CHAPTER XXIII 



PROTECT THE STREAM OF LIFE 



In the Journal of the American Medical Association for 

 September 2, 1911, Dr. Schamberg describes what he calls 

 " An Epidemic of Chancres of the Lip from Kissing." 



It appears that on the fourth of March, 191 1, a group of 

 young men and women ranging in ages from sixteen to twenty- 

 two gave a minstrel performance, had a banquet afterwards, 

 and closed the evening with what were called kissing games. 



No one suspected any danger, for all were light-hearted 

 and thoughtless. A certain young man was especially attrac- 

 tive and evidently quite popular. His one blemish, so far as 

 appearances were concerned, seems to have been a sore on 

 the lip, which led one girl to say that she let him kiss her 

 " with reluctance and wiped her own lips afterwards with a 

 handkerchief." As it happened, however, it was a plague 

 spot of the worst kind. Any man or woman who knows about 

 different kinds of contagious disease would choose smallpox 

 or scarlet fever or both together rather than the disease rep- 

 resented by the small sore which showed itself on the lip of 

 the young man. 



Any intelligent doctor would have told the fellow that the 

 sore itself was swarming with contagious microbes, that it 

 was not safe for him to mingle with healthy people, and 

 that it was a wrong of great cruelty for him to press that 

 sore, with its millions of microbes, against the lips of any 

 other human being. 



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