The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1885-10-24
PARASlTICAL.
The Poison Which Is Potent in Matters
of Human Health.

1t is a singular thing to those of our
number who think knowledge begins
with us to find that the germ theory, as
it is styled, was propoundcd and dis
cussed more than two hundred years
ago as one of the hypothesis accounting
for the plague, that otherwise unac-
countable visitation, and that in the en-.
sung century Reaumur, Linneus, and
other scientific people quite fully ac-
cepted it, so far as its progress was then
apparent.
The existence of microscopic life is
something that was revealed to us in the
first days of the microscopes fit and
proper use, and it is not impossible that
discovery will yet 60 very much farther
in that direction. When we find that
minute organisms, hardly more than
infnitesimal bright points under the
strongest lens, exist in the centre of a
lump of chalk rent from the very mid
die of some great mass, full of vitality,
and capable of producing important
Preventative changes in substances with
which they come in contact, we can
form some approach to a conception of
the universally of life, and of the diff
Guilty, if not the impossibility, of escap-
ing its most disastrous forms. That
much of this life is serviceable and ben
efcial is apparent, and that much is also
injurious and poisonous is equally APP
parent. 1t seems almost like an asser-
ton of positive malevolent force in the
world, this poisonous microscopic life,
when viewed with reference to its pos
sibilities, in the multitude of deathly
diseases thus created, and in the fact
that just before death, and not just after,
the putrefactive poison is often found to
have begun its malignant work; but as
nobody seriously doubts that good is to
overcome evil in the whole cosmos, so
the determination of these poisonous
powers is something to be looked for,
and to be worked for, by the doctrine
Of exclusion, by the elision of favorable
circumstances of development, the
elimination of the malevolent germ
from among created things by the de-
struction of the conditions which nur-
ture it and favor its continuance and
propagation, till the disease producing
germ shall one day become as extinct as
the dodo
Every physician knows that bacteria
are to be found swimming along their
fatal way in the veins Of patients in ty.
phoid, scarlet, puerperal and other fe-
vers, to say nothing of smallpox, diph.
liberia, measles, septicemia, and the
rest, that they are of material substance,
and that they propagate each after its
kind and not after another, showing ac-
tive force and individual existence.
This individual existence and continu.
ing active force, in fact, is seen to exist
in the earliest and most minute form OF
life, in the initial atom of bioplasm, as
one may say. The old distich in rela-
ton to the great tleas that have little
heas "to worry and to bite 'em, while
little fleas have lesser feas, and so nd
infnjt,tna," if possibly vulgar, is GER
tainly true, and shows that the idea of
the animal parasite is not at all novel
one. Even the little fly has its parasite,
that may be observed when he dies on
the window-pane, and hangs glued there
in tiny, fuzzy mould.
The capabilty for evil, not alone in
matters of human health, but even ia
the financial affairs of the world, which
these infinitesimal, atoms of life exert, is
to be understood from the circumstances
that the muscadine, the parasite of tht
silk-worm, has cut down production o
silk in France from an annual amour
of hundred and thirty million francs
to thirty millions only. The oidiun
meanwhile some time since as good a
exterminated the vine in Madeira, many
of the vineyards there having been re
planted with the supposedly yet unin
fected vines of California; and The smu
in wheat and the rust in cotton are para
sitical concerns that every year do thei
own damage.
Parasitical growth must needs AWAY
be an unhealthy growth, since it is diff
cult to believe that any created thin!
. has more life than it needs for its owl
uses, and consequently has none to civ
away and supply the wants and uses O
{ the parasite. To avoid this parasites
/ growth, or to destroy it, then, demand
, our best efforts, let us find it where W
, may; and regarding it as malevolen
1 and malignant enemy, it is somethin
+: curious to see that the cleanliness whic
. is next to goodness is its only EXTERN
/ nator Plenty of water. then plenty c
e sunshine, plenty of ART great clean,
d ing processes of nature-will be on
l safeguards against our general enemies
V the especial enemy needing still NOR
d especial measures. People who see pa
= ticular visitations of an angry Prov
e dence in the mortal diseases that 70
: their homes of their chiefest treasure
Y should look to it first, and make SUI
n that they themselves are not the angr
= providence, with choked drains, fol-
V closets, decaying vegetable heaps in III
Il used and unaired cellars, or with III
i. cleansed refrigerators, the gathere