DUST AND ITS DANGERS. 91 



in such a desperate case, much more is in- 

 volved than individual right or personal com- 

 fort. We virtually condone manslaughter just 

 as long as we permit men to hold municipal 

 offices who fail in their plain duty in the 

 protection of the public health. From mayor 

 to scavenger they should be held personally 

 responsible, and no political chicanery per- 

 mitted to obscure or call away public attention 

 from the business which such persons are 

 appointed and paid to attend to. We owe a 

 great deal to the vigilance of the press in 

 calling attention to sanitary abuses, but with- 

 out the steady and persistent urgency of 

 individual protest this is of but little avail. 



Until the recent revelations in bacteriology 

 gave us firm ground to stand upon in forming 

 our conceptions of the cause of contagious and 

 infectious diseases, there was something most 

 mysterious and dreadful, and the more uncanny 

 because mysterious, about the agency which 

 could so subtly convey a dreaded disease from 

 one to another. That invisible thing which 

 could linger about a room or cling to a folded 



