IS IT DANGEROUS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 11 September 1908, Page 1

IS IT DANGEROUS.

TELEPHONES AND CONSUMPTION. Referring to a recent scare with regard to danger of consumption lurking in telephone instruments, the writer pf an article in "The Times" describes! the way in which the bacilli are fought in the human body. He says : — "First, a small degree of protection is offered by the scavenger action of the tonsil, which tends to catch up stray bacilli and hold them while a more powerful agent Bets to work. But even when these sentinelf'in tbe throat fail to catch the intruder, other protective agente are , on the look-out, and, eager for the fray, : pounce on the unwary bacillus and annihilate it. During the past decade or two, much haa been learned of the protective forces directed against the invading germs of disease. It has been long known that the small white blood > globules have a neat little trick of eating bacilli up. Metschnikoff laid great stress on this means of freeing the body of such invaders, while within more recent times Wright has attempted to show that the greater part of this eating-up power of the white blood corpuscles, or leucocytes, as they are called, is due to a substance which exists in the serum or fluid part of the blood. This substance he called opsonine. Again is has been shown that other dissolved substances, ] having a peculiar ferment-like nature, can < act on bacilli, killing them, or massing < them together into clumps, or dissolving them. Other substances have, by indirect biological means, been demonstrated to exist which have the function of destroying the products or poisonous substances manufactured by bacilli. It must, however, be pointed out that, while these various effects on bacteria can be observed and traced definitely to blood serum or blood corpuscles, the cause of the phenomena cannot be separated, and their existence as substances has only been surmised. Be this as it may, there is ample explanation for th • fact that the inhalation of the bacilli of tuberculosis from the transmitter of the telephone under ordinary eilitions does not lead to illness. "Germs, undoubtedly, cause disease; but those who work most constancy with them learn that theso ,-erm: have to be present in considerable quantities, and that they have to gain an entraice by unusual means if they are to constitute a source of real danger to -1 .healthy person. The mortality of tuberculosis has decreased steadily •iurinz tne 'ast half of a century, although it is, ii-deed, doubtful whether the chances of "nfection have diminished it all during the same time. Tho surroundings -if tne populace have been rendered more healthy and sanitary, the people 'hemsslvas have thereby been rendered -jiore rc-is-tant toward the disease, and the fi-oj-crtion £ f infections which do not lead to a falsi termination has materially increased. "To keep a telephone clean must, from aesthetic as well as samta.y reasons, be regarded as desirable, lu. to le scared 1 by the discovery of a few hungry tul-tr-cfe bacilli is neither- lojijal hit jutiified.'