The Coconino sun., 1915-10-29
DEATH BEGtTS LIFE AND
 LIFE BEGETS DEATH

Great things have small beginnings. A spectacle maker, Jan Leippersheim by name, living in Holland, invented crude magnitying glass in 1908. Anton von Leuwenhoek, born in Delft, this day 1882, improved this clumsy toy and evolved compound miscro- scope which has become the most valuable sanitary tool yet devised by man. That first microscope was as far removed from the high-powered instrument of today as is the modern American from the original caveman. Yet by this faulty means, Leuwen- hoek, naturalists, physician and botan- ist, discovered certain minute bodies which he called little animals" He made drawings of these and today we know them for those useful friends and malignant enemies of man-bac- teria.
 We spend our days surrounded by another world, a living world of countless billions, invisible to the naked eye, silent, tireless, destroying the living, consuming the dead, useful in the sciences and arts, yet often fol- lowed by train of sickness, suffering and death A curious paradox this, yet bacteria are at once the greatest friends and the fercest foes of every living thing. Not animals, as Leuw- enhoek thougth, but vegetables, bac- teria consist of two classes, those which prey on living things and those which reduce to their original miner als, fluids and gases, every dead thing which they attack. They are of var ious shapes, round like marbles or straight like little sticks. They grow in clusters, chains, and in pairs. They are ubiquitous. The dusty air, the earth and its waters, the interior of animals and plants all contain them. They cause the fermentation of foods, they make cheese, they produce dis ease and some of them when killed and injected into an animal protect 1t against the very disease which they would have produced if living. Many of them live as harmless creatures in the body of an animal for years, only to kill their host when the opprotun- ity presents. Their study has given birth to science, bacteriology, one of the foundation stones of public health.
 Their mere presence does not neces- sarily produce disease. Recalling the parable of the sower, some bacteria fall by the wayside, some fall upon stony places, and some fall in good ground and bring forth the fruit of suffering, perhaps of death. A nor nal, temperate life, free alike from the gluttony of idleness or overwork, the sound mind in the sound body, cheerful, normal environment, these form the stony places in which bac- teria take no root The depraved ap- petites of mind and body, the dark and sordid atmosphere of penury, the nerve racking and strength undermin- ing trades, these prepare the good ground.
 The great weapon against bacteria is cleanliness. The mastery over. pre- mature death lies to great measure in our own hands. Clean persons, clean cities, clean workshops and clean lives are the makers of public health. The United States Health Service and other sanitary bodies of this country are gradually bringing these facts home to the general pub lie. In this way cleanliness is be- coming more general, and the span of life in America is gradually being heightened. All of which is largely due to the microscope.-U. S. Health News.