The Rockefeller Foundation’s 1910 Flexner Report41 recommended centralizing America’s medical schooling, abolishing miasma theory, and reorienting these institutions according to “germ theory”—which held that germs alone caused disease— and the pharmaceutical paradigm that emphasized targeting particular germs with specific drugs rather than fortifying the immune system through healthy living, clean water, and good nutrition. With that narrative in hand, Rockefeller financed the campaign to consolidate mainstream medicine, co-opt the burgeoning pharmaceutical industry, and shutter its
...more
