An Essay – On how medicine
ignored Claude Bernard’s milieu
intérieur and chose to fight germs
instead of tending gardens
By UNBEKOMING
Sept 13, 2025, 5:01am
From section 13:
Science has proven what Béchamp suspected: we’re not individuals but ecosystems. The microbiome revolution should have ended medicine’s war metaphors. Instead, we acknowledge the facts while ignoring their implications.
You’re 10% human by cell count. The rest is microbial. These aren’t passengers but partners, performing functions our cells can’t. They synthesize vitamins, break down toxins, regulate immunity, influence mood. Destroying them has consequences we’re only beginning to understand.
Antibiotics don’t just kill “bad” bacteria. They devastate microbial ecosystems that took years to establish. One course of antibiotics can alter gut composition for months or permanently. We’re creating microbial wastelands then wondering why chronic disease explodes.
The hygiene hypothesis reveals our cleanliness obsession backfires. Children raised in sterile environments develop more allergies, asthma, autoimmune conditions. They need early microbial exposure to train their immune systems. Our war on germs creates immunological ignorance.
Yet medicine continues carpet-bombing microbial gardens. Antibiotics for viral infections. Antiseptics for healthy skin. Antimicrobials in everything from soap to socks. We’re so committed to killing germs that we can’t stop despite mounting evidence of harm.
Terrain medicine sees microbes as Bernard should have: indicators of internal conditions. Pathogenic overgrowth signals terrain disruption. Instead of killing microbes, we should ask why the terrain allowed their proliferation.
Your internal ocean’s pH, temperature, nutrient levels, and waste accumulation determine which microbes thrive. Change the terrain, change the population. Create conditions for beneficial microbes, and pathogenic ones can’t establish dominance.
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[…]
Bernard’s internal ocean still holds medicine’s future. Not as battlefield but as garden. Not for defense but for cultivation. The experiment continues, waiting for medicine to finally understand what Bernard almost saw: health emerges from tending our internal sea.
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