PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 57 
that they all tend to produce decayed matter on the surface of 
the body, and this matter is sometimes situated too deeply to be 
cleared away by ablution. Here Providence has prepared the 
parasite to eat it away or to be sown into, and, so to speak, 
nourish it away. Where the parasite is vegetable there is a soil 
produced; in that soil the parasite thrives, and it carries away 
the soil until at length, in many cases—the common ringworm for 
instance—though nothing is done to remove it, the whole soil is 
after a few years absorbed by the parasite, and the disease is 
cured by the parasite—cured by its own agency irrespective of 
the physician. Now, there is a tendency in all diseases to be 
cured by nature. There never was a fever or any other disease 
in which there was not to be found (if you would search for it) 
an effort of nature to remove that disease. We are apt some- 
times to be blind to this; but, if we have anything to do as 
medical men, it is to find out what nature is doing to assist 
nature when she seems feeble, and to check her when she seems 
to be doing too much—for, strange to say, nature often does too 
much. Sometimes to relieve inflammation she produces gangrene ; 
gangrene would destroy life, and therefore we must cut off the 
gangrene. Sometimes parasites do too much, and, as Dr. Tilbury 
Fox has rightly remarked, they produce disease ; but they do not 
originate disease, for disease always originates them. I deny 
that the so-called new class of diseases called parasitic diseases 
are a class at all, and I demur to the term altogether. If the 
term means that diseases are produced by parasites I deny it 
im toto. The disease forms the anides, a soil or food for the 
parasite, and the parasite comes to feed upon it; the disease is 
there before, or the parasite could not be there. But then, if 
what is meant by “parasitic diseases” is that they are not 
diseases produced by parasites; that they are diseases attended 
by parasites, incidentally or accidentally, then I maintain that 
there is no distinction, for every disease is accompanied by 
parasites. There never was a disease of animal or vegetable 
matter that was not attended by parasites, or for which some 
parasite has not been prepared to carry away the results of the 
disease, and it is only because we shut our eyes to one half of 
nature while we are dreaming of the other half that we do not 
see these things plainly. It is a law of nature that Providence 
sends no evil in the shape of a disease for which it does not send 
the remedy ; and, therefore, [ am sorry to have observed that 
many clever men both here and abroad have taken upon them- 
selves to say that there is a distinct class of skin diseases pro- 
duced by parasites. They might as well say that there was a 
distinct class of eye diseases, of brain diseases, or nose, or any 
other diseases. These diseases, in common with all others, are 
attended with parasites, as may be frequently discovered by the 
microscope, which is nothing but a peep into nature. He con- 
cluded by stating that if any of the members were desirous of 
