Abstract
No one can doubt that infection with parasites and predatory microbes is common in wild Nature, both among plants and animals, but that is not tantamount to saying that disease is common. For disease, whether constitutional, environmental, functional, or parasitic, means disintegrative or deteriorative disturbances of the normal balanced metabolism of the organism. Speaking of animals some years ago, the late Sir Ray Lankester said that he knew with certainty of only one microbic disease in wild Nature—a bacterial disease of sandhoppers. Many parasites—if not most—seem to do little harm to their host, unless that becomes somehow enfeebled, for example, by man's over-crowding or over-sheltering. In many cases, the parasite establishes an innocuous modus vivendi with its host, though it may become harmful if man transfers it to a new hospitality. Moreover, many so-called parasites (the concept has become woolly) are really predatory organisms devouring the plant or animal from within, as a beast of prey does from without. Such predatory intruders may destroy the victim, but they do not bring about disease. All evidence from crops and plantations and the like must be excluded as irrelevant to my point that wild Nature is characteristically marked by exuberant positive health. But this is not to be taken as a dogmatic assertion that there is no disease in wild Nature, and Mr. Ramsbottom's expert caveat is very welcome.
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[Letters to the Editor]. Nature 127, 630 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/127630b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/127630b0
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