The Washington times., 1918-12-08
By w. H. Ballou, D. Sc.

n ECENI careful STUDY ny moulcAl
science Of the fossil remains Of many
= - extinct and monstrous birds. and
beasts has resulted in the announcement
that the wicked disease germs of to-day
which plague us are to be thanked for
wiping them out and giving US the chance
to live at all. For in the distorted atti-
tudes, the condition Of the bones, the pet
rified marks Of their dying struggles re-
corded now imperishably in rock that once
was soft mud or sand, medical science has
found plain evidence of what killed these
creatures millions Of years ago.
And to clinch the matter, there have
actually been found fossils Of the germs
themselves, some of them quite 100000
years old-and appearing exactly the same
as their descendants of this year 1918.
The maladies which wiped out these
huge and savage forms Of the youth of
earth we're in fact the same msiadies that
anlict its human creatures now, its middle
age. The monsters have gone, destroyed
by the microbe. The microbes prepared,
therefore, the path for mans ascent-for
without them these amphibian and later,
ape-Iike forms through which he grew
could not have held their own against the
nightmare carnivores such as the dino
saurs on land. the gigantic lizards of the
sea and the flying lizards of the air.
The microbes helped shove the monsters
into the discard. Now they are trying to
do the same thing with man, who has man
aged to sneak around the dangerous cor
Hers of nature so far. Man can, with the
aid of knowledge that never could have
found its place in the brain cavities Of the
monsters, circumvent the germ somewhat.
nd in the end, when man has gone the
way Of all other animal species, the germ
will no doubt still be striving. r. g.
Wells, in an interesting story dealing with
earth's twilight, conceived it as a cold
waste upon which, under a red and dying
sun, moved only hideous crustaceans. He
might have looked still further and drawn
world on which dwelt only microbes-the
earliest perhaps to come and the last, Ger.
tainly, to go.
There are certain malignant bacilli which
leave their characteristic mark, like the
burglar upon the safe, on their victims.
The police, grown familiar with the pecu-
liar methods of the criminal, can tell in
an instant whether it is Jimmy the Brute"
or BILL the Bite" say, by the Characters
tic way each one has handled chisel or
torch or explosive upon the object Of his
attention. Medical science, the police of
health, recognize the work of the tetanus
bacilli, the tuberculosis germ, the virus of
meningitis and so on in much the same
way-by the marks they have left on that
broken safe Of life, a corpse or a fossil.
which is only a very. very long dead
corpse or its Detriied imprint or remains.
In anaivzing these marks, science has
discovered some. extraordinary things in
deed.
Among them that a certain enormous
and dangerous carnivore of the Eocene
age, or long before the dawn Of the lowest
form Of ape man. died in hordes Of the
very same disease that afflicted the m
fated Car Nicholas's soma softening Of
the bones called osteomalacia. that carries
with 1t a fragility OF the vessels Of the
circulatory system that brings on hemor-
rhage from the slightest bruise or pune
ture II was form of this ancient disease
likewise that caused the death OF Anna
Held
Pyorrhea alveolaris has been supposed
to be a modern disease more or less. This
is the shrinking Of the gums and the pus
poisoning that makes so many mouths Of
today the abode Of sickness and death.
Yet Professor Roy L. Noodle, Of the De-
partment of Anatomy. College OF Medicine,
University Of Illinois, has discovered the
presence OF this disease among the gigsn-
tic sea lizards called mosasaurs and plesio-
saurs-monsters greater than any sea ser
pent of legend-and even on the turtles OF
the crctaceous period.
Professor Noodle lecturing upon the
subject recently. said:
Every student Of fossil vertebrates who
Is fortunate enough to collect a number OF
complete skeletons Of extinct animals is
almost sure to be impressed with the fire.
uue~cy of the peculiar curve to the back
wardly bent neck and the rigid appearance
of the limbs, If these members are pre-
served in anything like the position as
sumed by the animal at death. This atti-
tude OF the skeleton Is very common In
the petrifed remains of extinct animals
and it is doubtless what is known to medi,
zeal men as opisthotonos.
"Williston, in describing the fossil re.
mains Of a long-necked plesios1ur from the
cretaceous formation of Kansas, says:
The specimen comprises the skull and
twenty-eight cervical vertebrate, all at
fached with their relative positions but lit
tie disturbed. They lie upon the right side