River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1890-08-07
REGARDING PARAslTism.
A Never-Failing Cause of Death to Ami
NAL and Vegetable Life.

Never-Failing Cause of Death to AMI
NAL and Vegetable Life.
Every one is familiar with the fact
that all tho higher forms of animal ami
vegetable life are infested with innu-
merable parasites-a name given to
those animalcule or plants which are
nourished wholly or in part at the ex-
pense of other living organisms. We
can not go through a forest without
finding the noblest trees in the embraces
of clinging vines, and there are large
tracts of the most productive soil where
different forms of parasitic life flourish
so abundantly that the higher organ
isms find existence impossible. The
same fatal conditions threaten all va
rieties of animal life, and countless in
dividuals of the more helpless of the
brute creation, unable TO protect them
selves from these little enemies, live in
constant suffering, while multitudes an
nually die from their ravages. Although
all are familiar with this general fact,
only the naturalist knows the wide ex-
tent of parasitic diffusion, or the in
juries which il causes to animal life
and health. Not only in flesh and
blood, but in eye and brain, do these
fatal creatures exist Man, with all
his medical skill, can not rid himself of
a multitude of invisible and disgusting
creatures which live at the expense of
their victims health, sapping their
strength and causing premature decay
and death.
The same conditions are still more
prevalent in the social body. Para
sitism is clearly defined here, as wide
in its extent and as fatal its ravages, as
throughout the animal and vegetable
world. A multitude of creatures exist
whose nature is essentially parasitic;
they derive no subsistence from origi-
nal and natural sources, they serve no
useful purposes in themselves, they are
excrescences clinging to and feeding
upon the social body, they sap its
strength, they undermine its health,
they cause decay and death. Certain
classes of them are easily recognized.
The criminal class, the beggars and the
idlers are well known to be wholly and
essentially parasitic in their nature, but
the generalization is far wider than this.
Whenever there is any individual who
draws his subsistence from the public
and gives no adequate payment in re-
turn he is nothing more or less than a
parasite. This is the classification of
the panderer, of the eXtortioner so far
as he EFFORTS unjust gain from any
source, of the lawyer who prostitutes
his abilities in behalf of any cause in
furious to society, of the politician who
seeks his own end regardless of public
interests, of the saloon-keeper who
stimulates that he may make pecuniary
gain by satisfying the unhealthy anpe-
tites of his victims, of the minister who
tones down his divine message that it
may be more agreeable to the influen-
tial sinners, of the business man who
reaps where he has not sOwn, or
who by artful scheming puts I'M
just prices upon the necessaries.
of life. All these are instances of that
partial parasitism of which nature gives
US so many examples. Every profess
sion furnishes its illustration of the
fatal parasite-the quack in medicine,
the charlatan in theology or philosophy,
the scandal-monger in society or jour
nalism. While no man has any right to
Judge another, the unerring fact of
every ones life and actions will show
plainly enough whether he belongs to
this class or not, and without under
taking TO pass judgment on any indi-
vidual, it is perfectly correct to say that
every one is a parasite who does not
draw his existence from some original
and natural source, or who does not
render society an adequate return for
his support. Providence (R. L. Jour
nal.