The Fallacy of a Bar of Soap

Did you know that a hundred years ago the use of a bar of soap was considered a radical heresy? Would you be surprised to learn that the doctor who proposed using soap to wash up between patients was discredited by his colleagues and eventually died penniless in an insane asylum?

Crazy isn’t?

We forget that our current medical system was a radically new thought just a two hundred years ago. In 1676 a Dutch cloth merchant by the name of Anton van Leeuwenhoek, was, “the first person to see bacteria”^[1] using a microscope. It took ten years for his observations to be accepted by the Royal Society in London^[2].

For almost two centuries, the knowledge that the world teemed with small organisms was regarded as an interesting but rather irrelevant fact. Nobody knew what to do with that information. Today, Van Leeuwenhoek is considered to be the “Father of Microbiology.”

In the middle of the 19th century a doctor in Vienna called Semmelweis made a very important discovery. Dr. Semmelweis worked in a maternity hospital where the death rate of mothers and babies was extremely high because of an infection commonly known as child bed fever.^[3] He observed that the ward run by midwives had a much lower death rate than a ward run by doctors. Why? Because, after each delivery, the midwives washed up and put on a clean apron.

Semmelweis suggested that if doctors were to clean up between patients, wear clean coats while doing their rounds and used different clothing during post mortems they could achieve a huge drop in death rates. His colleagues were scandalized at what they considered to be foolish suggestions. He was shunned by his colleagues and eventually dismissed from his position. He died in 1865 in a mental institution, widely regarded as a madman. He never lived to see the day that his theory that tiny particles, invisible to the naked eye, could carry infection from person to person would be proven.

Dr. Joseph Lister, in the 1800’s studied the principles of Pasteur and his advances in microbiology. As a result of Lister’s research based on these principles he was able to successfully introduce the use of carbolic acid as a means to sterilise surgical instruments and clean wounds. He incorporated a policy of making fellow doctors wash their hands in carbolic acid before and after surgery and when seeing new patients. He even went so far as to have carbolic acid mists sprayed in the operating room during surgery. He became known the “Father of Antiseptic Surgery”

Another scientist, Robert Koch, also in the 1800’s clearly demonstrated that the disease anthrax was caused by a bacterium. He developed criteria called “Koch’s postulates” that are still used today as a check list for proving that an infectious agent actually causes a specific disease.

Using Koch’s postulates, an English doctor, Dr. John Snow, was able to prove that the cholera epidemic London in the 1850’s was in fact spread by bacteria found in sewage and not from “clouds”.  As a result of his work sewage systems were developed for cities and sanitary methods became the norm for hospitals.^[4]

It is interesting to note that now in the 21st century as we review history and that our ancestors would have laughed us out of the room for believing that the simple act of washing our hands could help stop the spread of an epidemic. We would have been treated as heretics and possibly thrown into a mental institution for having the absurd notion of believing in bacteria and a bar of soap.

A very sobering thought.

The discovery of the microscope changed how we look our world. It lead to the discovery of bacteria which helped to solve the mystery of cholera outbreaks which lead to the development of our modern-day sanitation systems. Understanding how bacteria could make a person sick lead to the development of modern antiseptic procedures used in hospitals around the world. It also made us realize how important it was to perform the simple act of washing our hands on a regular basis to stop the spread of disease.

Then a strange thing happened in Russia during the 1930’s. Scientists became curious about a group of people who called themselves healers. They started to take a look their success at helping people who were sick. When interviewed all of these healers talked about being able to look at the energy around a body. They said you could see blocks in the energy that created illness and if you released these blocks people would recover from their illness.

Curious, a Russian scientist called Semyon Kirlian,^[5] accidentally discovered that this energy field described by healers could be photographed. His technique was called Kirlian photography. His research eventually lead to the further discovery of a different technique, by Dr. Konstantin Korotkov called Gas Distribution Visualisation (GDV).^[6] With the GDV technique scientists were able to study this energy field around the human body, as described by healers. They were able to prove, using the GDV instrument, that it could be determined if a person would get sick and how they would get sick. The research has been so accurate that it is now being studied in about 20 different countries and this equipment is now certified as a medical instrument in Russia.

