Fifty years before germ theory revolutionized Western medicine, a linguist named John Gilchrist became convinced that his longstanding mental illness was caused by a microbial infection of his brain, and that microscopic pathogens cause most of the world's diseases. The book that he wrote in 1833 to promote this theory is the earliest published germ theory of mental illness, and one of the earliest published germ theories per se. The work, portions of which are written in verse, was ignored in its time and has been forgotten in ours. Notwithstanding his mental illness, or perhaps even because of it, the author came remarkably close to an accurate description of microbiology-decades ahead of mainstream scientists. This forgotten text suggests some intriguing and hitherto unrecognized ways in which the histories of psychiatry, alternative medicine, and illness writing might be intertwined with the history of germ theory.

中文翻译：

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我们血液和大脑中最小的怪物：1833 年患者的精神病细菌理论

在细菌理论彻底改变西方医学的 50 年前，一位名叫约翰·吉尔克里斯特 (John Gilchrist) 的语言学家确信，他的长期精神疾病是由大脑的微生物感染引起的，而微观病原体导致了世界上大多数疾病。他在 1833 年撰写的宣传这​​一理论的书是最早发表的精神疾病细菌理论，也是最早发表的细菌理论之一。这部作品的一部分是用诗句写成的，在那个时代被忽视了，在我们的时代已经被遗忘了。尽管他患有精神疾病，或者甚至可能正因为如此，作者还是非常接近于对微生物学的准确描述——领先于主流科学家几十年。这段被遗忘的文本暗示了精神病学历史的一些有趣且迄今为止未被认识的方式，