Many parasites find a habitat in and on the human body and, under certain conditions, these are capable of causing much trouble. Under favorable conditions these parasites multiply very rapidly, whereas, under unfavorable conditions, they multiply slowly, if at all, and appear to do no harm.

Agriculturists and horticulturists know that when plants and trees are deprived of some of the elements of normal nutrition, they become victims of parasites. They can control these to a limited extent by spraying the plants and trees but their attack will continue until the plants and trees are destroyed unless the lacking elements of normal plant nutrition are supplied, after which the plants are able to defend themselves.

This same is true among animals including man. Those of lowered resistance are not able to prevent parasitic invasion. However, as soon as normal resistance is restored the parasites disappear.

Dr. Shew tells us: "The children of the Indians were never known to be troubled with worms; so that, we have reason to believe, that if a hardy course of training and diet were pursued with civilized offspring, such would uniformly be the result in their case as well. Worms are an evidence of debility. They cannot generate in the living body if it is preserved in a truly healthful and vigorous state."--The Hydropathic Family Physician, p. 21.

Tilden declares: "It should not be forgotten that parasites will not find lodgment in the intestinal tract of normally healthy people. To find anyone troubled with any kind of parasitic disease is proof positive that his nerve energies have been broken down, and as a consequence, his digestive power is below normal; hence everything must be done to restore his resistance." "It is impossible for parasites to develop in the intestines of a child or adult unless the digestive secretions are weakened to such an extent that they have no destructive influence on the ova, or eggs of the parasites taken in with the food."

Jennings declared that only a "depravation" of the secretions of these organs gives the parasites a "title" to a "residence" therein. When men become victims of intestinal germs, or when parasites, such as hookworms, infest the intestines of thousands of people, it means that wrong or imprudent eating has been indulged until a favorable intestinal habitat has evolved for the propagation of germs and worms. Tapeworm and hookworm cannot develop in a normal stomach and bowels. Only those have tapeworm, hookworm, and other intestinal parasites, whose secretions have lost their defensive potency. When digestion in the intestine is below normal, parasites flourish; when one is enervated and the powers of elimination and secretion are greatly lowered, parasites may affect the body. When the body's digestive function has given out, the body loses its protection, the ova of the various parasites, taken into the body in food, are not destroyed, because the digestive secretions lack the power to digest them. Hence, they develop in the digestive tract. Reduced alkalinity of the body's fluids favors premature exfoliation of the mucous membranes and this gives opportunity for parasitic invasion of the body itself.

What tells most in parasitic "diseases" is the loss of resisting power and this loss is due to behavior that weakens the powers of the body. The parasite is a notorious weakling. For a higher organism to evidence a pronounced liability to parasitic imposition proves that it has indulged in weakening habits.

False feeding habits determine us in the direction of liaisons of a biologically undesirable kind. They tend to encourage the "idlers" and would-be parasites amongst the world of micro-organisms at the expense of our strenuous and moderate partners. Such feeding habits produce a soil favorable to "infection." Infeeding habits render an organism increasingly liable to parasitic invasion.

There are two ways of life--one the way of industry and cooperation ; the other the way of improvidence and predacity--work and theft, or production and appropriation. Both ways exist in nature, but they lead to opposite goals. The predacious, whether minute or large, prey only upon those forms of life that are unable to offer strong resistance.

Man is provided with power to resist the influences of all animal life below him in the scale of existence. Only sick men--those who have lost their normal resistance--become victims of parasites, animalcules, and germs. Because of the supply of toxic blood to the tissues, these degenerate and lose their resistance to parasites and germs that cannot obtain a foothold in a normal healthy subject.

Health gives the best "immunity" against parasitic "diseases." Supremacy rests upon true fitness, the fitness that spells freedom from degeneracy--integrity--a kind of fitness with which Darwinism and its fictitious "selection" jargon and medicine and its countless forms of vicarious atonement are wholly unacquainted.

Parasitism and its concomitant and coetaneous degeneration are fostered by a superabundance of nutrition, by a "royal diet." Health preeminently depends upon symbiotic support. Carnivores are notoriously hot-beds of parasites and there are parasites that prey upon parasites. The predacious life and its inferior food supplies produce degeneracy and destroy resistance.

