St. Landry democrat., 1885-10-24
PARAslTIcAL.
The Poison Which Is Potent ia Matters
of Human Health.

IL is singular CulHS5 W tAoSo VI OuG
number who think knowledge begins
with us to find that the germ theory, as
it is styled, was propounded 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. Linn@us, and
other scientific people quite fully &C.
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 go very much farther
in that direction. When we find that
minute organisms. hardly more than
infinitesimal 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 conception of
the universally of life, and of the diff
Guilty, if not the impossibility, of escap-
ING it's most disastrous forms. That
much of this life is serviceab1e and BEN
eficial is apparent, and that much is also
Injurious and poisonous is equally APP
parent. 1t seems almost like an asser-
ton of positive maleyolent force in the
world, this poisonous microscopic life,
when viewed with reference to it's pos
sibilities, in the multitude of deathly
diseases thus created, and in the fact
that Just before death, and not just after,
the putrefactiye 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, septic8mia, 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 fieas that have little
aeas ''to worry and to bite 'em, while
little aeas have lesser feas, and SO nd
iaJf9ituns," if possibly vulgar, is GER
tainly true, and shows that the idea of
the animal parasite is not at all a 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 in
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 the
sllk-worm, has cut down production OF
silk in France from an annual amount
OF hundred and thirty million francs
to thirty millions only. The oidium
meanwhile some time since as good as
extermlnased the vine in Madeira, many
OF the vineyards there having been re.
planted with the supposedly yet unin-
tected vines of California; and the smut
IN wheat and the rust in cotton are para
sitlcal concerns that every year do their
own damage.
Parasltical growth must needs ALWAYS
be an unhealthy growth, since it is diff
cult. TO believe that any created thing
has more life than it needs for its own
uses, and consequently has none to give
away and supply the wants ard uses OF
the parasite. To avoid this parasitical
growth, or to destroy it. then, demands
our best efforts, let us find it where we
may; and regarding it as maleyolent
ana malignant enemy, it is something
curious to see that the cleanliness which
is next to goodness is its only externi-
nator. Plenty of water, then plenty of
sunshine, plenty of air the great cleans.
ing processes of nature-will be our
safeguards against our general enemies,
the especial enemy needing still more
especial measures. People who see par.
tlcular yisitations of an angry Provi-
dence in the mortal diseases that rob
their homes of their ehiefest treasures
should look to it first, and make sure
that they themselves are not the angry
providence. with choked drains, foul
closets, decayiDg vegetable heaps in I'm.
used and unaired cellars, or with un-
cleansed refrigerators The cath cred