The Mystery of the White Blood Cells
Many people that know me know I like to talk about the White Blood Cells and their role in the body. It's a favorite topic of mine because the idea that they are not what we have been led to believe intrigues me. Those little particles that float in and out of the blood and lymph have confused all of modern medicine into believing they are the "vigilant policemen of the vital domain". They are said to be phagocytes (germ eaters) and part of that defense system of the body that is misnamed the immune system. This was not always the belief however and for very good reasons were these ideas challenged when their initial proponent, Rudolph Virchow, sought to solve the mystery on whether the leukocytes (white blood corpuscles) are actually pus corpuscles. Corpuscles, by the way, means only bodies. The technical name for the white blood corpuscle is leukocyte while the technical name for the red blood corpuscle is haemocyte (from haem which contains iron and binds oxygen giving it the red appearance.
Over 150 years ago, there was a great debate on whether these leukocytes were actually pus corpuscles and it was Virchow, the pre-eminent physiologist of his day who rose to the challenge to settle the dispute. Here are his words, as recorded and transcribed in
Cellular Pathology (a collection of lectures Prof. Virchow gave to settle these disputes):
Under all circumstances this layer resembles pus in appearance, and since, as we have already seen, the colourless blood-cells individually are constituted like pus-corpuscles, you see that we are liable not only in the case of a healthy person to take colourless blood-cells for pus-corpuscles, but still more so in pathological conditions when the blood or other parts are full of these elements. You can imagine how apt the question is to present itself, which has already been seriously raised by Addison and Zimmermann, whether pus-corpuscles are not merely extravasated colourless blood-cells, or vice versa, whether the colourless blood-cells found within the vessels are not pus-corpuscles which have been admitted into them from the exterior. We are here called upon for the first time to make the practical application of the principles which I laid down with regard to the specific nature and heterology of elements (p. 92). A pus-corpuscle can be distinguished from a colourless blood-cell by nothing else than its mode of origin. If you do not know whence it has come, you cannot say what it is; you may conceive the greatest doubt as to whether you are to regard a body of the kind as a pus or a colourless blood-corpuscle. In every case of the sort the points to be considered are, where the body belongs to, and where its home is. If this prove to be external to the blood, you may safely conclude that it is pus; but if this is not the case, you have to do with blood-cells.
That's the criterior which changed the course of medicine till this very day! Virchow acknowledges in Cellular Pathology that the white blood corpuscle and the pus corpuscle are the same in every way and even tells of various experiments showing how.
It was Mechnikov who advanced the phagocyte theory and actually won the Nobel Prize for it. This was in early 1900's but even during his Nobel Prize lecture, he acknowledged all the great opposition to his ideas.
This error has proven tremendous for it covers up all of the various illinesses that people suffer and have been led to believe their own bodies are attacking themselves (auto-immune diseases i.e. lupus) when in reality the leukocytes are doing what they do, wreak havoc by releasing toxins into the body, cause inflammation, cause circulatory constipation, etc. etc.
In times of wellness the blood (of a meat eater) will contain about 1 leukocyte to every 200 or more red blood cells (much less in vegans) while in times of illness there can be as many as 1:20! In short term bases where the leukocytes are numerous it is called leukocytosis where on the long term basis, it is called leukemia which we know is a Cancer! When a woman has her menses and thick white substances comes out first they call that leukorreah because it's the pus/white blood corpuscles coming out as waste. When you eat cooked foods or meat, the body goes into what is called digestive leukocytosis where the leukocytes crowd the digestive system shortly after consuming these foods.
The reason that a meat eater has considerably more leukocytes than a vegan or one on a mucusless diet is because it is the foods that these particles come from, particularly the partially digested fibrious elements of the food that enters the circulation. It is this material, and it's parent serum albumin that bacteria propagate on. Bacteria are Nature's scavengers which gather the harmful elements of the blood and consume them. It is in the destruction of these pathogenic elements of the blood that releases histamine (hence runny noses, etc) and other toxins as it is being consumed by bacteria and both are destroyed - the bacteria from the toxins and the leukocytes from being eaten. It takes about 25 bacteria to consume the largest leukocytes. In reality the phagocytic theory needs to be flipped upside-down and inside-out to really get a picture of what's going on inside the body.
There is so much in this subject to cover so I'll call this Part One.
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