Prthagoriscus Mola, the "huge" and "majestic" sun-fish, is a veritable hot-bed of parasitic infection. Geddes and Thompson describe a tuft of barnacles upon his back, the biting isopods, like enormous fleas, upon his skin, the trematodes sucking like leeches upon his eyes; and within they find, "not only his alimentary canal crammed with worms more than food, and his liver changed from its natural brown almost to the likeness of a tangle of white worsted, of which each thread is a tapeworm." Such is the condition of fish, fowl and beast engaged in the service of death and eternal emptiness--the predatory, non-symbiotic feeders of earth. Thus we see that many associations, though apparently compatible and even indispensable, are unreal inasmuch as they are of a retrogressive nature.

Not all whose resistance is impaired are troubled with parasites, but some are. Particularly the poor and those who live in unhygienic, unsanitary surroundings and eat poor or unclean food, and drink polluted water are affected by parasitic "diseases." Filthy houses, dirty beds, lack of body cleanliness, etc., favor the acquisition and development of parasites. The kind of parasite that one will acquire will depend upon what parasites are indigenous to his locality and climate, as well as to the season of the year. Or, one may receive an imported variety from some one else who is infested with them.

It is true that parasitic "diseases" are sometimes, though rarely found in the well-to-do, who live conventionally clean lives. These people have broken down their resistance to parasitic invasion by an unwholesome mode of life and have, through some channel, come in contact with the parasites.

Some parasites are found chiefly in the skin. Before parasites can gain a foot-hold in the skin and thrive therein, there must be a lowering of the powers of life. Nutrition must be abnormal and renewal of tissue slow and imperfect. The skin must be weakened and debilitated and ready to undergo degeneration. In such a condition, the normal scaling of the skin takes place prematurely and the skin does not renew itself promptly and perfectly. This gives opportunity for parasitic invasion. That this is true is proven by the fact that the improvement of the skin by sun-bathing soon ends most parasitic skin "diseases."

Because of a lack of some of the elements and conditions necessary to the production of high-grade tissue, retrogression takes place and parasites find a ready entrance into the skin. It should be easy to comprehend that any influence that impairs the powers of life, and thus impairs and disturbs nutrition, will build a systemic condition favorable to the invading parasitic hosts. It will also be readily seen that in order to bring about a complete and permanent cure of parasitic "diseases," it is necessary to build up the general health and correct all environmental factors that are impairing health.

Parasites are supposed to be conveyed from one person to another in a wide variety of ways--the use of common hair brushes, combs, towels, caps, wearing apparel, sleeping in the same bed or coming in contact in any way with the body or clothing of the infested individual. Some parasites are supposed to be carried by dogs, cats, birds, etc., and spread among men through these agencies. Many find their way into the body in food and drink, usually in the form of eggs. Others like fleas, bed bugs, lice, etc., when they get into a house find many hiding places from which they sally forth, and bother almost every one that stops for a minute in the house. Some, however, seem to be immune to attack by bedbugs, although the room may be full of them and other occupants of the room are much annoyed by them. Some are never annoyed by mosquitoes. This peculiarity is, by some, thought to be hereditary. Skin parasites live upon the skin. They feed upon its tissues and fluids and produce their young in its layers. They thus form a constant source of irritation which causes itching, inflammation and various efforts of the skin to protect itself. These efforts at self-defense on the part of the skin, constitute the symptoms of the "disease" or "diseases" caused by the particular parasite. The excretions of the parasites are, of course, poisonous and form part of the cause of the skin "disease'."

Intestinal parasites live upon the food in these organs. When they get into the body they may find lodgment in the liver, kidneys, lungs, heart, or elsewhere, where they live upon the blood and tissues of their host.

There is but one cure for parasitic "disease" and that is to reestablish digestion and assimilation; then the body will cease to be a welcoming host to various parasitic organisms. Any plan that fails to restore resistance fails. The Rockefeller Institute found a way to free the bowels of hookworms without increasing resistance. The cured people were soon full of hookworms again, for they were living in a manner to convert the body into a habitat for parasites; their body defenses were impaired, and, until their life is corrected and full nerve energy restored, a cure cannot be said to have taken place.