Baltimore Evening Sun (8 March 1913): 6.

Let the Hon. William H. Anderson be duly thankful. So far, no one has thought to accuse him of spitting on the Maryland flag.--Adv.

From the Hot Towel’s thrilling story of the dynamite explosion:

Atoms * * * shot out like minie balls from of canon [cannon?].

A cannon shooting minie balls is something that would be worth seeing. Is there one in the arsenal of the Towel? Is it, perhaps, a brother to the great goose-grease rifle in G flat, the harrific blubber-gun with red, white and blue stripes?

THE WOMAN HUNT

To attempt, with human nature as it is, to run counter to our common sense * * * is at best innocently, but none the less surely and harmfully, to invite disaster. * * * It serves us well to keep our heads in the heavens, but we must also keep our feet upon the earth. As grave harm has been done, in unnecessary haste and violence, by those of over-reaching temper, as by those who through calculating thrift or sordid stupidity stay the reasonable progress of mankind.--The Rev. A. C. Dieffenbach, of Hartford, Conn.

Presidents may come and Presidents may go, but the ex-Sheriffs hang on to the mazuma forever.--Adv.

The effect of caffeine, the essential poison in coffee, as described in Waugh’s “Alkaloidal Therapeutics”:

Administered to warm-blooded animals [for exmmple, vice crusaders and bartenders] in non-toxic doses, reflex irritability is increased, the animal starts at every touch, and becomes tetanic at times, even without evident cause. Small doses increase the pulse rate; larger doses render it irregular and slower till the heart stops in diastole. * * * * This action resembles [that of] strychnine.

Respectfully referred, for study and comment, to the Hon. Eugene Levering, foe to the Rum Demon and coffee millionaire.

Dr. A. L. Blessing, the calliope of medical freedom, in answer to my objection that his authorities against vaccination are either long dead or without professional standing:

Unfortunately for his reasoning, by the same logical process the words of Christ, Shakespeare, Bacon and all the other great lawgivers and reformers are dead letters and of no value.

A typical example of anti-vaccinationist bosh. What possible comparison can there be between generalizatlons about human conduct and special knowledge about the facts of biology? The principles of ethics are the same today that they were in the time of Christ; the facts of immunization belong, in the main, to the medical progress of the last 30 years.

Nine-tenths of the objections that were brought against vaccination in the sixties and seventies are no longer valid today. At that time, as every intelligent man knows, it was still impossible to guard against the contamination of vaccines. On the one hand, they might contain impurities derived from the body of the human being or animal from which they were taken--for example, the germs of tuberculosis, tetanus or hydrophobia. And on the other hand, there was grave risk of polluting them in transmission or during inoculation, thus producing so-called blood poisoning.

But both dangers are now reduced to next to nothing. On the one hand it is possible to make sure that the laboratory calf is free from tuberculosis, tetanus and all other such infectious diseases, and on the other hand it is possible to perform the operation of inoculation under absolutely aseptic conditions. And not only is this possible, but it is actually done daily. The huge vaccination scars of 40 or 50 years ago--mute evidence of unclean surgery--are now encountered very seldom. An authentic case of tuberculosis following competent vaccination is almost as rare as an authentic case of delirium tremens. In brief, the business of getting vaccinated, provided the attending surgeon be decently equipped for his work, is now little more dangerous than the business of getting shaved.

For this benign advance the human race owes its thanks and respect to a long line of earnest and inspired men, and particularly to Joseph Lister and Emil Pasteur. It was their patient experimentation, their long, tedious work in the laboratory, that made aseptic surgery possible. Not only must we thank them for the improvements made in vaccination against smallpox, but also for our growing control of other and even worse infectious diseases, and for the phenomenal advances in surgery in our time. As a direct result of their labors the death rate throughout civilization has been reduced fully 40 per cent. and the average span of human life has been lengthened more than five years.

But Lister and Pasteur get no grateful acknowledgments from medical freedomists. On the contrary, it is the chief effort of these grotesque believers of balderdash to deny and revile them. I do not say that Dr. Blessing himself is donkey enough to do it, but I do say that many fellow-members of his lodge are at it constantly, and that he encourages them to it by joining them in an ignorant and ridiculous war upon vaccination. He is, as he informs us, a graduate of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Let him go back to that school and ask its professors what they think of his association with the Christian Scientists, anti-vivisectionists, osteopaths, chiropractors, Perunists, vegetarians and other such mountebanks of medical freedom. Let him find a single university professor or student who is on the side of that absurd and lying bunch, and I shall very gladly kiss his hand.

If Dr. Blessing has any actual evidence against vaccination, his alma mater is the place to present it. There he will find men capable of judging it intelligently, and what is more, men willing to hear it patiently. If he has discovered sound objections to the operation, they will be given due consideration and he will go down into history as a respectable contributor to the progress of medicine. But he is not going to accomplish anything of value, either to himself or to the world, by allying himself with a camorra of bonesetters, masseurs, Eddyites, patent-medicine sellers, herb doctors and screaming old maids. He is not going to get any attention from intelligent folks so long as he adorns the League for Medical Freedom.

Somehow a body don’t hardly hear nothing no more about trying them stuffers no more.