Life, 1917-07-12 · page 13 of 40
Life — July 12, 1917 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Cartoon:** Shows a man at a desk interviewing a line of women applicants, captioned "IF WE USED AS MUCH CARE IN ACQUIRING A WIFE AS WE DO IN HIRING A STENOGRAPHER." This satirizes how men applied rigorous hiring standards to employees while choosing wives carelessly, implying marriage decisions lacked the same scrutiny as business practices. It mocks both male presumption and the casual attitude toward matrimony. **Main Article:** Discusses "anaphylactic idiosyncrasy"—an allergic reaction that killed a San Francisco boy. The text uses this medical case to satirize pseudoscientific thinking and how people blamed serums for diseases they already had, rather than acknowledging actual causation. **Bottom Cartoon:** A child tells his mother "I WISH MOTHERS WASN'T SO BUSY WITH RED CROSS WORK," referencing women's wartime charitable activities during WWI.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
IF WE USED AS MUCH CARE IN ACQUIRING A WIFE AS WE DO IN HIRING A STENOGRAPHER Anaphylactic Idiosyncrasy UT in San Francisco, six-year-old Tommie Pennington romping in his front yard. An officer of the board of health came and injected into In less him something called antitoxin than half an hour the boy was dead. Thus it is stated in the San Francisco Chronicle, ary 4, 1917. “Tt was unavoidabl declared an- other health officer. “I have no doubt it was a case of anaphylactic shock One person in about ten thousand has an idiosynerasy against serums.” These few technical words derived from the Greek ought to make the matter clear. This is the way it is: If you are in- oculated with a serum and nothing no- ticeable happens to vou, you have been prevented from having some disease which you wouldn't have had anyway If you are inoculated with a serum and later develop tuberculosis, infan- tile paralysis, cancer or some other dis- order, no doctor will admit that the scrum had anything to do with it But if you are inoculated with a serum and die so soon thereafter that the sequence of ca and effect is un- avoidable and the gets into the newspapers, then you nd anaphylactically ch explanation absolves s all their sins, cleanses them of a impurities and proves that th Ellis O. Jones. ANKIND will soon be divided into two classes — Pro-Germans and human beings. “LT WISH MOTHER WASN'T SO BUSY WITH, RED CROSS WORK ” comicbooks.com