GERMS. 103 



one of the difficulties is that the man who has charge of 

 the board of health in this state is a man who has never 

 practised medicine. He is a man who gets all the 

 knowledge he has on the subject from a study of the- 

 oretical books. His knowledge is the knowledge of the 

 laboratory and not of the practical/' 



Can men who spend much of their time in labora- 

 tories inoculating and experimenting upon the lower 

 animals understand much about disease, or appreciate 

 the needs of the sick ? The Physician and Surgeon for 

 February, 1900, contains an article in which is stated, 

 page 85: "Paralysis has been assigned as the disease 

 causing death in seventy cases in Detroit during the 

 year, from July, '98, to June, '99, according to the 

 Annual Eeport of the Board of Health just issued. 

 People die of paralysis, convulsions and dropsy in 

 Philadelphia, New York and in cultured Boston, ac- 

 cording to the death record from these and other cities. 

 Yet these are not diseases, they are only symptoms 

 which point to disease. Paralysis bears the same rela- 

 tion to disease in the nervous system, that cough does 

 to disease in the lungs, but health boards accept it as 

 disease itself, and accept symptoms as the cause of 

 death." Are health boards "the highest medical au- 

 thority?" 



A pamphlet just issued by the Michigan State Board 

 of Health says regarding disinfection: "For a room 

 ten feet square three pounds of sulphur should be used; 

 for larger rooms proportionately increased amounts." 

 According to bacteriology disinfection means to remove 

 from or destroy certain germs which they claim are the 



