof was there under Ibn Sahl’s microscope. 

Cells could be seen breaking down, but it was Koch who first observed and documented that bacteria were eating, or at least destroying otherwise healthy cells.  Erwin just provided an avalanche of data supporting Koch’s hypothesis to fellow botanists.  Biologists specializing in similar processes in animals were just too reluctant to accept the implications: Animals, including humans mind you, were teaming with bacteria all at war with each other!

The thought of billions of “animalcules” battling for survival in the very living tissues of which we were composed, that was a bridge too far.  Koch’s research was, if not rejected, resisted.  Erwin, in contrast, was merely describing a parallel process occurring with plants.  I offer an attenuated empathic connection to plants allowed the scientific community to entertain Erwin Smith where Koch they could not.

No single scientific discovery in human history has had a more profound impact on civilization.  Until this point in history, the predominant view was that disease was the consequences of individual sin.  Technically, that was still correct, linguistically speaking.  Sin, after all, merely means ‘wrongdoing”.  If you are dying for preventable reasons, you are doing something wrong.

But that is not what the Fire and Brimstone crowd in churches, synagogues, temples and mosques all over the world had been saying for millennia beyond recall.  Theologians, nearly universally, agreed that, in a world governed by Divine Laws, Divine Will necessarily had to account for disease processes.  Even if diseases did not originate in Divine Intent, but through bacterial agents, if God was not making people sick, then Divine Will certainly allowed disease to impart consequences on sinners.

Clerics the world over dismissed each new scientific discovery as six of one, half a dozen of another.  No matter what science proved, God was still, ultimately, in control, so prayer continued to matter.  And I agree it does, but so does retiring dogma in the face of revelation. 

God, after all, is not opposed to using an ass to enlighten a Saint.  If the scientific community was indeed filled with nothing but asses, as zealots insisted, why then were not the zealots listening to what the asses had to say?

I can relate to how this Fire and Brimstone logic came into being, even the guilt trip that accompanied every form of disease, not to mention the blamestorm that attended every communicable outbreak throughout history.  And though today I now believe in a Creator, I still reject theology which insists that God punishes sinners with diseases, or punishes sinners by refusing to heal the sick through Divine Intervention.

I do not believe in a malicious Creator, either. 

I just believe that, while life in every respect is a miraculous phenomenon which defies the laws of entropy at all levels of temporal existence, the created world we are blessed to live in is not perfect, at least in the imaginations of we mortal beings.  The created world we live in involves frictional forces which assure everything built from chaos will return to chaos, in the absence of Divine Intervention.  

Disease, while regrettable, is biological friction in a world which is otherwise perfect to the imagination.  Disease does not require Divine Intervention because, ultimately, the temporal world is not the destiny of the soul.

In my mind’s eye, the temporal world operates on the soul much like a toaster operates on a slice of bread.  When the slice of bread has achieved the proper amount of toastiness, the toaster ejects the slice.  The heat which results in scorching, and the friction which often results in crumbs, that is just intrinsic to a process which will only make sense once you are free from the toaster.

Anyone who thinks me mistaken, is not being honest with themselves. 

Ask yourself this question, “Would you rather live a life free of disease or a life free of death?”  Anyone who wants to live forever, in our given, temporal form, is like a slice of bread that wants to remain in the toaster.  The frictional consequences of remaining in the toaster will only increase over time, as will all associated consequences.  Your suffering will only increase over the long run. 

Death, as I now accept it, is a phase change for every form of life, a threshold we all must cross if we are to transcend the temporal dimension and enter the celestial dimension. 

I read, listen to, and watch science fiction predicting the “Singularity”, an imagined point in technological progress when Mankind will transcend biology and ensconce the human psyche in a form of computer hardware, thereby overcoming death completely.

And why not?  If we are all nothing but a collection of fragile, organic cells, and the soul is distinct form that organic temple, why can we not transcend biology and assume a more durable form of existence?

