Inspired by Fort to dismiss the germ theory.
Guy Fred Rogers died in the summer of 1952. At the time, he was living in Gainesville, Florida, with his wife, Nell Rogers. He had lived throughout the Southeast corner of the United States for most of his life, moving often. Rogers had been involved in radical politics and developing alternative theories of medicine. He is recorded several times in the pages of Doubt, the Fortean Society magazine, throughout the late 1940s and into the early 1950s.
Late in 1951, he and Nell published what would stand as their magnum opus: The Medical Mischief, You Say!: Degerminating the Germ Theory. It was a relatively short pamphlet, supplemented with excerpts from other writers, such as Bernar MacFadden—the physical culturalist who influenced Fortean Scott Nearing to take up vegetarianism, and the Naturopath and Fortean George S. White. The book dismissed the germ theory of disease, and embraced, instead, a naturopathic emphasis on food and healthy habits. But the germ theory was only the starting point of a critique that encompassed medicine, science, American society, war, commercialism, and capitalism. These were issues that had consumed them for decades and fit them easily into the left-libertarian tradition that supported so much of the Fortean Society.
Guy Fred Rogers died in the summer of 1952. At the time, he was living in Gainesville, Florida, with his wife, Nell Rogers. He had lived throughout the Southeast corner of the United States for most of his life, moving often. Rogers had been involved in radical politics and developing alternative theories of medicine. He is recorded several times in the pages of Doubt, the Fortean Society magazine, throughout the late 1940s and into the early 1950s.
Late in 1951, he and Nell published what would stand as their magnum opus: The Medical Mischief, You Say!: Degerminating the Germ Theory. It was a relatively short pamphlet, supplemented with excerpts from other writers, such as Bernar MacFadden—the physical culturalist who influenced Fortean Scott Nearing to take up vegetarianism, and the Naturopath and Fortean George S. White. The book dismissed the germ theory of disease, and embraced, instead, a naturopathic emphasis on food and healthy habits. But the germ theory was only the starting point of a critique that encompassed medicine, science, American society, war, commercialism, and capitalism. These were issues that had consumed them for decades and fit them easily into the left-libertarian tradition that supported so much of the Fortean Society.