News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1885-02-19
POISON IN KISSING.
A HINT FROM A MEDICAL MAN THAT
DEMANDS ATTENTION.
Little Ones Sent to Their Graves by Disease
Given to Them from Older Persons.

At medical meeting in Utica DIR. M.
| o. Terry presented q paper on "Kissing
| as q Medium of Communicating Dis
ease" which read as follows:
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 Affection
ately, but it was the kiss of death for
her. have no doubt other physicians
have noted similar observations.
In the sacred precincts of the fireside.
when death has laid its relentless hands
on one of its members, the common
practice of kissing is liable to induce
septIc@mla, and thus other precious lives
be exposed to the venomous sting of
death. AS you can see more easily the
action of the drug when given in large
dose, you will see more pointedly the
danger arising from kissing by giving an
illustration of q malignant disease.
There is no longer any doubt in re-
gard to the inoculability and infectious
ness of consumption. 1t is not an estab-
lished 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 exempt from it. This
being true, should not persons visiting
such unfortunate 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 conforming
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
minute form of organized life, which
acts so subtly that the introduction of it
into the system would not be manifested
by any Immediate symptoms. AS surely
as "a little leaven leaveneth the whole
lump" just as surely will the micro
scopical germs multiply in the system
in the most marvellous ma nner. Soon
there will be a hacking cough, some
elevation of the temperatur e. hoarseness
or shallow voice, and the work of destruc-
ton 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 pre-
viously mentioned. It is peculiar to no
grade in the social world; it is handed
down "'unto the third and fourth genera
ton, }" when it gets thoroughly seated in
the system, unless treatment be con-
tinued for years. It is more terrible
than cancer, for that is not hereditary.
1t is constitutionally destructive, while
cancer is more locally so. 1t eats away
the palate, destroys the hearing, softens
and disintegrates bones, and its heredi-
tary descent produces malformations of
brain and body. 1t is known as syphilis.
1t exists very extensively in this coun-
try, but more so in other parts of the
globe. A person may have the appear
ance of health, yet the system may be
poisoned by it. Such person kissing
another upon the lips free from the dis
ease could communicate it. Every ply
sician has seen these cases in hospitals
or in private practice. Laying aside the
question of heredity, dissoh1te hus-
band may convey it to his wife and she
in turn to her children or lady friends
through kissing.