DANGERS OF KISSING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 31 August 1907, Page 4

DANGERS OF KISSING.

AMERICA'S LATEST SCARE. 'To kiss or not to kiss" was an interesting problem which for fully sixty minutes engaged the American Medical Association at Atlantic City recently. Elderly doctors told in grave words how kissing, more particularly on tender lips, had an intimate relationship with the spread of disease, and while the younger doctors smacked their lips and murmured dissent, the voice of the conference generally certainly went dead against promiscuous osculation. Tt was while discussing methods suitable to stay the sweep of tuberculosis that Dr. Davis, an elderly Benedict, proposed a resolution declaring that kissing should be placed under legal restraint. He did not believe that the time was ripe for actual legislation, but the time had certainly arrived when people ought to know' tha,t they kissed at their peril. "The kissing'habit," said Dr. Davis, "is terrible enough when it is confined to 'lovers, but in recent years the custom has extended throughout feminine society, most particularly girls in colleges." The conference somehow drew the conclusion that Dr. Davis had got his knife into girls' colleges. To listen to him everybody might have thought that American girl students, particularly those between the ages of ihirtcen and thirty, were kissing all <\<y nn<l «' ell into 'the night. "They kiss each other during the dav, and they kiss again at night. They kiss without rhyme or reason, and at'the slightest provocation." "The kissing devotion of the average. American college girl," continued Dr. Davis, warming to his Bubjcct. "exceeds that of all lovers of fact or fiction. Students have kissed most alarming grippe fpidemtcs through many of our largest female seminaries and universities. It is high time doctors should speak out to save the educated fair sex from kissing their lives away by transmitting tuberculosis and fever bacilli."

Kissing, the orator declared, was a habit which mielit gradually be cur-d. Tor custom's sake he would sanction girls kissing on Hie forehead or cheek, a hygienic sort of kissing, but on lips, with the delicate membrane exposed, never. From infancy kissing amongst children should be discouraged, and hence he declared that a great source of contagion would be gradually diminished, if not removed.

As regards promiscuous osculation, Dr. Davis got support, but his resolution w-as shelved on the ground advanced by Dr. Charles Irion, of Detroit, who pleaded that "other reforms were more urgent." If was a question for the kissed and kissers, he said, to decide, and it was sufficient for the conference to have called attention to the possible evils. Kissing, therefore, in 'America, will probably go on as usual. aTleast for a whi'e. Smoke in relation to disease was also [discussed. Dr. Abraham .Tacobi, of Now | York, declared that the majority of eye. Ithroat, and nose ailments were caused by the smoke, which in the cities should he aholislwd. .........