The belief in an aura is certainly not new and can be traced back to medieval saints and mystics who believed that the aura. This belief is reflected on many religious paintings of not only Christianity but other religions as well. Look at Raphael’s “Madonna del Granduca”^[7] or Angelico’s depiction of the “Coronation of the Virgin.”^[8] Considering that these paintings were being created during the Dark Ages where it was a widely believed and accepted fact the world was flat, I find it quite amazing that depicting an energy field around a saint was treated as normal. Paracelsus, a Swiss physician of the German Renaissance in the 1500’s, said, “The vital fluid is not enclosed in man, but radiates round him like a luminous sphere.”

In 1848, Baron Charles Von Reichenbach of the British Society of Psychical Research^[9] investigated this phenomenon of an energy field around the body and concluded that there was an “unexplained luminosity resembling phosphorescence observed in the region immediately around the magnetic poles (head and feet) and it was visible only to certain individuals.”

In 1911 Dr. Walter J. Kilner^[10] published a book called, ‘The Human Aura’ and in each copy of the book he included a ‘dicyanin screen,’ which made the aura visible to the human eye. Kilner believed that up to ninety-five percent of population could view the human aura using the dicyanin screen, he had developed. This was due to the fact that the more he and his colleagues used the dicyanin screen in their research the more sensitive they became to seeing auras without the screen. As a result of his research, Kilner became a firm believer in the power of studying the aura around the human body. He started to use the dicyanin screen regularly as a tool to help diagnose diseases of the human body which was a highly radical shift in medical procedures of the day.

Bookstores and the internet are brimming with proof of aura’s existence and the effectiveness of energy medicine or integrative medicine. All of this research and literature repeatedly demonstrates and provides proof of what happens if the energy field around the human body is disrupted and the impact that has on physical health.  This body of knowledge and research is turning traditional healthcare as we know it, on its head.

Hospitals like Duke University^[11] and the University of Colorado Hospital^[12]in the United States, just to name a few, now offer integrative healthcare programs to their patients. These programs are becoming more mainstream as more hospitals and clinics offer acupuncture, nutrition, massage, chiropractic, reflexology and body work, to their patients.

The discovery of the microscope lead to the discovery of bacteria which lead to the understanding of disease which lead to the regular use of soap. These three simple items changed the course of healthcare and the well-being of society as we know it today. It also radically changed the way we looked at a puddle of water. Now we have a form of photography that is confirming that aura’s, unseen by most, does in fact exist and it does have an impact on our health.

Dr. Walter J. Kilner said, “There cannot be the smallest doubt as to the reality of the existence of an Aura enveloping human beings, and this will be in a short time a universally accepted fact, now that it can be made visible to any one possessing normal eyesight.”^[13]

It is will be interesting to see what changes there will be to modern medicine in the future as we begin to accept the existence of auras and see it as fact and not fiction. Maybe the study of aura’s will be like a bar of soap and change everything we currently accept as truth and fact.

Atherton Drenth is a clairvoyant medical intuitive and the author of Intuitive Dance. Building, Protecting & Clearing Your Energy, (Llewellyn Worldwide) and Following Body Wisdom. Atherton also appears in the documentary, Voyage to Betterment as one of 12 experts along with other internationally renowned physicians, researchers, and pioneers in the fields of consciousness research and spirituality.

www.athertondrenth.com
www.paradigmcentre.com

[1] Retrieved from: http://explorable.com/discovery-of-bacteria

[2] a report of his sightings and his many detailed drawings still exist today and are on display at the Royal Society of London

[3] Retrieved from: http://explorable.com/semmelweis-germ-theory

[4] Kathryn Senior PhD. Updated: 18 November 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.typesofbacteria.co.uk/how-when-were-bacteria-discovered.html.

[5] Retrieved from: http://www.lightstalking.com/what-is-kirlian-photography-the-science-and-the-myth-revealed

[6] Retrieved from: http://www.gdvsource.com/technology.php; http://www.gdvsource.com/index.php

[7] Retrieved from: http://artandcritique.com/raphael-madonna-del-granduca/

[8]Retrieved from:  http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/coronation-virgin

[9] Retrieved from: http://parapsychologie.info/history.htm

[10] Kilner, Walter J., The Human Atmosphere, or the Aura Made Visible by the aid of Chemical Screens, 1911, reprinted as “The Human Aura” by Citadel Press, NY, 1965.

[11]Retrieved from:  http://www.dukeintegrativemedicine.org/

[12] Retrieved from: http://www.uch.edu/conditions/integrative-medicine/

[13] Kilner, Walter J., The Human Atmosphere, or the Aura Made Visible by the aid of Chemical Screens, 1911, reprinted as “The Human Aura” by Citadel Press, NY, 1965.