"You are completely out of touch with the latest techniques."
"I know it."
"You have been described—accurately I believe—as an old fogy."
"I know that too."
"Then what could you tell us about a new appearance like Hickle's Disease?"
"Only that it is not really new. And not, properly speaking, a disease."
That is why, even today, there are superstitious persons who keep McGonigal's Worms in small mesh cages in the belief that they insure fertility. It is rank nonsense and rose only because it was in the M.W. laboratory that the return of pregnancy was first noticed and was named for one of the women working there. It is a belief that dates back to that ancient generation, which very nearly became the last generation.
The official explanation, is that the Earth and its solar system, for a period of thirty-five years, was in an area of mysterious cosmic radiation. And afterward it drifted out of that area.
But there are many who still believe in the influence of McGonigal's Worm.