EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIII, Issue 7367, 15 November 1898, Page 1

EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The mission of the Victorian detective who was despatched to' seize a consignment of bubonic (.plague. germs imported from Colombo by a" Wajrrnambool physician, for experiinental panoses'.' provides; another of the'truth'of the comic opera adage '?A policeman's life is notahappy one." The y - ways o'fjbhe common or garden, germ .are asinscrutable and ap mysterious to the' layman as " The .way of, an eagle in the air. the way bf a serpenfc.upori a rock, the; way 'of* a.'ship in'the : 'midst-of the sea, and .the way of "a man with,.a maid." Even though .the germs w;ere hermetically seated, the'.oflficer must "have approached.his heroic 'tasli with a conviction that Tie, was handling some' * Korgian'.compound, more deiicat'ely than the most alluring'of'Venetian phiais". " Still the' task- was one which' the powers that' be were quite right, in ordering—an interference with the liberty of the subject for the sake of the. lives of all,subjects which everybody but the ambitious. Warrnainbool physician, will endorse'. . The tragic history of the doctors' of the Pathological' Institijte of Vienna is a bill too fresh in our ihemories to permit'of any reservation in the'matterof the strictest injunction against such playing with death. As well might the naturalist be allowedto introduce snakes "and venomous repitiles for the purpose of studying their habits; as the doctors introduce the, seeds of a pestilence whose record of mortality is appalling. Indeed the former concession would be by comparison comparatively harmless, for its subjects would atj least be concrete and captarable in the event of escape, but the pursuit of a lost germ would be as hopelesß as the Quest of the Golden Girl or the strivings of the Opposition to recover the Treasury benches. Of course prevention is admittedly better than cure, but prevention of the necessity for.,prevention is an even more desirable goal, and" to sow thistle's for the purpose of preventing their spreading by pulling them up before they seed is an ingenious if somewhat laborious method of noxious weed eradication. Also the pursuit of knowledge by up-to date methods is a worthy ambition, but when it ccmes.to "a question of plague germs the;general: public have a quiet conviction that these, unlike the blastoderm pill or the Pirani polish,;'are things which all regulated families can conveniently dispense,, with, and that in ; the special. case under consideration if Mahomet wants the mountain he should travel to it. The Warrnambool physician has suffered no.injury. If his soul hankers after germs let. him go where the germs are, for there his opportunities for research will be of a fuller and more, practical nature than could be afforded by the confined experiments of the laboratory.