Hostility to Germs

The Hartford Courant notes that a decided feeling of hostility to germs pervades the minds of scientific persons at present. When anything is the matter with man or beast, they say at once, "Some evil germ hath done this." When in doubt as to the cause of any ailment they say "lay it to a microbe." and as the microbe cannot possibly prove an alibi he has to stand the blame. They then invent something to shorten his days which they call a "germicide." If the man dies, the germs have killed him, if he recovers the germicide has killed the germs. These scientific persons will be glad to know that the "London Electrical Review" states that electricity of a high tension is fatal to germs. As is well known, a man who is struck by lightning is cured of his diptheria or eczema. The microbes simply quiver and curl up and die. If the electricity is of sufficiently high tension it does not hurt the man charged with it, as Mr. Tesla has shown, but he is surrounded with a "luminous haze." in which the corpses of the surface microbes are consumed, in fact this "luminous haze." which sounds like a pleasant thing to have enveloping one, may be produced by the ignition of countless microbes pasturing on the outside of the epidermis. The new method will be called "electrical dermatology" until some longer words are invented. It may be the coming fad for next season. Baldness is, caused by a microbe rooting in the subsoil of the scalp, a minute "cephalic weevil." A French savant has seen him with a microscope in his burrow. This fellow cannot endure static electricity of a high tension. It has the effect of exploding him. If the charge is applied in time the progressive baldness of those who possess the kind of scalp he fancies will be arrested. We shall see no more bald men when the "apparatus, the exact description of which must be kept secret for a time yet," is made public. There is undoubtedly something in this—just a germ of probability, as it were — for it has been known for some time that the "static breeze" from the Holtz machine has a beneficial effect on the hair. If it be objected that a bald electrician is not an unknown phenomenon, it may be answered that such a one has not used currents of sufficiently high tension. That ought to be a sufficient answer to doubters. At all events it is not too much to ask them to wait until "the apparatus, the exact description of which must be kept secret for a time yet, is made public." But that last quotation has a familiar sound.