"Diseases are not individuals arranged in classes, like cats and dogs, but conditions, growing out of one another... like a dirty and a clean condition, and just as much under our control...I was brought up to believe that smallpox, for instance, was a thing of which there was once a first specimen in the world, which went on propagating itself, in a perpetual chain of descent, just as there was a first dog, (or a first pair of dogs) and that smallpox would not begin itself, any more than a new dog would begin without there having been a parent dog.
Since then I have seen with my own eyes and smelled with my own nose smallpox growing up in first specimens, either in closed rooms or in overcrowded wards, where it could not by any possibility have been caught, but must have begun. I have seen diseases begin, grow up, and turn into one another.
Now, dogs do not turn into cats. I have seen, for instance, with a little overcrowding, continued fever grow up; and with a little more, typhoid fever; and with a little more, typhus, and all in the same ward or hut...
The specific disease doctrine is the grand refuge of weak, uncultured, unstable minds, such as now rule in the medical profession. There are no specific diseases; there are specific disease conditions." Florence Nightengale
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Describing her trip to Egypt in her letters home:
"One goes riding out, and one really feels inclined to believe that this is the kingdom of the devil, and to shudder under this glorious sun, for 'this is his hour and the power of darkness'. I cannot describe it. In Italy one felt they were children, and their dawn was coming; here one feels as if they were demons, and their sun was set...there is hardly any attempt at thatch, and out of these come crawling creatures, half-clothed, even in this country where it is a shame of a woman to show her face. They do not strike one as half-formed beings, who will grow up and grow more complete, but as evil degraded creatures..."
A "sista" and a cracker, huh?
Flo Nightingale
"I was brought up to believe that smallpox, for instance, was a thing of which there was once a first specimen in the world, which went on propagating itself, in a perpetual chain of descent, just as there was a first dog, (or a first pair of dogs) and that smallpox would not begin itself, any more than a new dog would begin without there having been a parent dog."
So she basically does not beleive in the evolution or mutation of viruses...meaning that SIV did not develop into HIV 1 from chimp to human. Or that H1N1 did not develop in the crossover from human to pig to human - but when when two different types of flu viruses get into an animal cell at the same time, the flu virus e.v.o.l.v.e.s because of a swapping of chromosomes and the creates a recombined virus.
...You sure you co-sign with Flo?
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