Germs Are Not Our Enemy

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Germs Are Not Our Enemy: Why the NEW Terrain Medicine Is Best for Optimal Health
By Marizelle Arce, ND
Arcebel Press

If you have read Virus Mania (Engelbrecht and others) or The Final Pandemic (Mark and Samantha Bailey), you may ask why we need an­other book on germ versus terrain theory. Well, germ theory has been around since the 1800s, so a lot of “unlearning” still needs to take place.

Germs Are Not Our Enemy has a place in this important task of reeducating the public and many medical professionals. It may help reach those who dutifully get their annual flu shot, wear masks on public transportation and call in sick to avoid passing on a “bug.” What a different world we’d have if we lost our fear of germs! This is naturopath Marizelle Arce’s mission, and ours, should we choose to accept it.

Arce kicks things off with pleomorphism, the idea that bacteria and fungi alter their ap­pearance under certain toxic conditions. This sets the stage for the fact that most diseases have to do with the environment inside the body. As Arce puts it, “Diseases aren’t caught from microbes outside the body. Microbes like bacteria and fungi are products of the changing of the environment within.” Are we unwittingly labeling as “viruses” organisms that have shape-shifted within us? Have we been blaming for­eign invaders for what are simply products of the body’s innate and natural defense mechanisms?

Pasteur got the ball rolling with the “one-germ-one-disease” idea. He not only got it wrong but intentionally manipulated his experi­ments, yet somehow his perspective has shaped conventional medicine’s approach and public opinion on germs ever since. Western medi­cine also views the body as a machine; when a body part wears out or becomes dis-eased, it advises replacing it with a new part (say a mechanical knee or hip) without exploring why the body began breaking down in the first place. It overlooks the body’s complexity, displays no curiosity about how bodies heal and ignores epigenetics; instead it promotes fear of enemy attacks on a fragile “machine” vulnerable to assault. Traditional cultures, Arce says, see the body as “part of nature and the cosmos, but one that is its own microcosm that constantly interacts with nature.”

She points to the many dissenters who have challenged the notion of contagion and mecha­nistic germ theory, from Florence Nightingale (convinced that illness resulted from “poor environmental conditions, the buildup of filth, putrefaction and decay in hospital wards, lack of exposure to clean air and sunlight, and [lack of] fresh water to clean wounds”) to Dr. Weston A. Price. About smallpox, once considered (and by many, still considered) contagious, Dr. Price stated: “The [Native Americans] died of small­pox because they expelled their blood salts by the use of liquor introduced by [Europeans] in excess without replenishing salt in due propor­tions.” Price considered the blisters the result of an imbalance of salts and proteins. Arce also re­examines other diseases considered contagious, such as cholera and typhoid, and in each case, identifies a plausible terrain theory explanation.

In the chapter, “The Better Way to Create Optimal Health,” Arce lifts up many truths that align with WAPF for cultivating health and well-being. She even includes a list of terms that can replace old ways of thinking and speaking. Instead of, “I caught a cold,” we can say, “I need to detox, upgrade, purge or cleanse.” Though the food section is not strong, Arce reminds us that to assist the body’s efforts in restoring equilib­rium: “Food is the real medicine. Toxins and trauma that alter our bodies’ terrain are the real sources of disease.” Consider reading and then sharing the book with those who are still afraid of germs. Maybe you can give it to them before the so-called “cold and flu season”! This book merits a thumbs up for its educational value and practical, applicable recommendations.

This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Fall 2025

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