Again, the blight is always most persistent
under the shade of trees or tall hedges, or where the bine is over
luxuriant, when owing to the exclusion of light and air the plant is
unable to elaborate its natural safeguard.
Fertilizers not well balanced as to their constituents, and containing
an excess of nitrogen, act as stimulants without supplying the
minerals necessary for perfect health. The effect is the same as that
produced in man by an excess of alcohol and a deficiency of nourishing
food, the health of the subject suffers in both cases, leaving a
predisposition to disease.
Reasoning by analogy, these causes affecting the success or failure of
plants give us the clue to the remedies for bacterial disease in man.
Disease is the consequence and penalty of life under unnatural or
unfavourable conditions, which should first receive attention and
improvement. When in spite of improved conditions disease persists,
specifics must be sought. The conditions which produce disease in the
vegetable world are fought by the active principle of each plant, and
inasmuch as the germ diseases of man are probably, though distantly,
related to those which affect vegetable life, the specific protections
of plants should be exploited for the treatment of human complaints.
This, of course, has for long been a practice, but possibly more
success might be achieved by careful research to identify each
distinct bacterial disease in man with its co-related distinct disease
in plants, so as to utilize as a remedy for the former the natural
protection which the latter indicates.
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