Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1915-02-26
''But the. Scarlet Death. Granser, =
Edwin at last auggeate.d

"But the. Scarlet Death. Granser,"
Edwin at last suggested.
eyes. yes. Edwin; had forgotten.
Sometimes the memory of the past 10
,ery strong upon me, and forget that
am dirty old man. clad in goat
& skin, wandering with my savage
grandsons who arc goatherds in the
primeval wilderness. The heettng
systems lapse like foam and 20
lapsed our glorious, colossal civiliza-
ton. am GranseE, q tired old man.
I belong to the tribe Of Santa Rosans.
married into that tribe. My sons
and daughters married into the Chauf-
feurs. the Sacramentos, and the Palo-
Altos. You, HareLip. are of the
Chauffeurs. You, Edwin, are of the
Sacramentos. And you, Hoo-Hoo, are
OF the Palo-Altos. Your tribe takes
its name from q town that was near
the seat of another great institution
OF learning. It was called Stanford
university Yes, remember now. It
is perfectly clear. was telling you
of the Scarlet Death. Where was I
in my story?"
"You was telling about germs. the
things you can't see, but which make
men SICK" Edwin prompted.
Yes, that's where I was. A man
did not notice at first when only few
OF these germs got into his body.
But each germ broke In half and be-
came two germs, and they kept doing
this very rapidly SO that in short
time there were many millions OF
them in the body Then the man was
sick. He had q disease. and the dis
ease was named after the kind Of a
germ that was in him. It might be
measles, 1t might be influenza, 1t
might be yellow fever; It might be
any OF thousands and thousands OF
kinds Of disease. u
''Now, this is the strange thing
about these germs. There were al
ways new ones coming to live In
mems bodies. Long and long and long
ago, when there we're only a few
men in the world, there were few dis.
eases. But as men increased and
lived closely together in great cities
and civilizations, new diseases arose,
new kinds of germs entered their
bodies. Thus we're countless millions
and billions of human beings killed.
And the more thickly men packed to-
gether, the more terrible were the
new diseases that came to be. Long
before my time, in the middle ages,
there was the black plague that
swept across Europe 1t swept across
Europe many times. There was
tuberculosis, that entered into men
wherever they were thickly packed
A hundred years before my time
there was the bubonic plague. And
in Africa was the sleeping sickness
The intercollegiate fought all these
sicknesses and destroyed them. just
as you boys fight the wolves away
from your goats. or squash the mos
quitoes that light on you. The bac-
teriologists-"
But, Granser; what is arwhat'you-
call-it?"' Edwin interrupted.
You, Edwin, are a goatherd. Your
task is to watch the goats. You know
q great deal about goats. A bac-
teriologist watches germs. That's
his task, and he knows a great deal
about them. So as I was saying. the
bacteriologists fought with the germs
and destroyed them-sometimes.
There was leprosy, horrible disease.
A hundred years before I was born,
the psychologists discovered the
germ of leprosy. They knew all about
it. They made pictures Of it. ! have
seen those pictures. But they never
found a way to kill 1t. But in 1884.
there was the pantoblast plague,
disease that broke out In country
called Brazil and that killed millions
Of people. But the bacteriologists
found It out, and found the way to
kill 1t, so that the pantoblast plague
went no farther They made what
they called serum, which they put
into q mans body and which killed 4
the pantoblast germs without killing
the man. And in 1910, there was pei
lagru, and also the hookworm. These
we're. easily killed by the bacteriolo-
gists. But in 1947 there arose new
disease that had never been seen be-
fore. It got into the bodies Of babies
of only ten months old OF less, and
II made them unable to move their
hands and feet. or to eat. or anything:
and the bacteriologists were eleven
years in discovering how to kill that
particular germ and save the babies.
I'm spite of al these diseases, and
of al the new ones that continued to
arise, there were more and more men
In the world. This was because 1t
was easy to get food The easier 1t
was to get food the more men there
were: the more men there were. the
more thickly were they packed to-
setler on the earth; and the moro
thickly they were packed, the moro
new,kinds OF germs became diseases.
There were warnings SoAervetzsky.
az Harly as 1929. told the bacteriolo-
gists that they had no guaranty against
some new disease. thousand times
more deadly than any they knew,
arising and killing by the hundreds
Of nillions and even by the billion"
II was at this point that Hare-Lip
rose, to his feet, an expression Of huge
contempt on his face.
"dranser," he announced. you
make me sick with your gable. Why
,Annx Won tell about the Red Death 3