ELLOWS of the Pickwick Medical Club: "Having been once more elected to the presidency of this honorable society, which it was my pleasure and privilege to organize, I wish to thank you for inducting

me again into this high and responsible office, to which I humbly protest my modest endowments and qualifications fail to entitle me. I wish, especially, to express my pleasure and heartfelt gratification at the confidence you have shown in making that choice unanimous. This endorsement of my past conduct and leadership inspires me to further lofty efforts and I have the sincere hope and trust and desire—against which, I bid free to presume, no black ball will be cast by any worthy member of this society-the hope and confidence--I repeat -of seeing this society grow and flourish and influence by its mighty and thoughtful deliberations the course of medical thought and the diffusion of science throughout the universe, to the glory of its members and the good of mankind. Gentlemen, I thank you. (Vigorous Applause.)

"I have been asked to bring to your notice a bill about to be introduced in the legislature, and to bespeak your interest and aid for this humanitarian measure, which has the powerful backing of the Philitrachoma Society, the Daughters of Evolution, the Neurosis Society and other well-known women's clubs.

"I am somewhat diffident about bringing such a matter to your attention, but the more I have thought about it the oftener and the more continuously the committee of fair ladies have talked to me on the subject the deeper was I impressed by its worth and importance and especially by the spirit of justice and fair play which inspires and pervades this measure.

"The bill was prepared and introduced primarily at the instigation of these three allied organizations: the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Microbes, the AntiGermisection Society and the Society for the Amelioration of the Condition of Amoebae. It has for its object the prevention by law of the wanton, indiscriminate, wholesale, malicious, cruel and altogether unnecessary destruction of germs.

"For thousands and thousands of years germs led a happy, careless, care-free and undisturbed existence. Man concerned himself not at all about them and was just as happy until an old busybody, impelled by morbid curiosity and an insane craze for solving the unknown, invented the microscope to better spy upon and pry into their private life and habits, since when Pasteur, Koch and others have taken up and popularized the vocation of experimenting with and torturing germs, thus inaugurating what has become the greatest and most barbarous fad of the day, the fad of microbe hunting.

"For many years now this warfare against bacteria has been going on ruthlessly. So relentlessly has been the attack that many forms, the B. gangrenosus and others, have been well nigh exterminated and, like the American buffalo, threaten to become an extinct species.

"It is today the fad to be affected with the mania for exterminating germs under the cloak of so-called 'modern sanitary methods.'

"On every hand the hue and cry is get rid of the germs; they are sought in every nook and cranny and either poisoned by chemicals or boiled alive. Refuse and dirt are kept away with the sole purpose of depriving the germs of nourishing soil and food. Everything is sterilized. As a well-known poet has sung:

"They take up the babe from the sterilized bed,
With sterilized gauze scour his sterilized head;
In sterilized tub give a sterilized bath,
And take him to walk on a sterilized path.
Dress him in muslin or sterilized silk,
For food give him nothing but sterilized milk;
Let him play only with sterilized toys,
Have nothing to do with unsterilized boys.
Use a sterilized bottle with a sterilized spout,
Nothing unsterilized let lie about.

Get him at once a well sterilized nurse,
And his finish will be in a sterilized hearse."

"And all this so that the germs can't get at him. "But it is behind the grim walls of laboratories and medical colleges that the chief work of germ torture and germ destruction is being carried on. There behind closed doors the most cruel, brutal and revolting experiments and tortures are inflicted daily on thousands of poor dumb, innocent, helpless germs. There in the name

of Science cruelties and barbarities are practised and fiendish experiments are enacted such as no one with a spark of pity in his nature can read of without being moved to tears. Worse atrocities and agonizing tortures are constantly invented and executed than Dante ever dreamed of in his Inferno.

"The agonies and torments the poor dumb germs are made to suffer one can only imagine, and the imagination often fails.

