Knaggs was influenced by Antoine Béchamp and believed that germs were not the cause of disease but the products of tissue breakdown. He held pseudoscientific and vitalistic ideas. An article in the "Medical History" journal noted that Knaggs believed that the "human body took in three streams of "solar life essence", as light, as air, and as food and water: and that uncooked vegetables were "fully charged with magnetism" drawn from sun, earth and water." His vitalistic ideas were ridiculed in the "British Medical Journal" as unscientific.