DEVELOPMENT OF THE MICROBE-KILLER. 43 



antiseptic, and I regret to have to place it in the hst 

 with them, because it creates a taste for spirits, which 

 is not desirable, and people are too much addicted to 

 them already. But common sense will tell most people 

 that even alcohol is less harmful than morphia, chloro- 

 form, or the ordinary poisons and antiseptics known to 

 physicians. 



Finding, then, that alcohol was a powerful antiseptic, 

 and knowing that it is derived from the vegetable king- 

 dom, from fruit, grain, rice, potatoes, and anything that 

 contains starch or sugar, I made raids upon my garden 

 and the prairies. I gathered up every kind of plant that 

 had any aromatic properties, and extracted the oil. I 

 took a similar extract by grinding up onions, sage, 

 thyme, tomatoes, and various other fruits and vege- 

 tables, as well as leaves. In fact, I refused nothing that 

 offered me any kind of juice, oil, or extract which would 

 not ferment when mixed with a sufficient quantity of 

 water to be rendered harmless in the stomach when 

 taken in large doses. But I was not successful. I did 

 not find anything that would answer my purpose. The 

 more I worked, the more I experimented, the more con- 

 vinced I became that there was no medicine to be found 

 in that way which would kill the microbe and stop fer- 

 mentation without killing the patient ; and that is what 

 the doctors told me when I first introduced the microbe- 

 killer to public notice. 



However, I was now thoroughly disheartened. All 

 my efforts had failed ; all my experiments had proved 

 fruitless, except to give me negative results and to tell 

 me I had undertaken something that could not be ac- 

 complished. I lay down to die. I felt that there was 

 no cure for me, no hope that I could get better. I had 

 tried everything that friends or physicians or my own 

 reason could suggest, and all to no purpose. My weight 

 had fallen from one hundred and ninety pounds to one 

 hundred and forty-four. My energies were exhausted 

 and my spirits were depressed. But the subject still oc- 

 cupied my mind, and my rest seemed to stimulate my 



