Lewis Perin > wrote in
news

>> "It seems a pity that the world should throw away so many good things
>> merely because they are unwholesome. I doubt if God has given us any
>> refreshment which, taken in moderation, is unwholesome, except
>> microbes. Yet there are people who strictly deprive themselves of
>> each and every eatable, drinkable and smokable which has in any way
>> acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And
>> health is all they get for it."
>
> As a Twainolator, I'm pained to note that the master was wrong about
> microbes.
>
> /Lew
> ---
> Lew Perin /
> http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

He wasn't, strictly, if you allow for what the term "microbes" meant to
the medical layman in his time -- microscopic disease organisms only,
hence the fewer the better. (I seriously doubt if he was aware of the
concept of benign intestinal florae.) No one can hold him responsible
for not-quite-so earthskaking discoveries made at the tail end of his
life, or maybe even after it, can they?

He records elsewhere in the same autobiography that he'd seen
homeopathic medicine go out and allopathic medicine (the precursor of
modern-day doctoring) come in during his lifetime, which included the
growing acceptance of the "germ theory" of disease and the start of
antiseptic practices.

I think this attempt to keep current is another example of how unique
and varied his mind was. Huckleberry Finn is a tale of (among other
things) the gross inhumanities of slavery, yet it was written by a
member of the slaveholding class who had initially fought for the South;
he also stood up for the Jews in print, another thing that you'd hardly
expect from an American gentile born in 1835; etc.

I am also a bit a bit of a Twainolator, you see.

Ozzy