While the Singularity sure sounds tempting, what if committing one’s soul to a disk permanently cuts your soul off from transcendence to the celestial dimension?  Could not resorting to a technological “singularity” cut one’s soul off from eternal life?  If that is the case, the Singularity is a self-imposed exile which is one hard drive crash away from true death.

But a life without disease?  I’ll take that right here and right now! 

Admit it, so will you.  And while that does not seem likely to any of us living to read these words in 2023, in 1905 that is precisely what the leading scientists in accredited academia were predicting.

Nobody was predicting eternal life, mind you.  But it was immediately clear that bacteria and parasites were doing unmitigated damage to human populations the world over. 

At this point in history, the global mean life span was 41 years.  Meditate on that. 

The passing of a loved one at the age of 41 was, while tragic, almost expected.  Today, if anyone we knew died at 41, we’d all be looking for someone to sue or throw in prison.  If you want to know how Mankind doubled the mean lifespan of everyone alive in less than forty years, stay tuned.  This thread is about to get interesting.

Because of Ibn Sahl’s mathematical theory on optics, the microscope, and all that follows from the microscope, blesses Mankind with extraordinarily long life.  Just don’t expect accredited academia to acknowledge Ibn Sahl or the extraordinary distinction between a life rife with disease ending at 41, and a life blessed by good health ending at 82.

No.  Accredited academia remains haunted by Malthus, Darin and Marx, who, in rapid succession, insisted there were too many mouths to feed, only the fittest should survive, so why not just exterminate the unfit and save us all the suffering?  It is all extremely scientific.

In the remainder of this essay, I will not be focusing on the medical miracles which began to unfold after we finally learned to put Ibn Sahl’s invention to good use. 

The narrative of modern medicine is replete in all we say and all we do.  Not one of us has been neglected in the miracles of one Muslim scholar.  No, in this essay I will recall how the world’s intelligentsia fell into psychotic conflict following the discovery of bacteria’s pathogenic role in human biology.

Beginning in 1905 every academic alive became acutely aware that God was not punishing sinners: Sinners were punishing us all!

It may take a day or two for the ramifications of this perception to sink in, but take your time, and let it sink in.  You will never understand how the Socialist International justified the extermination of over a hundred million innocent human beings unless you grasp the caustic conclusions reached following the Epiphany of 1905.

Bookmark this page here and join me after you’ve done some independent thinking.

Done already, are you?

Welcome back!

I’ll assume by now that you, like me, realize that a cascade of “scientific” discoveries followed Erwin Smith’s validation of Koch’s earlier work. But did you realize that hundreds of millions of people died from bacteria related diseased in the twenty-two-year delay in Peer Review process? 

Connecting only the obvious dots, we realize, if bacteria cause diseases, and all people are infected with all kinds of bacteria all of the time, then what you should have been fearing all along, is not punishment from your Creator but direct contact with your fellow man.

Of course, between 1905 and 1918, accredited academia was busy connecting these very dots and publishing papers, the ramifications of which were only just beginning to circulate in the public domain.  If “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” was a maxim of the righteous in previous generations, it became the Law of the Land after 1905. 

By the 1930s governments all over the world began requiring blood tests to get married, initiatives which were to set precedents in government powers on matters of healthcare.  One could, and probably should, more fully appraise the role these legal precedents played in the years leading to the National Socialist Worker’s Party’s Holocaust. 

Too recently primed to accept government’s role in combating communicable diseases, people everywhere were too easily led to conclude the same held true for inheritable traits, both desirable and undesirable.  Eugenics, that is to say, the directed evolution by its other name, became extremely popular in accredited academia.  But I am putting the cart before the horse.

Skeptics will also warn my audience that I am neglecting previous advances in the healing arts, and will point to figures like Florence Nightengale, Clara Barton, and many of the monks and nuns of Europe’s Monasteries who already proved that hygiene mattered more than anyone believed.  But even to these earlier figures, good hygiene was considered a character trait, traits which Clara Barton merely converted into medical protocols in battlefield hospitals.

