Arizona republican., 1904-11-08
The Pain of Living. :.


 Marvel as we. may at the discoveries of modern science, the greater marvel is that the world has gone on so long and mankind has increased and multi piled through countless generations without the knowledge we now find in dispensable to the maintenance of life. Think through what infnitude of per ills and inconvenience man has fought his way. We know now that we are surrounded on every hand by agencies Of death. Disease turks everywhere, in our food and drink, in the very air we breathe. Life is to be defended only by an amending germicidaI war. To drink of water is to court death, and a resort to any other beverage is demonstrably suicidal. Such food as is not artificially poisoned is known to be laden with microbes, and the prudent mans only choice is between death by swift and sure disease or death by privation.
 If he seek recreation out of doors. it is but to pass into a polluted atmos- phere, reeking with the germs which his fellow sufferers everywhere are scattering. Such germs, we are assur- ed, have always existed; it is only the recognition of them that is new. And yet our fathers and our fathers Iath- CTS lived through all this hideous con ! tagiOn without knowing It. What hardy race ours must have been, or else how enfeebled now.
 Science has done great things for us, but the old, careless joy of living is altogether gone The mothers fond embrace of her children, the lovers kiss, the clasped hands of friendship. all alike are inhibited as unsunitary. We dare not greet our neighbor in the household pets are banished as bearers of contagion, and in our cheerless, un- curtained rooms, with bare and lime coated walls washed daiIy with antI- septics, our spectacled children study from disinfected books and go forth to pass a sanitary examination before they enter school.
 For time 1t was hoped that a dis tant salute might safely be substituted for any closer interchange Of greetings, but even that is now denied US. A scientific person has recently proclaim ed that the waving of a handkerchief is but setting germs in motion. and | the "Chautauqua salute"-which means the simultaneous waving oc many handkerchiefs-is to be prohibited by sanitary ordinance. Even though the handkerchiefs be clean, we are told the pockets whence they are drawn are the lurking places of bacteria, which thus are started on their devastating course. There is no longer need to resort to those mysterious agents, concealed In caskets, which we read of in Italian romance. Each one of us carries a poisoned 'kerchief, and to wave 1t to- ward the inaccessible adored one may be but the signal of destruction. Truly, life becomes a serious busi- ness in these unsanttary days, and ev- cry week the circle Of it is narrowing. No one who really values his existence 1 any longer rides in a public conveyance or enters a place of public assembly To be really prudent, each of us should live in isolation, in an antiseptic net ting, abstaining carefully from meat and drink and breathing only through a respirator. By these means only can he hope to live as long as lis parents | lived without them. For the poetry, the grace and charm his parents found in life. he must be content 70 substitute 1 his superior knoyyIedre IT if coe+s hin, more pains to keep alive, he has the advantage of knowing. at the end. what has killed him as they evidently cid not. When they thought they were succumbing to the natural innrlnities | of age, 1t was really to bacteria.