Life — December 14, 1911 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

1088 -LIFE- Another Surprise ANY people, otherwise intelligent, doubt and sneer and laugh and jeer at the frequent life-saving discoveries proclaimed from the Rockefeller Institute of Physical Research. These doubting persons may be glad, and somewhat mortified, to hear of one more discovery; a discovery that promises to be of priceless value to the human race. Dr. Simon Flexner, in speaking on “The Mode of Infection in In- fant Paralysis” recently, told his audience, according to the Evening Post, that “At present the disease must be opposed by prevention, since there is no specific cure for it.” This is, of course, disappointing after the reverberating songs of triumph that have come, the last few years, from the Halls of Agony. But there is solace for our disappointment. Dr. Flexner went on to say: Prevention involves knowledge of the cause—now proven to be a very minute germ—and the way in which the cause enters the body. Experiments on animals had indicated the upper respiratory membranes—nose and throat—as the place of entrance and exit of the germ; and the study of human cases of infantile paralysis in New York at the Rockefeller Hospital in the last summer tended to uphold this view. Certainly, a reasonable view. We had always supposed those wicked germs entered the victim's body through shoulder blades, on the knee cap, or through his hat. However, this official statement from a leading vivisector is a final, crushing and triumphant reply to the vast army of skeptics, who main- tain that the workers in the Halls of Agony are always promising and never making good. Further experiments on living dogs and monkeys may be the means of proving that we smell through our noses and eat with our mouths. The Unimportance of Getting Married OVELS dealing with married life seem to be in the ascendency. Few enterprising novelists consider their life complete unless they have written at least one book dealing with the “problem” of married life. This is rather remarkable, in view of the fact that married people are living less and less together all the time. Who, indeed, marries now just for the sake of having a home, when home is degenerating into a telephone booth with a few rooms ofi—a place where we linger impa- tiently over night while waiting for something to happen to take us away from it? There are so many other things to do besides getting married that married life has become relatively unimportant, and only of consequence because, as a romantic possibility, it was once thought desirable. Only two things, indeed, are interesting as a permanent contribution to humanity: one is that which keeps us from thinking and the other that which furnishes us with materials for conversation. Married life now does neither of these. Everything about it is well known, even to schoolboys. No longer a sacred mystery, every phase of it, from the initial engagement kiss to the signing of the divorce decree, has become shopworn. . On the other hand, owing to the travel tours, the automobiles, mov- ing pictures and other inventions to keep us from thinking, we can pass our time much more profitably than in sitting by the fireside in carpet slippers, reading aloud to “wifey” from the Family Herald. Once marriage was a calamity, to be reckoned with on its merits: now it is only an incident. T. LM. fas < Serle tyY “MERE, CONFOUND YOU, TAKE THIS MEGAPHONE AND DO THE THING Property!” comicbookseunl