The Watchtower’s Half-Century Crusade Against the Germ Theory

Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. Introduction One of the most bizarre Watchtower campaigns was against medicine in general and specifically the germ theory. The crusade against medicine was not primarily a phenomenon only during the Rutherford era but was the dominant Watchtower view from the late 1880s to the early 1950s. Hundreds of articles were published, primarily in the The Golden Age and its successor Consolation, which lambasted orthodox medicine and many of the basic conclusions of modern medical research. Typical Watchtower comments include “sickness abounds . . . and the M.D.’s and dentists have waxed rich at the expense of suffering humanity” (Newcomb 1929:106).…

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