CHAPTER III. 



INHERITANCE OF DISEASE. 



My personal experience first led me to believe, and my 

 personal investigations afterward proved conclusively, 

 that in all cases of disease, whether in plant or in ani- 

 mal, there is some form of micro-organism connected 

 with it, and that this will increase and propagate itself, 

 and that, too, when it is transferred to a healthy organi- 

 zation of the same kind. If I take seed from an un- 

 healthy, sickly, yellowish-looking plant and sow it, and 

 if it germinates, unhealthy, sickly, and yellowish-look- 

 ing plants will be the result. The germs of disease were 

 there. ^^Rust," which is common on oats and some 

 other cereals, is nothing more than a fungus and disease 

 germ. Farmers recognize this, and they call for rust- 

 proof seed. That does not imply that the plants grown 

 from such seed are not subject to disease, but it does 

 mean that the germs are not already in the seed. It 

 means that the seed is healthy, that it came from 

 healthy plants, and that it contains no microbes, fungi, 

 or micro organisms. Acting upon similar knowledge, 

 he plants only healthy potatoes ; he breeds his sheep, 

 cattle, and horses only from healthy stock ; and, in 

 short, in all his farming operations he avoids, as far as 

 possible, contact with disease in any and every form. 

 In doing this he is simply avoiding the transfer of dis- 

 ease germs or microbes. 



The same thing occurs in the human race. It may not 

 be going too far to call it a law of Nature that diseased 

 parents have diseased offspring, in which case the chil- 

 dren have inherited a constitution which favors the 

 growth of the same microbes, or they have received from 

 their mother's organization the actual germs which de- 



