A Tribute

If science had done nothing more than to discover the microbe, its claim to human gratitude would be established, and if it should now lay down its work its glory would still be eternal in our history. Over its grave would be erected a monument, on which would be carved a gigantic bacillus, and underneath the figure would be graven:

"Sacred to the Men Who Rescued Me From Obscurity."

To think of all the ages through which human beings struggled in ignorance of what ailed them! They had diseases, took dope and died, but the dream never came to them that they were vast perambulating menageries. They had no thought that they were full of monsters beside which the fabled sen serpent would look like a domesticated cat. They knew not that they were theaters of war compared with which the skirmishes around Troy would pale Into mere love feasts.

Science turned on the light. Then it was that men for the first thine realized that they are fuller of germs than an overripe limburger cheese; that In them are more populous nations than those that swarm over the ant hills we call continents.

Wonderful is science, Beside it all other discoverers dwindle into insignificance. Columbus may have found another hemisphere, but science lifted the veil from a world undreamed and revealed to us the microbe.

This age has many distinctions. It built the locomotive, made electricity carry its messages and do its work, erected skyscrapers and evolved the new woman. But In ages to come these will not constitute its greatest claim to renown. In the perspective of time they will be dwarfed by the ever growing figure of the bacillus. And in the two hundred and forty-second century, after the wonderful things that Tesla was always about to do have been forgotten, the present era will be marked upon the map of the centuries as the bug hunting age.

For millions of years the humble disease germ toiled on unknown and unappreciated. But patient merit wins at last. He long had dreamed of fame. Finally the scientist found him, obscure but not alone, saw his wonderful possibilities and dragged him forth from his retirement, thenceforth to be known of all men.

And now he has become the fashion, the lion of the hour. Long disquisitions have been written on his ancestry, his habits, his future. He is cultivated, and all sorts of attentions are showered upon him. Learned societles discuss him. He is the subject of lectures, of papers and of dope. Newspaper artists draw pictures of him that are the occasion of nightmares. He bas filled the earth with new diseases and pipe dreams.