The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-05-05
POISON IN KISSING.
A Physicians Views As Presented at a
Medical Meeting.
Utica q. y Letter. }

Utica CN. " letter.
Lives are daily sacrificed and diseases
are daily communicated by the promis-
cuous habit of kissing. As a custom it
should be abandoned among women in
their greetings.
1t is within my remembrance that boy
was suddenly stricken down with that
dreadful malady, diphtheria. The mother
kissed the son most affectionately, but it
was the kiss of death for her. have no
doubt other physicians have noted similar
observations.
In the sacred precincts of the Preside,
when death has laid its relentless hands
on one Of its members, the common pTaC-
tice Of kissing is liable to induce septica-
mia, and thus other precious lives be ex-
posed to the venomous sting of death. As
you can see more easily the action of a
drug when given in a large dose, so you
will see more pointedly the danger arising
from kissing by giving an Illustration of a
malignant disease.
There is no longer any doubt in regard
to the inoculability and infectiousness of
consumption. 1t is not an established
fact that it is not contagious. When you
remember that more die by its insidiOus
hands than from any other cause, but few
families or relatives of families can be eX-
empt from it. This being true, should
not persons visiting such unfortu-
nate individuals do away with the
accustomed mode of greeting by kissing?
a disease which has resisted the treatment
OF the most skilled up to the present day
should be prevented if possible. Is human
life to be sacrificed for the sake of con-
forming to custom? Change the custom,
and other ways of greeting will be equally
popular and much more sensible and safe.
The bacillus of phthisis is a minute form
of organized life, which acts so subtly
NN.raEA
would not be manifested by any immediate
symptoms AS surely as "a little leaven
leaveneth the whole lump, just as surely
will the microscopical germs multiply in
the system in the most marvellous man
ner. Soon there will be a hacking cough,
some elevation of the temperature,
hoarseness or shallow voice, and the work
Of destruction now noticeable goes on
until its victim can no longer resist its
invasion, and death claims the victory.
There is a disease more terrible than the
two previously mentioned. 1t is peculiar
to no grade in the social world; it is
handed down "up to the third and fourth
generation" when it gets thoroughly seated
In the system, unless treatment be con-
tinued for years. 1t is more terrible than
cancer, for that is not hereditary. 1t is
constitutionally destructive, while cancer
is more locally so, 1t eats away the pal
ate, destroys the hearing, softens and dis
integrates bones, and in its hereditary de-
scent produces malformation of brain and
body. 1t exists very extensively in this
country, but more so in other parts of the
globe. A person may have the appear
ance of health, yet the system may be poi
soned by it. Such a person kissing an
other upon the lips free from the disease,
could communicate it. Every physician
has seen these cases in hospitals or in
private practice Laying aside the ques-
lion of heredity, dissolute husband may
convey 1t to his wife, and she in turn to
her children or lady friends through kiss
ing.