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Show 00 UNDUE FEAR OF GERMS. Someone has been alarming us because be-cause he found a few bacteria ou gumed postage stamps, though he should have been astonished if he bad not found them. Some years ago an Investigator reported that he had found many clgarmakers, with mucous mu-cous patches in their mouths, who wore moistening the cigar end with saliva. He, too, spread alarm, but as no cases of syphilis from cigars wore known, smokers went calmly ou regardless. re-gardless. Wo now know tha't the Infecting In-fecting organism of syphilis porishes very quickly. Postage stamps scorn to be just as harmless, though, of course no one wants to put them in his mouth immediately after they have heen handled by the dirty fingers fin-gers of someone else, even If the germs so deposited are dead as doornails. door-nails. In the same way common sense tells us not to put dirty money in the mouth, fqr it may have been recently tucked away in a very dirty place, yet Its germs, too, are mostly dead, and we can lay very llttlo disease dis-ease to its agency, its evils arc of another sort Our clothing ia boiled In the laundrj, and even if pus-soaked, it does not spread infection Ironing Iron-ing also kills some organisms, though noL nearly so many nti sve. once thought, .as the temperature qf the fabric is. not sufficiently raised) ia' the 'process. .' c. ' . Bactcriophobia seems to beat .the rpot of the present dread of things tvo rausl handle daily. These sufferers should be Informed that far thousands of ears wc havo been constantly bombarded with living germs, and by ordinury laws of adaptation, we havo ovolvod defenses. Moreover, wo caji not possibly avoid all those enemies, even in the a,r w breathe. This Is not a-plea for filth, Common sense, as well as decency and good taste, dictate that wc should avoid as many sources of Infection as possible even tho least of thorn and wo must Insist In-sist up having clean clerks with clean hands, clean stamps, clean money, clean bread, clean clothes, clean bar ber shops and clean restaurants, but' the point to enlarge upon is this w'e get dfseases from diseased people peo-ple as a rule, and not from Infected things. Bacteriophobia is blinding us to the real dangers the living carriers. car-riers. Instead of objecting to the crusade cru-sade for cleanliness wo have been preaching it, but we think that so much attention to"fomttes is misdirected. misdi-rected. We know . of many seilous skUv infections transmitted from face to yfacp by barbers, and it Is certain tha't a dusty "day in a city fills the jnouths oC people with virulent organisms. organ-isms. In these directions It is neces'-sary neces'-sary to continue the crusade, for there we find vital defects. The oth'-er oth'-er dangers mentioned, though real and- in need of remedy, are greatly exaggerated. ex-aggerated. American Medicine. on |