126 On the Campus 



life are before us and we have learned strangest 

 chapter in the book of knowledge ! that these minutest 

 microscopic things are intimately bound up in everything 

 else that goes on beneath the sun. 



They bring bane or blessing, life or death, and surely 

 not the least service which biologic science has in these 

 late years conferred upon humanity is to be found in the 

 comprehension and mastery of some of the most terrible 

 diseases that have ever vexed the race. In 1854 Asiatic 

 cholera swept the whole country, away up the Mississippi 

 valley, not sparing even the poor prairie settlements of 

 early Iowa. In 1869 the same dread malady threatened 

 us again. The whole nation was in fear. I was but a 

 youth in college and our president, good man that he 

 was, sought to reassure us. He read us the ninety-first 

 Psalm: "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by 

 night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the 

 pestilence that walketh in the darkness; nor for the de- 

 struction that wasteth at noonday ; a thousand shall fall 

 at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand ; but it 

 shall not come nigh thee," and we were all, if possible, 

 more frightened than before. We were not reassured, 

 we were alarmed. We saw no comfort in the thought 

 that a thousand should fall at our side and ten thousand 

 at our right hand; even if individuals were spared, a 

 large population would be swept away. Yet this was the 

 best we could do : be brave, be truthful, do righteousness 

 and escape. It never occurred to us, that we need never 

 have cholera at all; that cholera could be checked, yea 

 absolutely suppressed, stamped out, if men were only 

 wise. Men were all their lifetime subject to bondage 



