PARASITIC DISEASES

PARASITIC DISEASES

    There are many kinds of parasitic derangements of children. When we are enlightened enough to separate children and animals--dogs and cats--and keep them from intimate association with each other, the human animal will be better off. This statement will not be very kindly received by dog and cat fanciers, and I suppose it is wasting my voice to dictate it. Most doctors and laymen have not the slightest conception of how many children are laid low by their intimate mingling with animals. Not being wise to this truth, not much thought is given to the subject. I once insulted a very loving father by telling him that his little four-year-old child had developed its liver and intestinal disease from playing with the family dog. The dog was very fond of the child, and vice versa. If the dog was not licking the child, the child was kissing the dog. The child died of hydatid cyst, which means Tenia echinococcas--dog tapeworm. The parasitic infection was developed from the child's association with the dog. It is a very fearful disease when once established, and it is doubtful if any case ever gets well. Just how many people are deranged, more or less, by their association with dogs and cats it is very difficult to say. The ova of parasitic diseases are taken in with food and association with animals.

    When digestion is normal--when the digestive secretions are one hundred per cent normal--parasites have no show in the human body.

    There is this to be said about disease: It comes from ignorance and filth. The human animal bathes little enough, and dogs and cats not at all. If it is impossible for the human animal to keep from developing disease because he is not clean enough, what are the possibilities among the lower animals? It is true that animals have evolved a toleration for certain parasites, both internally and externally, but when dogs die they die from parasitic derangements.

    Children kept in clean houses and fed plain, wholesome food, free from fear of all kinds, free from inoculations of vaccine and serums, and free from association with lower animals, should be ideally well. Children who are properly taken care of at birth will develop sufficient resistance to withstand a reasonable amount of association with animals; but children who are abused in their homes by neglect of bathing, and imprudent and improper eating, are made susceptible to periodic infection from animals. Children who are brought up in that manner are susceptible to so-called contagious diseases. An absolutely normal child will not take any contagious disease.

    What I have said above is rank heresy to the ordinary individual; but I manage to be on that side of the argument nearly all the time and all my life; so a little more or a little less will not kindle the flame of the pyre very much higher.