Article March 11, 1911 Issue

A good many people will have read the remarks lately...

Philadelphia (Pa.) Inquirer

A good many people will have read the remarks lately made on the microbe question by Dr. Alvah H. Doty, health officer of the port of New York, with a sense of lively satisfaction and some feeling of relief. Their tenor was that the maleficent influence and activity of the omnipresent microbe as an agent for the destruction of health and life had been absurdly exaggerated, and that if people would think less and worry less upon this subject it would be a great deal better for them.

Dr. Doty expressed the opinion, and it is an opinion in which many will agree with him, that a large part of the agitation over microbes which has gone on within the past few years is to the last degree irrational and absurd. People have gone microbe crazy. They have read without clearly understanding the medical dissertations about the extent to which diseases of all kinds are occasioned by these microscopical organisms which get into our systems and become perniciously active there, and many of them live under a constant apprehension lest their own system be invaded by these invisible enemies at some time when they are momentarily off their guard.

And the trouble is that it is so difficult, that it is virtually impossible, to maintain a sufficiently vigilant and effective outlook for these innumerable and omnipresent invaders of the human frame. There are microbes everywhere. Nothing that we touch, taste, or handle is immune from their presence, so we are told, and there is never any telling how soon or at what moment any one of us may fall a victim to their destructive operations. That is the prevalent idea for which the little knowledge declared by Alexander Pope to be "a dangerous thing" must be held responsible, and it is the gratifying feature of Dr. Doty's deliverance that it tends to dissipte what has become a sort of national obsession. He says that there is a whole lot of humbug about this microbe business, and that the people who lie awake nights shivering lest a microbe should catch them are very foolish. How often have we been told that there was danger in handling a dirty bank-note because so many billions of deleterious germs are likely to be distributed over its surface. Probably not many have been deterred by this warning from handling all the bank-notes that came their way, and yet it is satisfactory to be assured that they may be handled, microbes and all, without the slightest risk.

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