Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1915-10-19
CLEANLINESS PAYS.

Great things have small beginnings.
A spectacle maker, Jan Leippersheim
by name, living in Holland, invented
crude magnifying glass in 1908. An
ton Won Leunenhoek, born in Delft,
this day 1852, improved this clumsy
toy and evolved a compound micro
scope which has become the most val
liable sanitary tool yet devised by
man. The first microscope was as far
removed from the high powered in
strument of today as is the modern
American from the original caveman.
Yet by this faulty means, Leuwen-
hook, naturalist, 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-
terra.
We spend our days surrounded by
another world, living world of count
less 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 fiercest foes of every
liuino tainfr NOT nj
enhock thought, but vegetables,
bacteria consist of two classes, those
which prey on living things and those
which reduce to their original miner
ais, fluids ana gases, every dead thing
which they attack. They are of
various 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 it's waters,
the interior of animals and plants all
contain them. They cause the fer
mentation of foods, they make cheese,
they produce disease and some of them
when killed and injected into an
animal protect it against the very
disease which they would have pro-
duced if living. Many of them live
as harmless creatures in the body of
an animal for years, only to kill their
host when the opportunity presents.
Their study has given birth to a
science, bacteriology, one of the found
alton stones of public health.
Their merepreSence 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
bacteria take no root. The depraved
appetiteS 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 a great measure
in our own hands Clean DerSOnS
clean cities, clean workshops and
clean lives are the makers of public
health. The United States Public
Health Service and other sanitary
bodies of this country are gradually
bringing these facts home to the
general public. In this way cleanli-
ness is becoming more general, and
the span of life in America is gradual
ly being heightened. All of which is
largely due to the microscope.