What none of these earlier pioneers in medicine knew was that billions of microscopic creatures crawled across the surface of our bodies every minute of every day.  And while countless parasites and bacteria infested our outer selves, every minute of every day, trillions of even more disturbing forms of life lived in our mouths, fed on the contents of our stomachs, and spent most of their lives in our digestive track.

The result of all this new information was an amplification, not a relief, of stigmas and phobias associated with disease.

Making matters worse, was scientific proof that those once merely suspected as communicating disease, were now proven to be personally responsible for spreading disease!

Mankind began to turn on his fellow man. 

Degenerate behavior, not just unhygienic behavior, was directly, irrefutably responsible for communicable diseases!  That dot was immediately connected with the latest revelation, that human conception and heredity were also processes of microbiology!

Gone was the stork and delivering Angels! 

Those lofty models of procreation were all supplanted by spermatozoa and ova, their course after conception determined by hereditary biology.  This last dot was inevitably connected with degenerate diseases and degenerate hereditary conditions. 

Degenerate behavior, as Darwin’s thesis on sexual reproduction predicted, inevitably led to degenerate beings.  Even Classical Scholars and Ecclesiastical Scholars were forced to admit, under the microscope, the Fall of Man appeared to be proven by germ and hereditary theory. 

Had sin compounded to the point, as scriptures predicted, life had degraded past the point of no return?  Was not, then, the end quite near?

In hindsight, we can all predict where this is leading.  But, between 1905 and 1918, the horror and disgust at all this new information was isolated to accredited academia.  The clergy, ever watchful, were ringing their hands in prayer.  If cures could deliver us from the ravages of all these disgusting diseases, the inspiration would come from God.

In the time it took one class to graduate from Vienna’s leading university, the news that pathogens caused diseases had completed its circulation among the leading faculty, and was being introduced as curricula to the next generation of healers.

Except, they were not all healers.

Ecclesiastical scholars were, from that point forward, consigned to prayer.  Classical Scholars were resigned to the philosophies.  Agnostics just nodded knowingly into their microscopes.  Atheists threw their hands up and concluded, if we don’t assume the leadership role now, we’re all headed off a cliff.  Anarchists seethed and plotted a homicidal rampage.

A deluded faction within the humanities department, the students of sociology who did not read The German Ideology, but swallowed Das Kapital hook, line and sinker, fell headlong down Karl Marx’s evolutionary rabbit hole. 

To the Literati who frequented Vienna’s Café Central, great thinkers like Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Alfred Adler, Adloph Hitler and countless other Socialists of the day, it was clear, if Christ had indeed risen two thousand years ago, God had just died.

The Epiphany of 1905 was the straw that broke the back of the Clergy in Academia.  From that date forward, there was no longer a conversation, much less a debate, between the faculty of Theology and the Faculty of Science.

To non-believers, the Great Schism between science and religion was not just confirmed but justified.  From that day forward, few scientists would ever again entertain theological interpretations of natural phenomenon.

One can hardly blame the non-believers, for the Fire and Brimstone crowd had brow beaten humanity into reflexive compliance to their moral order.  Morality was the constant cause of the Clergy, and half of them, in 1905, regarded medical science as voodoo bordering on heresy.

I am being, perhaps, unfair to the Clergy, but I do so to emphasize the breach in confidence experienced by the Laity when traditional, moral instruction and prayer was exposed as futile responses to disease.  I consider this aspect of the Epiphany of 1905 as a blessing, for discarding overbearing dogma does everyone good and no one harm. 

Non-believers in accredited academia just did not share my view on their age. 

In 1905, non-believers, especially those applying Darwin in a Marxist context, exulted in the downfall of the church.  In less than five years, the Church’s role in accredited academia went from the Conscience of Scholarship to the Fool of the Quad.  The Church has yet to recover from the Epiphany of 1905.

What occurred next is almost predictable.

To the Café Central we now turn.