this same method for the prevention of infection in the days of Moses? In the thirteenth chapter of Leviticus, the forty-fifth verse, we have a record of a contagious disease particularly repulsive to the people of that time. Among other methods for the preven tion of the spread of this infection, the law of God, as given through Moses, contained the injunction that the infected man must bind a cloth across his upper lip, exactly as the physician in the hospital wears the mask today! Could Moses have known the germ theory of disease? Not unless he.had a microscope that was remarkably modern in its equipment and powers, in which case Moses, and not Pasteur, should be the titular deity of modern medicine. If, however, Moses really spoke by the inspiration of the Spirit of God and transmitted to us only those things which he in turn had received, we have a sensible explana tion for this marvelous anticipation of modern wisdom in this ancient book. One of the oldest criticisms that has ever been directed against the scientific integrity of the Bible, is the objection of a generation ago which criticized the scientific accuracy of the first chapter of Genesis. In this chapter it is specifically stated that life occurred on the planet before the work of God on the fourth day had caused the direct rays of the sun to shine upon the face of this globe. The opponent of the Scripture cus tomarily begins his objection by stat ing that Moses said there was life before there was light, and this would be an impossibility in science. We would hasten to refer the read er to the first chapter of Genesis, however, that he might read for him self the exact statement of the fac tors in 'the problem. Light illumined the planet on the first day of creation. The second day was given up to the establishment o f the laws of meteor ology that guide and direct what we call weather. On the third day three mighty works were wrought. The oceans were gathered together into their one bed, the vast realm of bot any was born, and the world of biol ogy came into being. Up to this time, the light that had been shining on the planet had been filtered through that aqueous envelope which had not yet been dissipated. Then on the fourth day, the atmosphere cleared so that the direct rays of the sun reached the planet with all the bright ness characteristic of our modern daylight. (Continued on Page 2S) T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
and until this aid to man’s research was invented and well-nigh perfected, the bacteria remained unknown. But now that we know of their ex istence and have the science of bac teriology that studies their very na ture, substance, structure, and organi zation, physicians almost make a fetish of prophylaxis. Undoubtedly the reader has seen surgeons prepar ing to enter the operating theatre. The first stage in their preparation, after they have gowned themselves in the white robe and covered their hair with a surgical cap, is to spend twenty minutes washing their hands, from the finger tips to the elbow, with our old familiar friend, green soap. With a scrubbing brush, hot water, and this slimy substance, the surgeon scrubs and works and rinses and scrubs again, until his hands are as nearly sterile as they can be. These clean hands are then wrapped in a sterile towel, that they might not be con taminated by the air, and the nurse binds over the doctor’s mouth and nose, a sterile gauze pad. The patient having been made ready for the incision, the sterilized instruments are taken out of the ster ilizing machine, and the doctor bends to make his incision of mercy. Per haps the most important step in all this prophylaxis is the gauze pad that the nurse has bound over the doctor’s mouth and nose. Many of these patho genic organisms ride invisibly on the human breath, and the doctor who is operating upon some patient whose life he hopes to save, might breathe infection into the open wound, with out the aid of that pad. These tiny organisms, however, cannot pass through the numbers of layers of dry and filmy gauze that constitute the pad, but are trapped and rendered innocuous. There was an element of intelli gence, at least, in the sanitation law that caused all of us to walk around during the dread epidemic of influ enza wearing what was commonly called a “ flu mask.” Some day an intelligent generation will force all who have that weird contagion called the common cold, to wear such a public protective measure when they venture out among their fellow men. This custom, of course, of protecting the innocent from infection by the use of the white cloth, is a highly modern method of preventive medi cine. It is based upon the certainty that pathogenic organisms do cause disease in the human body. How, then, can we account, on purely human grounds,- for the use of
that fly through the clouds?” we would brightly answer, “ These are they of the twentieth century.” That much of the anticipation at least is established, and we are well on the way toward the climax of his proph ecy. The same writer who said that a company of men would fly through the clouds also said they would land like doves at their windows. One of the great drawbacks of aviation today is the high landing speed of airplanes. Because of the necessity for a vast area to form an airport, much of the time that is saved by air travel is lost getting from the cities to the airports and back again. The same ingenious generation who fly will learn also to land at the private open ings of their own domiciles. We merely call attention to the fact that among the weighty words of this man who was the voice of God in his generation, anticipating the redemp tion of Calvary and the coming of Him by whose stripes we are healed, he nevertheless interjected into his prophecy a preview of an age when the air would be vibrant with man made wings, carrying a generation of human beings on their flight through the atmosphere. The modern science of medicine sets a high value upon prophylaxis, and to us of this generation, preven tion means more than cure. It would be mere folly even to suggest that Moses, in the fifteenth century before Christ, knew anything of the germ theory of disease. In our generation, however, this so-called germ theory is no longer a theory; it is an estab lished fact. Teeming in the atmosphere, found on dust, in water, permeating all foods, and contaminating every physi cal substance on the planet earth, there are uncountable myriads of pathogenic organisms that cause suf fering and sickness in the human body. These tiny creatures that are classified as germs, bacteria, or bacilli, are so infinitely microscopic that the human eye cannot possibly apprehend them unless they are magnified by the lens of a high-powered microscope. In fact, most of them are visible only through an oil immersion lens, which increases their magnitude by many diameters. It is utterly impossible that any human being could have known of the presence of these dis ease-causing organisms until the great Louis Pasteur established their reality in the face of the opposition of almost every man of science of his generation. These organisms are visible only through the microscope,
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