The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1917-12-14
Pro-AIly Bugs Are Now Being
Sent Into the Camps
HELP FIGHT The KAISER
Dead Are Used to Help Kill Live
Ones That Create Serious
Disease
From Mondays Daily.
GEORGE MARTIN.

TWIN "OTudyS SaItys
GEORGE MARTIN.
Washington, December S.-Billions
of pro-ally bugs to fight diseases that
fight Americas soldiers who fight the
kaiser are being sent to camps at
home and abroad and syringed into
our Sammies by army surgeons, the
government announced today.
/ Between April 1. and November 1,
the government, through its army
medical school here, has reared a
family of eleven quadrillion, seventy
five trillion, three hundred and thir-
tytwo billion, two hundred and fifty
million of these battling bug folk. If
every one of them didn't get born,
grow up and raise a large family at
the rate of several million every few
minutes the government couldn't have
done it.
And the funny part of it is that
every one of that staggering nation
of bugs grew from the Hneal descend
ents of an old Adam and Eve bug
family caught and isolated by the
British government seventeen years
ago. Inter- married with them are a
few trillions of native American stock
just to let the British bugs know that
America has entered the war.
Shot Into the System.
Each soldier gets about billion
of these Anglo American atom fight
ers shot into his system. They are
anti-typhoiders. Along with them go
about 750,000,000 anti-para- typhoid
ers. The CHASTITY total which we re-
fuse to repeat, constitutes about
Hnough bugs to protect the systems
Of two million American soldiers.
There's long technical history of
this bug family supplied by the gov
ernment Sort of from the cradle
% the grave" affair. Put tersely, this
is about what it amounts to:
The bugs are grown in colonies on
glass, and they start for camp finally
n a glass dress, wearing black caps
# ri-cresol in their heads
They are by this time corpses, but if
S as corpses that they do their best
work. This is the only known branch
f military service wherein dead
mes.
Robust and Fat.
These colonies are grown until all
members of it are good, fat, robust
rerms, skipping around enjoying life
nd just itching to give somebody
inc case of typhoid fever.
The men who have brought them to
rtrength and maturity by working in
sealed rooms surrounded by damp,
teamy atmosphere then proceed to
kill them and dress them up in their
glass gladrags and black hats. These
nen have worked like trojans at their
ask and despite close watching by
government inspectors, many of them
ave tainted at their work. They
''ake as few and as slow movements,
oven as to breathing, as they possibly
AN get along with, to prevent circu-
alton of air and harm to the germs.
The Germs Are Ready.
Now the germs are ready for the
inal squirt Into soldiers arm
through a needle roll the billion, sew
IN hundred and fifty million dead.
Then they ride around his system on
he tide of his blood. They are still
'ull of typhoid poison, but being dead
hey have no way of directing that
poison against the soldiers health.
But the poison, made active by its
contact with the blood, has to attack
something, so it hunts up all the live
typhoid and para typhoid germs In
the mans system and offers battle.
The life typhoiders accept the chal-
'enge and mobilize. The dead ty-
nhoiders poison blindly does likewise.
Then the two armies go to it.. They
fight it out from the top of that mans
head to the tip of his toes, sometimes
for days. The heat of battle frequent
W makes the man, who is also the
battlefield, feel feverish and rotten.
Dead Kill Live Ones.
But the dead bugs, being already
dead and unable to die any more,
though still able to fight, eventually
kill all the live ones, absorb them in
to their own ranks and stand on their
necks in an attitude of victory.
Thus is Uncle Sam fighting that
which during the Spanish American
war was deadlier than bnllets-ty-
bhoid. Thus does he employ the old
principle: "set a thief to catch a
thief"
How successful he has been is
shown by the fact between the begin
ming of vaccinations for typhoid in
1911 and the year 1913, the disease
was practically eliminated from the
army. There were in that year only
four cases of and no deaths from ty-
phoid, in an army of over 10000 men.
There were only thirty seven cases
among guardsmen and fifteen among
,,,1,, won on tho, Mexican