instinctively avoid all facts that are reassuring, and eagerly
swallow those that make it a marvel that anyone could possibly
survive three days in an atmosphere consisting mainly of
countless pathogenic germs. They conceive microbes as immortal
until slain by a germicide administered by a duly qualified
medical man. All through Europe people are adjured, by public
notices and even under legal penalties, not to throw their
microbes into the sunshine, but to collect them carefully in a
handkerchief; shield the handkerchief from the sun in the
darkness and warmth of the pocket; and send it to a laundry to be
mixed up with everybody else's handkerchiefs, with results only
too familiar to local health authorities.

In the first frenzy of microbe killing, surgical instruments were
dipped in carbolic oil, which was a great improvement on not
dipping them in anything at all and simply using them dirty; but
as microbes are so fond of carbolic oil that they swarm in it, it
was not a success from the anti-microbe point of view. Formalin
was squirted into the circulation of consumptives until it was
discovered that formalin nourishes the tubercle bacillus
handsomely and kills men. The popular theory of disease is the
common medical theory: namely, that every disease had its microbe
duly created in the garden of Eden, and has been steadily
propagating itself and producing widening circles of malignant
disease ever since. It was plain from the first that if this had
been even approximately true, the whole human race would have
been wiped out by the plague long ago, and that every epidemic,
instead of fading out as mysteriously as it rushed in, would
spread over the whole world. It was also evident that the
characteristic microbe of a disease might be a symptom instead of