A QUESTION OF NOMENCLATURE

New Zealand Tablet, 20 March 1913, Page 62

A QUESTION OF NOMENCLATURE

The doctors of all nations in session at Basel had discussed the characteristics of the minute creatures which they had just determined to be the cause of most of the ills that flesh is heir to. 1 Now we should give them a name,’ suggested an eminent Swiss physician, ‘ and, as we have learned all about them here at Basel, I suggest that this city be honored by calling them after —“bacilli.” ’ ‘ With all due respect to the suggestion of my learned friend,’ put in a famous German savant, ‘and desiring in no way to rob the city that is our host of any honors that may be due to it, I cannot see why the factitious selection of Basel as the site of our meeting should be deemed an appropriate reason for christening these creatures bacilli. For we in Germany have been studying these animalcuhe for years, and the greater part of the knowledge about _ them originated in Germany. Therefore I propose as an amendment that they be called after the great land of which I am so unworthy a representative—“germs.” ’ ‘I must beg leave to take exception to the assertion of my erudite friend from Germany,’ spoke up a celebrated French professor. ‘ Our laboratories in Paris have supplied the world with more information about these disease bearers than all the universities of Germany, The honor belongs to Paris, therefore I move that they be called “parishes.” ’ ‘ The assertions of our Continental friends are vain boasting,’ cried a surgeon from Ireland. ‘ These creatures were first discovered and studied in the university of my native Dublin, and to Ireland belongs the honor of naming them. Therefore I move that they be called “mike-robes.” ’ After a long and heated argument, participated in by men of many nationalities, a bland Chinese physician arose. ‘ I see that we may talk for ever and yet fail to reconcile the conflicting nationalities,’ he said, ‘ and, as these beings which we are discussing are international in their ravages, I suggest as a method of solving all difficulties as to their nomenclature that we adopt not one but all the names that are offered here to-day.’ And the Chinaman’s motion was carried by acclamation. .