DEADLY GERMS

How Dr. Thos. Powell Has Swallowed Them

BACILLI IN HIS SYSTEM
HE LAUGHS AT THE THEORY OF CONTAGION

Gives to the World the Story of His Ten Years' Defiance of the Death-Dealing Bacilli

Men have done strange things and taken desperate chances in the interests of science, but none has been stranger or more desperate that the act of Dr. Thomas Powell, a physician who about a year ago took up his residence in this city, and who has actually taken into his system during the past ten years the germs of the deadliest diseases, for the specific purpose of shattering the time honored theories regarding the transmission of contagious complaints from one person to another. Incredible as it may seen, Dr. Powell has not only survived the desperate experiments that he has undertaken, but has never shown the slightest signs of any ill effects resulting from them.

The evidence regarding the truth of his claim is conclusive.

His own written statements are backed up by the testimony of well-known physicians in whose presence Dr. Powell has taken the germs into his system during experiments that he has been secretly making during the past ten years. Dr. Powell has decided that the time has come for giving to the world the result of his experiments, which he claims have been a complete and unqualified success. Here is the doctor's statement of the result of his defiance of the power of germs:

"Before going into the details of my experiments with the germs of virulent diseases. I want to preface my statements with the explanation that I do not declare the germs to be harmless in all cases. What I do say is that a person to whom the germs of a particular disease are likely to prove dangerous must have a predisposition towards that particular disease, such predisposition being either hereditory or acquired. Given a man or woman with no such predisposition, and I claim that the deadliest germs are powerless to harm them. They can enter the sick chamber without fear of contracting disease, or even do as I have done, take the living germ into their system and suffer no harm. My experiments have proved the truth of my theory.

"I claim that disease germs are utterly incapable of successfully assailing the tissues of the living body; that they are the results and not the cause of disease; that they are not in the least inimical to the life or health of the body; that, on the contrary, it is their peculiar function to rescue the living organism, whether of man or beast, from impending injury or destruction. They accomplish this by bringing about the decomposition of that obstructing matter which constitutes predisposition to disease, and cause it to be passed out by the blood.

"For ten years I have worked on this theory, and the results achieved I now give to the world. I determined in the first place to experiment by inoculating, not an animal whose hold upon life is exceedingly feeble, as is that of the rabbit or guinea pig, but the human body. I made the experiments upon myself, then upon members of my own family, and lastly upon such patients as were within the range of safe experimentation. I inoculated myself with the most virulent typhoid bacilli obtainable, having first eradicated from my system any predisposing cause for the disease. The result was entirely satisfactory, no evil ensuing beyond the usual soreness as in vaccination.

"Then I took into my system the typhoid bacilli, and no typhoid lever making its appearance, I repeated the experiment with diphtheria germs, without the least perceptible effect.

"In order to make the experiments still more complete, I cultivated the germs of diphtheria and glanders until there could be no doubt of their virility and took them into my system in the presence of two reputable physicians. The outcome was [not legible] same as before.

"Then I made the greatest trial of all. In the presence of twenty-five physicians I took, first, the bacilli of typhoid into the stomach enclosed in gelatin capsules; and, second, the bacilli of diphtheria by both the vaccination method and subcutaneous inoculation.

"Examinations were afterwards made by the physicians referred to of the pulse, the temperature and of the respiration, and it was unanimously declared that these inoculations produced no greater effect upon me than might have been expected from a like quantity of water.

"In order that there should be no possibility of doubting Thomases declaring that the experiments were successful only in my case and that I had in some way been made contagion-proof by nature, I singled out from among my patients two who appeared to be fit subjects for similar experimentation: and, with their consent, put them through the same course as I had undergone, with less virulent diseases. The outcome proved that my calculation were well founded, no evil resulting in their ease any more than in mine. I am progressing towards a climax in my opposition to the greatest delusion of the world's history, which will consist of the most astounding and conclusive demonstration ever made in the establishment of a scientific proposition.

"So confident am I that the scientists of the world are at fault in their germ theories that I challenge anyone to bring to me the bacilli of any disease known to the medical profession, and I promise to take into my system, in the presence of any jury of physicians that may lie selected, germs that have been cultivated into deadly activity by the usual processes. All I ask is that I may be given time to eradicate from my system any predisposition to the disease that the germ represents."

The physicians in whose presence Dr. Powell has made the experiments have been completely dumbfounded by the ease and facility with which he has uprooted medical landmarks and smashed the chilled-steel theories of science. While admitting that there is no room for doubting the truth of bis statements, they are not willing to admit that the theories can be applied generally.

The matter is of so much importance, however, that they are arranging to have a great and convincing test made by Dr. Powell and anyone who is willing to submit to the same inoculation as he has done, in order to settle forever the great question of whether or not a supposedly contagious disease can be transmitted from one person to the other by the medium of germs. The whole world will await the outcome with interest.

I have demonstrated on many occasions, in the presence of many physicians and by means of many experiments, the most legitimate that could well be devised, that whenever the body is free from pathogen it is able to withstand, not only those changes which are usually productive of “colds” but all kinds of infective organisms, the most virulent not excepted.

The legitimacy of the experiments to which I refer is evinced by the fact that they were made upon the human body and consisted, on the one hand, in exposing it to sudden and severe changes of temperature, and, on the other, in the introduction into the body of the vilest germs known to bacteriology — namely,

• the bacillus anthracis — the germ of malignant pustule and blood-poisoning;
• the bacillus mallei — the germ of glanders;
• the bacillus typhiabdominalis — the germ of typhoid fever;
• the bacillus diphtheriae — the germ of diphtheria, and
• the bacillus tuberculosus — the germ of pulmonary consumption, and tubercular diseases in general.

These germs were introduced in various ways;

• first, by application to denuded surfaces, as in vaccination;
• second, by ingestion, or swallowing germ-laden “cultures”;
• third, by injecting germ-laden “cultures” into the bowels;
• fourth, by subcutaneous injection, or hypodermic inoculation;
• fifth, by insufflation — drawing into the lungs a powder made from carefully dessicated sputum of a patient who was dving of consumption, and which was heavily laden with tubercle bacilli, there being an average of twenty-five germs visible within the field of the microscope.

Experiments of this kind were made on six different occasions, and with no other precaution than that of seeing that the body was practically free of such evidences of the presence of pathogen as the existence of congestion and catarrhal transudation.

In every experiment, except the first, the germs were furnished and their introduction was supervised by reputable physicians. On the last three occasions the experiments were made in the presence of about twenty-five physicians, who declared upon due investigation that not the slightest symptom of morbid action of any kind could be detected — that there was no change of temperature, no enlargement of the glands and no inflammatory action.