BLIGHT. 125 



seventy-five long years ? But now to my theory of blight, its 

 cause and prevention, and in certain cases perhaps its cure. 



It is well-known that long before bacilli or bacteria were 

 ever heard of, eminent medical authority had declared that 

 few, if any, human beings were perfectly healthy, a close 

 examination always revealing some weak point in every one. 

 If by healthy we mean blood absolutely free from the bacilli 

 or germs of disease, then we may, in view of the wonderful 

 revelations of bacteriology, assert with the utmost confidence, 

 that there is not such a human being on the earth. With all 

 the various germs of malaria floating in the atmosphere, and 

 those of every variety of epidemic that at one time or another 

 has scourged humanity, taken into the blood through the 

 lungs ; the bacilli of typhoid and other malignant fevers intro- 

 duced into the system through milk and water, and once- 

 there, though never developed in numbers sufficient to pro- 

 duce specific attacks, still there, for not only our lives, but, 

 through heredity the lives of our descendants to the remotest 

 generation, is it credible that there exists to-day a single 

 absolutely healthy being ? In the blood of every person who 

 has at any time visited a consumptive friend lurks the dreaded 

 bacilli of that scourge of the human race, and so with all other 

 diseases. That in so few instances they show it by an active 

 outburst is simply due to a want of the proper conditions for 

 the rapid and infinite multiplication of the germs. Thus we 

 see that we are carrying around in our blood chained tigers, 

 so to speak, ready at any moment to devour us, if we slip 

 their chains by furnishing the conditions for an abnormal 

 development. 



But while all this is true of man, science tells us that it is 

 partially true of plants also. But thus far science has failed to 

 determine their relation to plants, or define their exact meth- 

 ods of attack and development in the sap or blood of the tree. 

 The general, if not universal hypothesis is, as stated above, 

 that the bacteria are in the air primarily, and when plants or 

 trees furnish the proper conditions, the phenomena which we 

 call blight, for instance, occurs from an external attack. But 

 reasoning from analogy, is this necessarily so? It is plain 



