St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-08-25
Is HEALTH CONTAGIoUse

Of the many lively sallies credited
to Bob Ingersoll, none is more fam
GUS than his reply to an orthodox
listener who, hearing him say that
he could have improved on the ar
rangement of things if he had been
the Almighty, asked him to state one
particular in which he could have
made a world better to live in.
Quick as a flash he replied that he
would have made health catching
instead of disease. Like all the rest
of his sayings, this is witty rather
than profound. But neither Ingersoll
nor any one else at that time dreamed
that his hint might be only a de-
scription of the world as it actually
exists. 1t is not religion or ire
lgion, but science which now comes
to us with the suggestion that, in
the natural order of things, health
may be made contagious. 1t is the
most stupendous conception of
changed conditions of existence,
taken all in all, that has ever issued
from the laboratory of scientific
thought.
AT recent meeting Of the British
Medical association, the president
delivered an address which opens
UP possibilities that we have as yet
not dared to consider except in the
visitations of our dreams. He spoke
of the development of the germ the
Dry of disease within recent years
as incomparably the greatest event
in the advance of the medical pro-
fession in modern times. Great as
are the triumphs that accompany it,
they are, in his view, less significant
than those that may yet be in store
We have learned that the minute
living organisms which inhabit the
tissues of the body have a
direct and important relation to the
health of the individual. We know
that when some are introduced into
the blood and others into the ali
mentary canal, disease certainly and
death possibly will follow We know
something of the use of the SUBJ
stances produced by these organ
isms, threatening their own existence
and proving to be an antidote for
their ravages. In every direction
the study of germs is she'd
ding light and contributing to the
prevention and cure of disease. A
hint of Sir Russell Reynolds car
ries us step further, over the bor-
der of an amazing country
If there are those of these organ
isms whose presence is inimical to
health, there are others whose pres
ence is necessary to it. There are
beneficent as we'll as maleficent
microbes. We have been occupied
largely with a study of the latter
their ravages and the means of ex-
terminating them. But as the first
Idea of employing the germ to pre-
vent a particular disease has been
extended to its cure, so is this now
charging into the speculation that
there are living organisms whose
Introduction into the human body
will give 1T new strength and vigor.
This is parallel to the life elixir
notion Of Brown-Sequard, but more
logical and less empiric. The ad-
dress to which we have referred con-
siders the probability of comforting
immunity from disease by inocula-
ton with germs that have the power
of healing. Well may it add that
If this should be successfully real
lied, it would be the greatest tri-
umph of medical science ever re-
corded.
We know now that the poison of a
disease may be turned against the
disease itself. If with that it is pos
Bible to give the positive operation
of elements that add intensity to life
and offer safeguards against dis
ease, then health will be as truly
within the reach of all as safety from
smallpox by vaccination is today
A whole new vista opens, at the
end of which there stands the
glorious vision OF human form un-
touched by disease and panoplied
against the maladies that now en-
feeble and distort it. If we can
noculate not only to prevent disease
but to promote health, the old search
or the elixir of life will have ended
5ictoriously. To have made health
contagious instead of disease would