Evening star., 1914-08-09
Drawings by M. L. Blumenthal

~ the many fallacies more or less universally be-
L eved to be truths, one of the most senseless and
absurd is the idea that measles is necessary to
the being of child, and that the he gets it
the he'll get rid Of the probability OF having it
again.
This is about on a par with the answer of pupil in
the biology class, who said lobster red animal
that walked backward. The genial professor agreed
that this statement correct, with the tiing ex-
ceptions that lobster not animal, but shell
fish, that wasn't red until it boiled; and that 1t
did not walk backward, but sidewise.
Equally the traditional ideas about
measles and nearly all those or less dangerous
contagious diseases cassed @chGlrens diseases
First they not necessary; next they add nothing
to the we-beng of the child and thirdly, they in
variably leave the system off than before
they
OF course every other popular belief, there is
slight foundation of fact here. Admitting for the sake
of argument that these infections 4have to be had it
is better to have them early. When measles scarlet
fever, whooping cough, mumps, chickenpox, and other
chdrens diseases fasten themselves upon adults, they
extraordinarily and ravagng course The
foundation for the traditional belief laid in the days
before the discovery of the germ OF disease when
it thought that these illnesses were merely Natures
kindly way of getting rid of @peccant humors' in the
blood; for if tre-which it IS not-that every
one has Just about much "hmor that he has to get
rid of later it would be good reasoning to get
it with the least effort and danger-that is in the
age of childhood.
But know-although we have not yet seen the
"bugs'-that measles, and many other chdrens dis
eases, are caused by germs of some kind OF this we
are reasonably certain from the way the diseases act
Their highly contagious infectious nature their uni
form clinical aspects the exactness of time with which
they certain with what we
know of the manifestations of m-caused diseases
(such the fact that the periodic chls Of malaria
caused by the wholesale birth of colonies of para
sites)-ndicate that childrens diseases microbic
in origin.
We have yet found these bacill because they
ninitesma that the finest porcelain does not filter
them of solution, also because they have not yet
been communicated to animals If only find some
bird beast that subject to these diseases that
will 4take" them,-as we found apes and monkeys
ceptible smallpox infane paralysis, and constitu
tona blood disease will not be long before we dis
cover the germs that cause the conditions
Then shall be able to destroy the bugs with their
own aend products the dead bodies of their fellows,
killed by boiling With specific antidote antitoxn
to combat the germs and their effects, shall be in
much better position speak disparagingly Of them
IN the meantime our watchword should be 1preven-
ton"
If children escape having any chldrens diseases,
they gamers in general health by just much. 1t
may be that years will have been added to their lives,
or an existence Of chronic nvadism avoided by side
stepping these malades of youth This applies to all
chidrens diseases without exception.
Get these points clearly in mind No disease Of child
hood Of any other "hood is desirable necessary.
Many if not ALL of them serious, and frequently
disastrous. For instance, measles
and the diseases that follow in
its train cause, according to the
vital statistics Of the latest 4
sus, more than thirteen thousand III
deaths annually in the United
States alone, mortality twice
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