"Bacteriologists and men of physiological and pathological research say their experiments are not cruel. They point to the fact that in the laboratories the germs are fed on agar-agar (imported from Japan) gelatine, potatoes, bouillon, beef broths, flesh peptones, eggs (hard and soft), infusions of meat, hydrocele fluid, milk, serum, urine, tubers, roots and fruits; a diet more substantial and varied than can be secured by germs anywhere else. But essential facts are uncontrovérted by any other tesimony but their own. Their minds are so tinged with the taint of bias and their sympathies have been so shriveled and their sense of pity so warped by their inhuman practices that they are unable to distinguish between cruelty and kindness.

"Here are a few of the cruel 'experiments hidden under the musical term of scientific research, according to published statements of the bacteria killers themselves:

"The germs are muzzled and confined in narrow glass tubes, are subjected to boiling, freezing, baking, starving, poisoning; their capsules are removed, their membranes dissolved by caustic chemicals, their nuclei are torn away, they are inoculated with antitoxins till they rot away, to demonstrate their power of movement, their flagellae are amputated for testing their capacity for pain, typhoid bacilli are tantalized by serum till they shrivel up and die, and to test a germ's love for its young it is deprived prematurely of its spores. For the sake of Science they are painted and stained for life with methyl blue, Bismark brown, analine yellow, gentian violet, Gram's stain and Ehrlich's triacid stain. They are fed on such virulent poisons as tuberculin, leucomain, putrescin, cadaverin and hydro-collodin. And, not content with these vigorous methods of destruction, against which even the germ's natural propensity for rapid reproduction and multiplication cannot prevail, they use the X-rays and cathartic and diactinic rays, by means of which they make them hopelessly sterile. They are determined upon, as far as germs are concerned, not race suicide, but race slaughter.

"When reading these tortures our sympathies are

touched, and we, too, join in the appeal of the GERM'S PRAYER, published in a metropolitan paper which is a powerful ally in the Anti-Germisection Crusade: "Lord of Humanity bend thine ear To hear a poor germ's cry! No human speech can frame my plea, No human heart have I.

My protoplasm belongs to Thee.
The Good Book tells us this-

The Lord above made Heaven and earth,

And all that in them is."

"The state of mind of the germs as a result of long continued torture can be gathered from this remark of the B. Coli Communis to the B. Typhosus: 'I don't know as yet whether I will be with you this summer, as my movements are so very uncertain.' "Contrary to the prevailing belief, all germs are not bad germs. Some manufacture beer, bread, wine, vinegar, cheese, butter and many other necessities of life. Then, too, there is the B. Aromaticus, the Proteus Fluorescens, The Microbe rouge de la Sardine and the Germ of Immortality. Not all are pus-formers or gas generators. In fact, many bacilli belong to the nobility. Note the titles: B. of Poor, B. of Friedlander, B. of Shimmelbush, B. of Sternberg, B. of Nicolaier, B. of Pyorrhea. Most germs are affectionate and if properly treated become very tame; they make lifelong companions and cling fondly after all others flee. They are especially fond of children and old people, despite the inhuman treatment which frequently leaves them out in the cold without any protection against the sun or rain whereby only the hardiest can survive. They are not partial in their affections, as the B. of green pus has been found in good company.

"One germ is always born of love under the most romantic circumstances, as a rule. It has been declared that this germ sometimes clings to a peculiar oval-shaped throne of after-breakfast popularity, but these are degenDespite evil report, no true Gonococcus has ever been known to inhabit a closet seat.

erates.

"There may be a B. Prodigiosus, a B. Foetidus, a B. of Epidemic Suicide and a Black Hand Bacillus, but every other self-respecting germ tries to kill these off with the antitoxin he manufactures.

"It is claimed that some Bacteria cause death. How about the trolley roads, the railroads and the automobiles. They have no such record as these.

"There are microbes, so I see, Germlets in a kiss;

Maybe so, but they must be
Bacilli of bliss!"

