The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1912-05-14
GOOD OLD ORNAMENT
WILL HAVE TO GO

a whiskered man, II any?
This very delicate yet vitality i'm
portant question has been answered
and definitely by a dis
professor Of the Paris
Academy of Medicine, in an article in
the New York American.
His experiment proves that it is just
one hundred times as dangerous from
a pathological point of view to kiss a
mustached or whiskered man as a
clean-shaven one.
Prof Durand decided that this ques-
ton, which has been much discussed in
a loose way. ought to be settled scien-
tifically He secured the services Of a
young and healthy woman, who was
willing to submit to the experiment
for the sake of science, and couple Of
doctors of his staff
The young woman was first thor
oughly sterilized. All the billions and
billions of germs that lurked in her
lips, eyes, hair and other external
parts Of her organism were completely
destroyed She was then locked up in
a germ proof room, in the professors
la boratory. used in bacteriolog ica1 eX
periments. Elaborate precautions were
taken to guard the feminine culture
medium from contamination during the
absence Of the professor.
OF the two doctors, one was clean
shaver, while the other wore the round.
fuzzy beard and mustache which have
become traditional among French med
zeal men. The professor took his two
assistants out for a walk among the
microbes and bacteria of Paris.
He took them for a walk along the
Low I'D tha nf "a
gayest Partisan butterflies of both
sexes. He led them through a great
department store near the Louvre,
which was filled with women repre-
senting every class of Partisan society.
Then he took them through the Louvre
itself, which happened to contain at
the moment a fine assortment of art
lists.
He steered them through Halles
Centrales, the markets which feed
actically the whole of Paris. He
allowed them to jostle a crowd of fac
| tory girls coming out for lunch.
Finally he led them back. microbe-
laden. to his laboratory. First he or
dered the clean-shaven doctor to go in
and kiss the culture medium firmly
and closely for two minutes. The pro-
fessor held his stop watch to see that
| the period was not exceeded. When
| the kissing had been completed, the
professor brushed off the young cul-
| ture- mediums lips and allowed the in
visible flora that hung there to drop
| into a Petri dish designed to hold mi
crobes. Then he thoroughly sterilized
the culture medium clips.
| Now it was the turn of the whs-
kered doctor. He was ordered to go
| in and kiss the sterilized subject in
| the same manner for the same period
as the other man. Once more the pro-
fessor brushed off the culture medium 5
lipe and collected the bacterial harvest
in a second Petri dish.
| Then the professor made a careful
study of the two dishes. He estimated
that the space kissed amounted to two
square inches From the dish used to
collect the offsprings of the clean-sha
en- mans kiss, he counted 10000 mi
crobes, which is practically nothing,
when we consider the enormous preva-
1ence Of microbes in our common sur
roundings The few dangerous mi
crobes among them were present in
such small quantities that they would
| hardly have hurt any one.
| Next he examined the crop, collected
after the whiskered mans kiss. In this
he found upwards of S0,000,000 mi
crobes Of all kinds, or about one hun
dred times as much as the clean-shaver
mans kiss yielded. Among them were
about 100000 germs of tuberculosis
| / O,00O0 900 germs of typhoid 5000 00C
| germs of diphtheria, 100000 germs OF
whooping cough, 100000 germs OF
measles and 100000 germs of scarlet
fever
1t is we'll recognized that a heavy
load of bacterial Infection is usually
needed TO convey a disease The in
lection of the whiskered mans dis
under predisposing conditions would
be likely to result fatally.
| The clean-shaven mans kiss, on the
other hand was so lightly charged
with infection that it was practically
innocuous.
The bacterial crop from the whis-
kered mans kiss, after 1t had been al
lowed to grow for four days in a high
lly nutritious culture medium, had in
creased to mass of deadly germs
which if let Eoose might have destroyed
the entire population of Paris.
The result of cultivating the bac-
terial crop from the clean-shaver
mans kiss was very different. From
the starting point the harmless mi
crobes predominated so greatly over
the harmful ones that during the pro
cess Of intensive cultivation they en-
tirely crowded the deadly ones out o.
existence