The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER FRIDAY FEBRUARY 6, 1914. THE RISKS WE RUN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 31, 6 February 1914, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER FRIDAY FEBRUARY 6, 1914. THE RISKS WE RUN.

Scientific experiments of modern days tend to show what astounding risks of

disease and death poor humanity takes every day. Whether the fact that we know that we are taking these daily risks makes life any the more worth living is certainly a matter of choice. Some people love taking risks and others abominate every form of gambling on the chances, it appears now that the idea that washing one’s hands destroys the chance of carrying disease germs is quite unfounded: at

least so some great authority states. Nevertheless it is to be hoped that the practice of occasionally washing the hands will not be abandoned. The story goes that typhoid bacilli were placed on a man’s fingers; he then rinsed his hands iu a disinfectant, washed them carefully in cold and then in hot water, and finally dipped them into a dish of pure alcohol. When the man’s hands were examined under the microscope it was found that the “fittest” of the disease germs still survived ; the weedy specimens had succumbed to these elaborate washing processes. Personal cleanliness is apparently not a sufficient safeguard against the danger of spreading infectious disease; and those who Jiavej denounced merely “the filthy habitsj of the typhoid carrier” have not gone

to the root of the evil. Another experiment reported to have been made j by a British Army surgeon gives addi- ■ tional proof of the fertility of the j perms. A bowl of freshly-made soup, one hundred cubic centimetres in vol- | nine, was placed in momentary contact with a finger which had been dipped jin a liquid infected with typhoid germs, i 1 The sou]) was examined next day, and j j in it there were approximately 15,.;00 j typhoid bacilli per cubic centimetre. ! Though all this is perfectly true, it : may he a grain of comfort to timid peuj pie to remember that notwithstanding '■the pestilential persistence of the | deadly fever germ, comparatively few; leases occur in ordinarily healthy places; j if sanitary methods are not altogether iignored.