HYDROPHOBIA IN CARROTS

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1780, 8 July 1926, Page 7

HYDROPHOBIA IN CARROTS

"FANTASTIC" NEW THEORY

It is difficult to ascertain the 'exact nature of certain astonishing "discoveries" attributed to Professor J. Tissot, of the Natural History Musieum at Paris, says the London Daily News. When a vegetable is kept in a test tube it undergoes decomposition, and there is a growth of moulds or microbes in it. The same thing occurs with meat or anything which has once been alive, and bacteriologists have proved that the growth is due to contamination by microbes or 'the spores (seeds) of moulds which get in from outside.

Professor Tissot apparently disputes this view. He thinks that the living material—meat or vegetable—is becoming disorganised,, losing its special structure, and returning ito a primitive state.

The sensational part of his 'experiments began when he found that the material formed on cultivating maize was exactly like the germs which cause typhoid fever.

From this astonishing discovery he was led 'to identify the substance of barley with the germ of diphtheria, that of oranges with Malta fever, that of lettuces with measles, and that of carrots with hydi"ophobia and scarlet fever.

All the diseases hitherto unexplained have found their proper place, and are now "known" to have their source in some kind of vegetable! tf .Needless to say, it is admitted that these dangerous plants do not invariably produce their appropriate diseases; they only do so when they have mouldered and decayed.

Medicine, it is suggestedl, will be infinitely simplified by the "discovery," for all that is necessary to prevent a child contracting diphtheria is to cut barley out of its diet, "and it is the sanve for all the other diseases, protection against which can be very easily assured now that the original source is known." ' All that can be said of this theory until further details are available, is that in an age of unlikely theories it seems one of the most fantastic.

The professor's conclusions —if 'they are really his, are opposed, to the evidence accumulated by countless workers, and he will have to describe some very startling new experiments if he wishes them to have a moment's consideration. In the meantime it is unnecessary to take any extra precautions in !the preparation of vegetables for the table. There is no risk whatever of contracting hydrophobia, Or even scarlet fever from the consumption of carrots.