Father Freud vs. Mother Goose.

Has it ever occurred to you that there might be a suppressed desire or a sublimated urge in some of the old tales which we told and still tell to children; hidden meanings and even dangerous suggestions in Little BoPeep and Tom Thumb? Now, take "Sing a Song of Six-Pence." The King was in his counting house, the Queen was in her parlour. Each occupied with satisfying primal needs, the greed of Gold, and the greed for Food. In the Queen's case, honey, fittingly rich, sweet, and golden, for Royalty. The Maid was in the Garden, and fittingly, too, the only one of the trio who worked. She was hanging up the clothes. Now, what significance had the Black-bird who "popped off her nose?" Was it a real bird or a symbol? And was it really her nose? Maybe this, too, was one of the fifty-seven varieties of phallic idol which filled all folklore, according to Freud. Little Jack Horner suggests solitary vice, as he "sat in the corner," and with it, the self-laudation for sexual abstemiousness, which finds utterance in his cry: "What a good boy am I!"

It is still true, as Mme. de Stael said over a century ago, that views which are not in accord with the prevailing Spirit, let them be what they may, always infuriate the common man. Study, the search for truth, and the test, alone, give that independence of judgment, without which it is not possible to get new vision and

real insight, or to uphold what one already has, for one subjects oneself to traditional or conventional ideas, not as Truths, but as a Force, and so human Reason accepts slavery even in the domain of letters and life.

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS OF ETIQUETTE. Manners are the whitewash on the rough surface of greedy personality; a screen with a legend informing the admiring world that we have leisure, food, and drink, pleasure, honor, and love, in such abundance that we need not even reach out for more. Manners are shed as desire and passion master us. When ravenous, one does not dally daintily with food; one devours. When the sex urge overpowers inhibitions of caution and ethics, the courtly gallant ceases to pay court and rudely embraces; the swain does not rally, but beats, his rival. Pleasant fiction makes way for stark reality, and "After you, Alphonse," for "Sauve qui Peut."

AESOP UP TO DATE. THE SHEPHERD, HIS DOG, AND THE WOLVES.

A stingy Shepherd had a Dog on whom he relied to keep several Wolves from the Door. But the Dog, being badly fed, Registered a Kick, and demanded More Meat. "Fido, shut up," said the Shepherd. "This is no Time to Grumble. You have always been my Faithful Help. And now I Need you More than Ever. There is Danger from a Particularly large and Ravenous Pack of Wolves." The Flock was, in fact, attacked; the Shepherd bitten, and the Dog badly torn. However, the Wolves were driven off. But the Dog got no more Meat than Before. Again, he asked for Food. But the Shepherd told him to wait until he had had his Wounds bound up and had settled with the Medicine Man. Finally, the Dog got desperate and growled loudly for Food. Said the Shepherd: "You are an ungrateful Pup, but I'll fix you if you keep on growling. I am quite recovered from the bite wounds, the Wolves have been scattered, I have fattened on the sale of my Flock, and if you Make a Move, I'll beat you Black and Blue. I'm just about Sick of your Constant Complaints."

Emotion is the race memory of physical pain or of

physical pleasure connected with desire and its satisfaction or denial. So conscience is the race memory of ideal pleasure and ideal pain connected with the satisfaction or denial of ethical desires, i. e., those good, over and above the individual, for the race.

A bad case is best urged with personalities and appeals to emotion. A fair one can get along on generalities and broad allegations. A good one is content with simple demonstration and simple facts.

In the old fairy tales the Giants were always fat, lazy, stupid and good-natured; the Dwarfs malignant, crafty and quick. There is here a dawn of pathological knowledge of our spiritual make-up and of over-andunder-growth in its dependence on endocrine function. Not a few of our most recent theories of life processes, of individual character, emotion and personality are foreshadowed in song and story coming down from the childhood of man.

P. H. F.