A BACILLIC PURGATORY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8996, 5 December 1907, Page 4

A BACILLIC PURGATORY.

The civilized world has been in a parlous condition since the microbe entered into its calculations. Before scientific research introduced the world to the bacillic horror people lived happily and long, but of late years a constant and growing terror has pervaded the mind of man. Adulterated food is a trifle compared with the invisible enemy of humanity. How mankind hasi existed upon the face of the globe so long under the circum • stances is a marvel; but the danger to health and life is becoming so acu'e, if physicians are to be relied upon, that the end of all things cannot be far distant. The deadly microbe lurks now in everything animate and inanimate. It is positively' dangerous to cat or drink anything, and there are thousands of little things which add to the happiness of the civilised inhabitants of the globe which science proves—or attempts to prove—to be more dangerous than facing dum-dum bullets or the poisoned arrows of African Pigmies. We live by money, upon money; and — sometimes —for money, but bacterioloists tell us that there are to be found millions of micro-organisms upon the face and rims of coins in general circulation, and that a minute fraction of a pound-note contains hundreds of millions of the insidious little wretches. Circulating library books swarm with them; the hem of a lady's skjirt gathers up billions of many varieties—all more or less deadly—of these imps of Nature, as it trails the footwalks of the street. The dust of the highways is freighted with bacilli; our milkjug is the happy hunting ground of living organisms Miimical to human life. They dance around its edges and inner surfaces with devilish glee and take possession of the vital organs of those who drink from the ,| receptacle. In the games we play in | our parlors we are literary juggling with death—that is, again, if we can take for gospel all that scientific investigators would have us believe. According to them, such innocent pastimes as chess, draughts and dominoes are sources of danger unless the pieces are frequently disinfected, and a terrible retribution may follow the playing of an innocent game of cauls. The English medical journal, "Lancet," of a recent date, states that "cards used -again ...and acaiu woulrl doubtless show on bacteriological examination an appalling selection of micro-organisms." Upon the edges of our razors, in our toilet requisites —wherever we move or look, or from whatever we touch tens of thousands of foes spring out upon us to "kill us dead." What a horrid worid this is, to be sure? Nothing that Dante ever imagined is so frightful as the horrors of humanity living in such awful surroundings. And all this is due to the meddling scientist, who has, with his magic wand, conjured up these phantoms of evil. Little wonder the birth-rate decreases. Why should innocent babes be brought into such a bacillic purgatory!