simply inoculate the patient with a lot of these little chaps with the green legs, and they will do the rest.
"Here is a germ with yellow stripes which looks a little like a diminutive potato bug. He is the deadly enemy of the bug of consumption, and will attack and kill him on every possible occasion. They are about evenly matched, but I think the little striped chap is a bit the better. Another ghost and myself made a match the other night,—seven battles, the result to decide the championship,—a sort of a bugging main, as it were. I won. The first six matches were even. We won three each, but in the seventh my striped bug got the tubercular germ down and shook him as a terrier does a rat. The other ghost and myself nearly had a fight to get our eyes to the microscope. I tell you it was exciting. There is my champion bug now, see him?—the one with the fourth hind leg gone."
"But how," I asked, "are you going to prevent people from dying of old age?"
"Of course they will die of old age; but there is no such thing as old age under one hundred and fifty years; what you call old age is not old age at all. There are two kinds of old age or senility. Old age, properly speaking, results from a distinct modification of the nervous tissues and a hardening of the arteries—the former caused by unnatural conditions, nervous strain and dissipation, and the latter from over-feeding and drinking. The trouble with the ordinary man is that he absorbs great quantities of nitrogenous foods instead of making his diet one of nuts, fruit, milk, etc. In comparatively young men of the present age there is often a decided modification of the nervous tissues with symptoms resembling those in neurasthenia. In such cases galvanic treatment will restore the centres to their normal condition. You
will, therefore, I think, admit that with proper diet and possibly the aid of a galvanic battery a man may live,—barring possible death by violence,—say, two hundred years."
"You mean," I said, "when we have learned to combat the various disease germs by pitting against them their natural enemies."
"Exactly, of course," answered the shade; "but it seems to me that we have talked long enough; I am becoming very dry, so let us repair to the Waldorf and have a cocktail."
"How is it possible," I asked, "that you can take a cocktail, there being nothing tangible about you?"
"Of course," answered the ghost, "it is impossible for me to actually drink a cocktail. I can, however, float over the bar and inhale the pleasing odors arising from the various concoctions served to the guests,