Time was when the human animal could not see anything smaller than a flea, and when his fears were confined to beasts and reptiles more powerful than himself.

Today we have subjugated the huge creatures of the forest, and, single-handed, our great and illustrious St. Theodore has tackled the very lion in his den and killed him by the score; he has marched into the jungle with more power than a million savages, but with a good deal of the same instinct and feeling that actuated men who lived in the age of tooth and fang.

At any rate, we no longer fear big things.

But now we lay awake nights trembling lest we be overcome by some invisible host of microbes and germs, of which our savage ancestors never dreamed.

And these germs are no joke; we can't see them with the naked eye to be sure, but we have manufactured powerful instruments that make little things look big, and so these creatures that dwell by the millions in a glass of water or a decayed apple, have come to have a real meaning and to present a real problem.

In fact, we have found that all nature is alive, and that life preys upon life in a most remarkable way, and a most uncomfortable way also, if it happens to be your life that is affected, or "infected," to use the proper term.

We find that a man's body is actually made up of millions of living organisms, that the blood is composed of living creatures, that some of these are white and some red, and that there is a constant conflict going on right inside our very veins and heart.

We are now taught that diseases are caused by tiny animals, that every breath of air we breathe may be infested with a deadly microbe which has designs on our life; in fact, we know that we are in a world that is teeming with myriads of invisible germs that are destructive to human life, and that we can not turn to the right or the left, or go straight ahead, without encountering an army of them; they fill the air of the city, take possession of the cellar and the garret and all the living-rooms of your home, follow you to the shop or the office, and while you sleep they hover around you, seeking a chance to sink their small fangs into your vitals - Ugh!

After a man has read a bit about these germs he walks around on tiptoe and dare not speak above a whisper for fear that some germ boy-scout will locate him and bring on the army of invasion, and come across and "possess" him. It's nerve racking, this dodging of invisible demons that we see in all their glory and power, thrown up in real life poses at the moving-picture show.

For all that, I've come to the sensible conclusion that the healthy human organism is more than a match for any army of disease germs that ever came down the pike, and that as long as a man lives right and keeps his body clean and free from surfeit deposits, he need not fear if all the germs in Christendom come and roost on his back porch, - though a clean man's back porch should be no good roosting-place for germs.

Given plenty of pure air and sunshine, a simple diet and sensible outdoor exercise, the human organism will cast out any germ that seeks to damage its internal anatomy. The body is supplied with gastric juices and white blood corpuscles and other forces for just this purpose, and when the body is vigorous, all these repelling forces are vigorous, and woe be to the germ that is caught anywhere on the premises.

But if the body is stuffed full of food that it can't dispose of, and every organ is taxed with foreign deposits, the result of overwork, the germ finds an easy lodging-place and congenial soil in which to commence operations. The weakened body, weakened by overindulgence of appetite and bad habits, is the legitimate prey of the germ, for nature has evidently created these germs for just this purpose, the tearing down of an organism that refuses to obey her laws.

In this fight against the germs it is pretty hard to corner them and destroy them. They are so small, and they breed so rapidly, and they spread over the country so easily, that we can never be sure that they are not around us; as you read this you may be breathing in a million of them. It will be only after society takes the position that human life is more important than profits, and commences a universal crusade against all dust and filth that the germs will be lessened in any considerable numbers, and even then we can expect to have them, they are a part of nature s plan.

The individual, however, may free himself from all anxiety if he will simply obey nature's laws and build up his body to a proper point of resistance. You can eat germs dead or alive with impunity if you will stop eating a lot of other things that furnish food for germs inside your body.

Eat little, breathe much, exercise moderately and keep cheerful, and if you can't keep cheerful always, keep as cheerful as you can, things are bad enough without you going around with a long face. But this doesn't mean that you should be satisfied. If things are not right, change them, and if you can't do this alone, get others to see what's wrong and lend a helping hand. Not all of the parasites are microscopic, some of them can be viewed easily with the naked eye. When the race locates a few of these large visible and powerful parasites that prey upon the body politic, then we will have a better chance in our fight with the little fellows that find such a congenial atmosphere in the slums of our cities.