Forrest Maready - Crooked; Man-Made Disease Explained, The incredible story of metal, microbes, and medicine - hidden within our faces.

Crooked

Man-made disease explained

The incredible story of metal, microbes, and medicine hidden within our faces.

by Forrest Maready

Besides historical references, the names, places, and accounts mentioned in this book are used anonymously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2018 by Forrest Maready

Cover typography 2018 by Forrest Maready

Cover photo stock image and posed by model.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Feels Like Fire, an imprint of Feels Like Fire.

ISBN 978-1983816628

Printed in the United States of America

Thank you to my wife & research partner, LeAnne.

This book would not have been possible without your heroic suffering, your indomitable spirit, your inquisitive mind, and your constant support.

There is the unknown and there is the unknowable.

We were made to figure out the difference.

A few years ago when I first started noticing people had crooked faces, I could not have imagined the chase it would lead me on. It started as a simple search for what was causing our lopsided smiles and misaligned eyes, but over the next two years, it would transform and focus every waking (and sometimes sleeping) hour of my existence into an attempt to understand if crooked faces might actually be a common thread that tied all of the modern diseases together.

Who am I to suppose I could discern the answers to riddles that have been vexing the worlds physicians and scientists for two hundred years or more? I am not a scientist. I am not a physician. I am no one, not even a hobbit from the Shire. I studied music and religion in school, playing the compositions of Bach on the pipe organ and dissecting the works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. I excelled at neither.

But my mind was on fire always. A cosmic game of connect-the-dots spinning in my head, latching on to the most trivial details from an important lecture while forgetting all that was significant, storing them in my brain for later retrieval in an organizational system that made no sense. I was always learning just the wrong things at the wrong time.

Eventually, after having acquired enough wrong things and after having connected enough dots, a pattern emerged a curious constellation that was both intriguing and horrifying. It became clear to me much of the sickness and suffering that currently plagues humanity was man-made all due to an entirely noble attempt to help each other with a decidedly ignoble result.

This book this story, represents the journey I undertook, the connections I began to see, and the theories (or hypotheses as some of my actual science friends will insist they be called) describing how our bodies are not only being harmed, but more importantly how they might be healed.

The ideas presented in this book are theories, or hypotheses, if you will. They have come from a very comprehensive study of medical history and the most recent scientific research available. I may speak with confidence within as if I am sure of everything I say. Without the encumbrance of putting a giant disclaimer on every page, realize that I do not know if these things are true. I believe them to be true. Indeed, I am terrified they may be true. But it is important that they be discussed, mulled over, researched and either tossed in the trash or acknowledged. If my theories are wrong, I can go back to looking for a nice hobbit-hole in which to smoke my pipe. If they are right, well then perhaps there is more hope for healing and recovery than any of us thought possible. Perhaps we are ready to depart this age of man-made disease after all.

In all of human history the pocks and pustules, the fevers and fatigue, the nausea and neuropathy every symptom of disease we have ever experienced is the result of the body trying to rid itself of a perceived invader. Even the fatigue and ensuing sleep that often went along with being sick were specifically requested by the body in such a way as to maximize a response. Whether the intruder was a trivial invader or posed a genuine threat to life, disease was the necessary side effect of healing.

It may seem that today is no different than two hundred years ago, which was no different than two thousand or two million years ago. It may appear that all of the effects of disease we see today are simply the body recognizing an invader and trying to either kill or expel it. Whether the attack be viral or bacterial, our body may give the appearance it is responding to the assault the exact same way today it did thousands of years ago.

What if all of the modern diseases that have appeared in the last two centuries actually follow a different pattern? What if something unique happened recently that in the previous millions of years of history had never happened before?

As it turns out, something did happen. Something did change that I believe will one day divide the whole of human history in two. Humans began digging ore from the earths crust and extracting the metals contained inside a process that would help create the biggest leap in industrial, agricultural and technological progress the world is likely to ever see.

But that is not the demarcation. During this period, humans began to ingest and inhale these metals. At first, accidentally through the lead water pipes of 3 rd and 4 th century BC Mesopotamia or the mining of the materials themselves. Later, the metals would be found to have some medicinal value, and humans began to ingest them purposefully. Their danger became well known, but with the knowledge of the human body and disease so primitive, the extent of damage the metals were doing was woefully underestimated.

The era of metallic medicine truly began in the late 1700s, when old ideas about how to treat sickness experienced a revival and led to frequent prescriptions of mercury and arsenic containing pills, tonics and powders. The next 100 years of human civilization would be a horrible chapter in the history of medical care, as the treatments used during this period undoubtedly killed far more people than they saved.

Despite this suffering, toxicity from heavy metals was muted until the late 1800s due to the methods by which they were administered through ingestion. Because they were taken orally, most of the heavy metals were blocked by the intestines and excreted before they caused much harm. This might destroy ones teeth and bowels in the process, but it achieved the desired effect to purge whatever might be ailing the body (along with everything else in the intestines).

If it seemed ineffective at curing the ailment, dosing of the mercuric medicines might be increased until salivation was achieved. Inevitably, enough of the metal would be absorbed into the body from whence a thousand different maladies might spring forth. Its little wonder the 1800s is known less for its medical miracles and more for its asylums and fainting rooms.

In the late 1800s, the toxicity of metals would exponentially increase. The syringe, having recently gained popularity with morphine injections, was to create a more direct pathway into the body. While the intestines were an efficient barrier, the rest of the body was not. Injections bypassed all of the sophisticated protection of the gut and gave metals free entry directly into the vulnerable organs inside. Even the kidneys and their miraculous abilities of filtration struggled to excrete tiny amounts of injected metal.

Before this time, the bodys immune system had only organic matter to deal with. Its white blood cells could enclose and destroy any microbe it encountered. Metals present a unique series of challenges the body does not have an answer for. White blood cells cannot destroy it, so the metal will exist as a toxin inside the body until it is converted into another form or excreted both of which might happen over a period of years, even decades, rather than hours or days.