Lincoln County leader. [volume] (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987, 1913-02-21

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gocytes are our best and
most intimate friends and yet we take
no thought for their perennial willing
ness to fight for us our battles and
every chance we get to fool them we
accept with unfailing enthusiasm. The
Phagocytes are the police of the body,
always ready to club some offending
bacillus over the head and run him into
the lookup. The Phagocytes are. the
standing army of the body, only they
do not stand still long at a time, so
busy are they in putting down insur-
rections on the part of germs thought
thoroughly naturalized or in repelling
invasions ON the part of alien microbes.
Let something go wrong and the Pha-
gocytes are there in a jiffy, foot, horse
and dragons, putting up fight that
makes the heroic memory of the Tro-
jams pale into cowardly insignificance.
Every day the Phagocytes have their
rounds to make and their fights to
fight, brief, hand-to-h hand and eye-to-
eye encounters with hostile bacilli, and
sometimes there are general alarms and
fierce, long conflicts with determined
enemy. That when we start in fool
ing the Phagocytes.
Let us say that we have cold in
the head. A lot of hostile bacilli are
encamped in the sensitive membranes
up there, having the unlawful time of
their lives, rioting joyously in the mis-
/, cry they are dealing to us. But, they
have forgotten in their unholy mirth
the army of the Phagocytes. These in
trepid organisms need no formal call
to battle, no definite declaration of
war, no official proclamation before
they cross the border into the territory
of the enemy. Upstairs they rush, all
hands to breakfast!
Soon, there is fight in progress.
No, not "soon," but Immediately. The
bacilli of the cold, base despoilers that
they are, grapple with the Phagocytes.
Why shouldn t they7 Even a rat will
fight, once he's cornered. The little
devils of the cold must fight or be de.
stroyed. So, there is battle that is a
battle and the arena-which we are
rings and resounds and has trouble
a-plenty with consonants and vowels
Then, when the ravages of war become
too much to bear, we start in to fool
the Phagocytes.
You see, We know that the Phago-
cytes are in the blood and blood is
what we do not want up there in the
war district. Rather, We would starve
out the enemy. We prefer to wage a
Fabian campaign, to make cunctatory
war. But the Phagocytes- class
fighting men, they-cannot understand
military delay of any sort. They en-.
joy Light Brigade charges, forlorn
hopes, dashing maneuvers, but the prin.
ciples of scientific warfare are to them
closed book. No, there's no use in
reasoning with the Phagocytes. There
they are, in deadly embrace with the
bacilli of the cold, knee deep in gore
and impregnated with the lust of
slaughter. They wouldn't come down
and quit any more than bulldog will
let go as long-aye, and longer-as he
can know and feel anything. The Pha.
gocytes are enlisted for the war; they
intend to fight it out on this line if it
takes all summer.
So, we, for whom the Phagocytes are
doing yoeman service, fool them. We
put on our other end mustard plas.
ter. We put the counter-irritant on
the calves of our legs and we put our
feet in mustard water, sizzling hot.
Ouch!
This false alarm is soon received by
the Phagocytes, engaged in unrelent.
ing, savage, quarterless war way up
there above the equator. One can
imagine the little soldiers taking coun.
sci among themselves
eyes, we have very fine scrap on
our hands here right now and it's get.
ting better all the time, but there must
be something fierce coming off down
toward the south. At that, we II have