The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1895-06-05
MIcR!OBE OF DEATH
Astehishins Discovery in Bacterielosy
Aads BY Dr.. Lloyd Parker, Of
I Kew York City.
Death Caused by a Microbe Which 81
Claims to Have Isolated and
Destroyed.

claims to Have Isolated and
Destroyed.
A discovery has just been made by the
| well-known physician DIR. Lloyd Parker.
| M. b., which if substantiated, as it seems
| almost certain to be, will create revo-
luton not only in medical sciences, but
In the whole economy of life to which
Newton's discovery of the law of CRAWL
| tation will seem as mere child's play,
Hitherto each experiment has served
| to confirm the conclusion arrived at by
the discovery, that death itself is caus-
ed by certain specific microbe, that can
| be recognized and bred just as the mi
crobes of various diseases have been dis
| covered and propogated by Koch, Pasteur
and the other Psychologists. The la
boris of these great men have made
| further discovery possible and it was
through the study of their achievements
that DR.. Parker conceived the idea that,
inasmuch as disease was caused by these
irfintesmial derangers of the human sys-
tenn, the elimination of disease must
have it's own specific microbe to put the
| finish to the work of dissolution, with
| out which the various organs of the body
distempered, and degraded from their
pristine purity and vital activity would
| remain purulent mass of living corrup-
| ton unable to resolve itself into its pri-
| NAL elements and to form other combi-
| nations, a process which we see taking
place every day as defunct animal mat
| ter sinks into the earth or vanishes in
| to the air to afford food for new and
active organisms.
Reasoning thus, DR.. Parker commenc-
ed a series of experiments, with the de-
sign of finding that microbe though he
should devote all his energies and all his
| time to the search.
DR.. Parker is quiet, reserved and
| gentlemanly man, of an extremely
studious habit and little given to taking
part in the ordinary trifles of life.
From his earliest youth he has been an
ardent and painstaking micropist and
his labOrs have been rewarded by many
and strange discoveries all tending to-
wards the same point and eliminating in
| this last and greatest of all, the microbe
of death.
| After long course of experiment. on
various bodies, animal and vegetable,
the strange phenomenon of the death of
the japanese day lily, occurred to him.
| Why this plant should bloom for twelve
| hours only, and then die, absolutely and
| entirely, not merely folding it's calyx and
going to sleep like other flowers, but lit
orally giving up the ghost, as it were,
and fading into nothingness, was the
| custom he set himself to answer. For
| months he studied this fragile plant, and
at length discovered, by the use of a
powerful microscope, curious thing i'm
| bedded in the very heart of the root. In
visible to the naked eye, it appeared un-
der the lens as a hair-like spiral, that
| kept continually rolling and unrolling
| itself with an uncanny motion, different
| to that of any of those rod-like bacteria
| that had ever come under his notice.
The flower was in full bloom, and ap-
parently quite uninjured by his re-
searches into the bulb from whence it
grew. But when he exposed the little
moving, writhing atom, by the aid of
an exceedingly fine cambria needle, the
leaves dropped, the flower withered, and
the plant died, in the twinkling of an
eye. Rapid decomposition followed and
in an incredibly short space of time the
flower had disappeared, leaving nothing
but slight, glairy scum and subtle
scent that permeated the atmosphere of
the room.
The discovery was made, the microbe
of death was found!
In an interview, DR.. Parker told of
his discovery and his further investiga-
ton thus:
7 hod fho
element felt at this strange result of
my experiments reasoned that, as the
discovery of this strange microbe had
caused the premature death Of the lily,
it was rather the microbe of life that l
had destroyed than that of death, To
determine he QUESTION, I took another
flower in a like state of floral vigor and,
with a very delicate scalpel, completely
extracted the strange little sQuirming
object, and closed up the orifice in the
bulb by luting it with damp clay, as
gardeners do in grating. To my sur
prise the flower, instead of whitening, as
the other had done, seemed to blossom
into fuller exuberance, as If some male
fic influence had been taken away from
it.
"I put it carefully upon a shelf and
watched till evening, expecting to see
1t IGQo ana ole, as the OCnor mowers ldO
invariably done. But to my astonish-
| ment it gave no sign of weakness, but
folded it's petals after the manner of
| other lilies, and evidently enjoyed a
healthful and restorative slumber
Il left it carefully guarded from acct
| dent, and on visiting it next morning
| found it in full vigor and giving no sign
| whatever of dissolution. l watered it
plentifully, and taking some other flow
| ers Of the same species, subjected them
! to like treatment, with the result that
my room was soon converted into bow
er of ever blooming lilies, none of which
! seemed to have the least inclination to
| fade in winter, and this state of floral
| Immortality has lasted now for months.
| OF course, l could not doubt that the lit
| tie wriggling atom l had extracted was
| the latent cause of death and had been
suddenly and unduly excited to action by
touch with the cambria needle in the in
| stance of the first flower, just as the In
dian hooded cobra is excited and it's pois-
on rendered more virulent by the touch
| of rod or awhip.
1.-THE microbes which I had extracted
| from the other flowers were still con-
| tinuing their spiral gyrations embedded
in the portion of the bulbs that had
| taken away with them and which now
were slowly rotting and developing a
most disagreeable corpse-like SMELL
Il set myself, therefore, to the task of