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Show I Aid in the Battle Against Disease II By GARRETT P. SERVISS. y J" you road) the article on "Tho Battle of m, I tho Microbes," in the Cosmopolitan mag- I J 'izinc for February, you will learn a very M curious fact, viz.: that tho only danger- I , ous microbes aro tho foolish ones. H The wise microbes (and our bodies harbor H thousands of billions of them) do us no harm, H and probably sometimes do us much good. M They arc settlers in tho vast empire of mi- croscopic boings that wo call a human body, and they till the soil, like capable agricultu- rists, without exhausting it. It is as much I to their interest as to our'B that the lifo and H health of tho body should bo preserved. Yet R they could destroy ub if they would, just 1 as tho mass of tho population of any great I country could bring it down in ruin, and I lbeii)Eolvn3 along with it, if they suddenly I turn back to eavagory, and forget all the I lessons of forbearance, temperance and co- I operation, taught by tho experience of Ion" I lines of industrious ancestors, I They are not only harmless, but helpful, I becauso they are educated and civilized. I And yet theso wise microbes that swarm I in our bodies differ, in constitution, from the j dangerous and foolish ones no more than civilized men differ in bodily form from the most brutal and besotted savages that our race hns produced. It may soem ridiculous to speak of "educated" "edu-cated" and "civilized" microbes but the investigations of bacteriologists absolutely justify tho terms. These microscopic beings, which rosomblo rather plants than animals, when they have become rogular inltabitants of tho body of a largo animal, settlo into communities that cause no harm to tho life of tho wholo body, but perhaps help to keep it active. The uncivilized invaders which do tho harm, which produce so many fatal diseases, aro like tho hordes of barbarians that broko down the Roman ompiro. Their only object ' is to ravage and destroy. They preserve nothing, they cultivate nothing, they sim-ply sim-ply rush on until they aro themselves involved in-volved in tho universal destruction. Yet science sci-ence has discovered that even they can be tamed. Study 0fl these things would open the eyes of many misled, well-meaning people who listen to tho outcry of sentimentalists against . fho work of tho laboratories a work without which wo should never have known tho tTuc sources of most of tho destructive diseases that decimate humanity, or have discovered , the means of combatting them, and tho con- ' tinuanco of which is osscntinl to the further advance of that beneficent knowledge. |