The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-08-24
SOME WASHINGTON GOSSIP.
A YELLOW WOMAN WHO TICKLED
THE PILATES OF FOUR PRES
IDENTS.

the Diseases to Which Flesh Is
Heir-sOme Facts About the Young
Duchess of Marlborough Her
Mother an Eminent1y Smart wO-
man-There Will BE Smart Dofngs
at Newport During the Duchess
Visit There-The Coming of the
Countess CasteIInne-NO Splendid
Entertainments Planned in Her
Honor-Other Matters of Special
Interest.
Washington, Aug. 23.-Did you know
that the United States government
carries a complete bottled stock of all
the diseases to which flesh is heir, in
seria? Pandora's famous box was
nothing compared to what may be
seen any day on the shelves and in
the cases of the Army Medical Muse
um-the big red brick building that
stands on the Mall next to the Smith
sonian Institution. There you may
contract any "ill" that is going, from
carbuncle to Asiatic cholera-con-
sumption, pneumonia, smallpox, ty-
phoid and yellow fevers, diphtheria,
blood poisoning, erysipilas. what not.
These unpleasant affections are kept
in tubes, constantly ready to be COM
municated to healthy individuals, but,
as may be imagined, the curator of
the institution is not burdened by re-
quests for communicating. He says
that in the one small tube marked
Consumption" there is sufficient to
spread the slow White Death TO a
thousand people; and that all the dis
are about the same. The germs are
obtained from actual diseased tissues
of patients afflicted with the COM
plants. To propagate the germs in
any quantity from these tissues is easy
enough. Vegetable gelatine, from
Japanese plant called "agaragar," is
boiled and mixed with beef tea, so as
to form soft, transparent solid. A
small quantity of this is put into
tube that is tightly corked with cot
ton at the open end. The tube is then
placed in an oven and heated until
all the germs in it, of whatever sort,
are killed Next, the tube is briefly
been heated also to sterilize it, is dip
ped in the germs of the disease to
which it is desired to cultivate and
scraped across the surface of the gela-
tine. The tube is now recorked and
permitted to stand a few hours, at the
end of which the bacteria of the dis
ease, having found the gelatine to
their taste for feeding upon, will have
multiplied enormously, so as to fairly
cover the surface of the gelatine. Each
kind of bacteria, or germ, has its own
form of growing in colonies, so that
one disease can be readily and clearly
distinguished from another in the tubes
without a microscope.
Suppose you desire to contract Asia
tic cholera-hardly a supposeable
thing, but then there is no accounting
for tastes. There would be no difficult
ty whatever about it, even in this alien
climate. You would simply have to
take two or three germs from the APP
propriate bottle on the museum shelves
and drink them in a glass of water
or beef tea. If it is pneumonia you
are after, get the curator, if you can
Ito put a solution of the germs in
water into a spraying vessel, and
then arrange it so that you may
breath the spray Operated upon in
this manner, a subject would contract
the disease, with absolute cretainty
every time. Pneumonia does not come
from a cold. or inflammation of the
lungs, as most people suppose, but
from the breathing in of pneumonia
germs, multiplied by the unhealthy
may give rise to Doctors
tell us that the mouths of
altogether healthy people often have
lots of pneumonia bacteria in them
The disease signifies nothing more nor
less than that the air cells in the lungs
are ruptured and the blood flows into
them, thus rendering them useless for
breathing. AS for that interesting and
commonly fatal complaint, carbuncle,
the Army Museum curator, says that
he could produce it any time, in the
most healthy individual, by the mere
scratch of pin inoculated with a So
luton of the germs. Once so inoculated
you have hardly an even chance with
death and might as we'll make your
last will and testament at once and
prepare for the Beautiful Beyond. This
nasty complaint used to be called
''woolsorter's disease" because men
who sort wool are extremely liable to
contract it. Sheep are much more af-
ficted with carbuncle than the human
species, and the slightest abrasion on
the hand of one who touches the fleece
of an animal so diseased is likely to
communicate it.
To contract diptheria with absolute
certainty, you have only to spray the
throat, very lightly one little time,
with a proper solution of diptheria
germs. Then it is merely a question of
preventing the patient by artificial
means from being strangled to death
by the false membrane that grows so
rapidly and strives with all its might
TO fill up the breathing passage. There
IS cancer, too, and itch and scrofula,
and unnamable diseases, and goodness
knows what in this Chamber of Hor-
rors. 1t is well that the days Of the
Borgias are past, and that these terri
BILE ministers of death are kept under
lock and key. One shudders to contem-
plate what wholesale destruction might
be brought had persons with 4 muir
derous mania access TO these harmless
looking little tubes. Why, oh, why did
not the good Lord make health catch
ing" instead of disease; why may we
not inoculate ourselves with renewed
youth, rosy cheeks and pure blood, as
easily as with loathsome diseases that
lead to death? Out in the suburbs of
Washington the government has an
other institution of which one seldom
hears. In it cows are raised for various
experimental purposes including the
production of virus for vacine-points;
and thousands of hares and guinea
pigs-the inoffensive little things all
doomed to torture and death in expert
ments with the disease-germs above
mentioned. 1t is a gruesome subject,
let us turn to something pleasanter.
The young Duchess of Marlborough