The Morning Astorian

THE MICROBE MANIA.

The state board of health of Kentucky has passed a rule putting the plush seat of railroad cars under the ban because of its possibilities as a microbe breeder. Another eastern authority has attempted to condemn the public telephone as a fruitful nesting place for disease germs. Barbers advertise antiseptic shaves, haberdashers sell medicated hat bands grovers advocate germless breakfast foods. Is the world growing germ mad!

Not long ago Professor Alfred Rosenbach, a noted Berlin scientist, published a book, "Physician Versus Bacteriologist," in which he declared that if the bacteria mania is allowed to continue its full sway the whole social order of things will be radically changed. and for the worse. As it is. all of our sympathies for the afflicted are put to rout at the first cry of contagion. Every one of our instincts of brotherly or fatherly affection is blunted by the fear of the ever-present bacillus. Those supposed to be the disseminators of harmful disease germs are shunned as pariahs, despite all bonds of family affection or social ties. Fear of infection is undermining the whole fabric of social intercourse according to the view of this German doctor.

Recently a high French official from one of the islands of Oceanica was turned back from the coast because he was supposed to be suffering from consumption, and it was held by the government officials that his passage across the continent would be a menace to the lives of the people of the United States. Again, one of the railroads of the west has provided special cars for sufferers from this malady and in these they must ride or not ride at all. These two circumstances alone instance the length to which the microbe mania has warped human judgment and weakened human sympathies. It is to be hoped that the inevitable reaction that must follow this far swing of the pendulum will not be long deferred.