The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-11-12
Germ Theory of Disease Was Foreshadowed
 By Dr. Johnson


 While the germ theory of disease is or recent origin, and has only lately been completely established, it was f9reshadowed by pr. Samuel Johnson in a letter written 131 years ago today. This remarkable document was ad- dressed to a Mrs. ThraIe. The latter had written to pr. Johnson regarding from dysentery. In his reply under date Of Nov. 12, 17s1, the eminent Eng liah author gave expression to the ease with which his friend was afflict- ed was due to an aninalcule or amoeba,z n. the. course of the epistle
 TT Mr. g., win drink Ereat deal of water. the acrimony that corrodes his bowels will be. diluted. if the cause reries to be produced by ani1nalcuIae which I know not how to kill"
 Thus casually. in the course of a century revelation that was even xuaIly to revo1utionize medical science.
 Many other instances might be cited of remarkable foreshadowings of tre- only now gSupder construction, was sug- Gested nearly century ago by Alex .AEicromegas." a romance which de- scrfbes a voyage to the planet saturn by a native of Sirius, forecasted the discovery Of the two moons 1s pf or sl1 Mal af Washington The celestial Voyasers ..coasted the planet Mars" and, adds vo1taire: '-rhey saw two moons have escaped the observations of our astronOmers-'s The great Frenchman, it would appear, considered that this statement, although included in a wild and Improbable romance, might have a basis Of fact, for he wrote: 1 know very well that Father Castel VIII write, good-humoredly, course, against the existence of these two moons; but am in accord with those who reason from analogy Philoso- st would be for Mars. which is so dis rant from the sun, to get on with less than two moons"
 The romancee of Jules Verne. inn probable as they seemed, foreshadowed many things that have come to pass A tour of the world in eighty days, noEsible. and recent gIobe-trotters have come near cutting the time in naIf- -rhomas Paine, in 1775, in the course Of his editorial articles in the Pennsyl- wania Mazazine, predicted that negro sisverv would be overthrown, that fIrIeIIfnr would soon be abandoned as d f1arbarous custom, and that the 1a1r sew would and should be given the right to vote, and that iron would be -5~ed In the construction of bridges and buf1dings- named Becher published book in which many of the great inventions of the present were 1orecasteo; 1a.oa raol [eSc-ff7ad as having some idea of the feIephone. About the same time Rob- erf Hooke. in his ''Micrographia wrote: T can assure the reader that haVe' tov the help of a distended wire, pro- ma gated sound to a Considerable dis lance in an instant Becher's book, besides forecasting the telephone, aiso zef forth that "Englishmen have dls- covered a kind of tachygraphy, or an art which enables them to write as "a apfdlv as the fastest speakers can ,,-, reason for doubt-the artcof short rand Is not nearly so modern as has been thought. fr, 75s7. forecasts the Suez canal in this syise: -
 -sEbereas the Terrene and the Red se4 meet being less distant than t-~--,dred leagues I meant to cut rhanneI to them both. that men might r,1ickly sail to India"