THE MICROBE AS A SOCIAL REFORMER.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1076, 15 March 1911, Page 8

THE MICROBE AS A SOCIAL REFORMER.

. fr HOW AN ARMENIAN PRIEST ' ROOSED HIS FLOCK. How tho microbe has becoino a social reformer is told in an interesting way in "Harper's Magazine" by Robert W. Bruere, general agent of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of tho Pcor.

"In tho summer of 1592," he says, "thestartling news flashed across the world that the hosts of cholera had risen up in Persia, that they had marched through Russia and Western Europe, destroying thousands; that Hamburg was under siege, ami that tho scourge was- about to invade America. On August 31 tho cholera-ridden steamship Moravia Was reported at quarantine in New York, with the Nonnaiinia, Rugia, Seandia, Heligoland, Bothnia, all from Hamburg, tollowing in close order.

What Fear Did. "11 id the Pied Piper threatened, tho defaulting burghers of Hamolin with a return of all the rats he had piped into tho river Weser, with all tho rats of Hanover city besides, those over-thrifty Brunswickers could not have matched the terror of New York—and, for that mutter, of the entire menaced nation— seventeen years ago. Yet, strangely enough, it was this very intensity of the pcpnUr fear that was destined lo make the cholera of 1892 remarkable for its beneficent consequences. "For fully a-decade tho officers of the New York Health Department, instructed by tin) discoveries of •such, scientists «s Pasteur and. luch, had asked in-vain for .i bacteriological laboratory as a., base from which to make thoroughgoing war, not only upon epidemics such as cholera and yellow fever, but. also upon all. forms of endemic contagion—diphtheria, tuberculosis, and the like. But in these days e\en the medical profession wero disponed to ridicule the idea that myriads of 'little bugs' could flourish upon the minute corpuscles of the blood to our bodily destruction.

"And ai for the pcoplo at large—who were in the last analysis responsible for I lie dciial I>y tho stolid financial authorities of the Health Department's request— their state of mind was precisely like that of the dwellers in the ancient Turkish city, of Van, of whom Mr. P. D. Greene, then a missionary of the , American Board, tells me the following story;

Allah or Boiled Water? "A caravan had brought cholera into the city, over'the route travelled centuries before by Xcuophon and his Ten Thousand. The disease spread rapidly, for its progress was greatly facilitated by th» water supply that canio from a near-by mountain and ran through the streets in open duct=. "The population of the city was equally divided between Mohammedans and Armenian Christians. The missionaries knew that cholera entered the body only through the mouth, and that the microbes ,might be destroyed by high temperature; they, determined accordingly to persuado the' people to boil their food and drink, and sterilise their cooking utensils. The Mohammedans were impervious to adrieoj 'they 1 declared that inasmuch as Allah had written upon every man's forehead the precise moment and manner of his death, it was both useless and blasphemous to try lo thwart His will by infidel precautions. .The Armenians, while not equally fatalistic, .showed, like their contemporaries in Xcw York, tho indifferenco born of ignorance. It was only when people began to die by the hundred that tho fear of death stirred their lethargy. Then they turned to their priest, liovsep Yavtabed, for help.

A Sermon Which Did Something. "Now when the missionaries had asked Hovse'n Vartabcd to explain to his congregation the nature of cholera, ho had replied that the lives of the people wero in the hands of the women who prepared the food, and that they were too ignorant to comprehend the difference between a germ and a mountain-lion. But the ingenious priest had resources of his own, lie gathered his flock into the great Armenian church, and when they wero packed as close as they could sit upon the iloor, he put on his flowing clerical robes, mounted the pulpit, and shaking .his long, bony finger, began to harangue them as follows:—

'"Have I not told you, miserable sinv ners, that unless you repented and were more zealous in your religious duties, God would surely punish you? Behold, He has permitted the water to swarm with little snakes, so that the people perish. Whence camo these snakes? Verily I say unto you that they arc naught but devils that God has unloosed from hell to chasten you sinners. Disguised as little, snakes, tliey'havo fled to the water to cool off. Woo unto them that drink the cup of Satan, or cook in unhallowed water, for them the devils will surely seize and destroy. There is only one way of escape: make the water so hot that tho imps will bo glad to run back to Gehenna, whenco they . calne. WKcn the water boils, you may know that every bursting bubble is a devil that leaps from the pot!'

"This announcement was received with cries of alarm and moans of repentance, Tho women did not wait for the benediction ; they arose like startled pigeons, rushed home, and began boiling busily. And it was fully two months after tho last caso of cholera was reported that tho kettles of Van cooled down,

After the Panic. "Tho New Yorkers of 1892 were quite as benighted in respect to public health as these Armenian Christians, only they wore far less religious; so that when'tho cholera-ridden ships at (heir gates terriried them with the fear of death, they turned to tho Health Department, as tho people of Van turned to their priest, for protection. "The department did not answer with a fable; its officers simply renewed their request for a bacteriological laboratory. They explained again that cholera was nothing but a microbe, or rather swarming myriads of microbes, as destructive to man as the seventeen-year locusts to the plants of tho field, but so iuiinitesimally small that they might easily dude tho utmost vigilance, unless the "department were equipped with the powerful lenses essential' to microscopic research.

What Science Can Do. "Thus it was that the cholera of 1892 caused the establishment of the first municipal bacteriological laboratory in the world, and not only inaugurated a new era in governmental methods of conserving public health, but also gave a fresh impulse- to the revolution that science had already initiated in the popular, fatalistic conception of disease and death. To-day, the scouts of tho laboratory keep sharp watch not only ■ on tho ships entering tho port, but also over the milk and'water supply, the oyster beds, tha meat and vegetable markets, and all tho various channels within and without the city through which destructive microbes can enter.

"Already the results have been inspiring, and justify tho cicpartinant in adopting tho motto of Pasteur, that it is within their power to rid the city of every parasitic disease, hardly excepting old age itself. "A far cry this from tho priest in Van working on tho superstitions fears of hia congregation. iloro than six hundred men and women devoting their lives to a municipal campaign for human conservation!' And in a very immediate sense it all grew out of the cholera invasion of ISH2.; Surely," says Mr. Brlicre, "tho microbe deserves to rank well among social reforniors."-