THE MICROBE IN CRIME AND DISEASE.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1522, 12 March 1886, Page 4

THE MICROBE IN CRIME AND DISEASE.

We are sorry to see that Professor Meandraof Outopos, has left the direct walks of medical Fcience and become sceptical as to the efficiency of the microbe in all cases. In his great work on the "Destiny of Man," he says: *We see tottering to its fall the old-fogy notion that man is a responsible being, the mighty endeavours of 10,000 doctors, armed with microscopes and bottles of vesuvin, have demonstrated the energy of the übiquitous bacillas, and have proved—beyond the shadow of a doubt—that all sickness, disease, and crime owes its origin to minute germs which float ceaselessly in the atmosphere seeking for a nidus Looking a few feet further down in the voluminous MS. of this great thinker, we find the following: "We see the gradual metamorphosis of our prisons into hospitals, and find heredity and the bacillus making away with the. Inst vestige of freedom of tho will ; the criminal like the drunkard is no longer amenable to law, he has simply an unfortunate diathesis. But a change may come, the mutations of humanity are constant, and the court-room of the future may shr w us a scene like the following : Judge—" What is the matter with the prisoner P"

Officer —" Found him sitting on a stoop holding on to his head." " Where were you last night, prisoner?"

" I was at home, sir. I don't drink 1 had been walking in the sac and felt tiny.* " Wbere was your umbrell aP" " I haven't pot one, «ir."

° D >n't you know that it's a?ainst the law to wnlk in the sun without an umbrella ? You may go this time, but I caution you to buy an umbrella or keep on the shady side in future." «« N*xt r

"Found this man clinpinp- to a lamp post, rubbing his abdomen and groaning " What's the matter, prisoner ?" " I bad jmt been to Robinson's restaurant and felt sick."

" What did you have for dinner ?"

•• Beefsteak and mince pie."

" Officer did you make a microscopial examination of the mince pie at Robinson's ?"

" I did, sir; there were no fungoid growths visible under a power of 240 diameters; the fat used Margarine's test, and the record sbowrd that the pics had not been made for more than four days. The prisoner ate a whole pie of legal dimensions."

" A whole pie 1 don't you know, prisoner, that it's against the law to eat over two cats of mince pie at one sitting ? I fine you $lO and will give you sixty days if I see you here again; there is getting to be too much sickneti in this district. Clerk, if that choleri cue is able to stand up send hini in here for trial,"