Contagion of Evil—See [Evil, Virulency of].
CONTAMINATION
A party of young people were about to explore a coal-mine. One of the young ladies appeared drest in white. A friend remonstrated with her. Not liking the interference, she turned to the old miner, who was to conduct them, and said:
“Can’t I wear a white dress down in the mine?”
“Yes, mum,” was his reply. “There is nothing to hinder you from wearing a white frock down there, but there’ll be considerable to keep you from wearing one back.”
There is nothing to hinder a Christian from conforming to the world’s standard of living, but there is a good deal to keep him from being unspotted if he does. Christians were put into the atmosphere of this world to purify it, and not to be poisoned by it.
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Mr. Hilditch, of the Sheffield Laboratory of Bacteriology and Hygiene, Yale University, has demonstrated that the average number of bacteria in each of twenty-one bills was 142,000, while by far the most common forms present were the varieties of the pyogenic staphylococcus. These organisms were not in possession of their full virulence, but merely produced a more or less local reaction, on guinea-pig injection, with swelling of the lymph glands of the groin. Their constant presence on money is certainly of greater significance than merely indicating the exposure to the bacterial contamination of the air; they clearly indicate that the money has been contaminated by handling and without regard to the virulence or the danger of infection to which these particular organisms themselves expose those who receive the money, they establish beyond question the most fundamental and significant fact for scientific demonstration, viz., that money is a medium of bacterial communication from one individual to another.—The Popular Science Monthly.
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