Physiological assassins are not happy till we die.
With the rights of man acknowledged, can you wonder that we squirm
At the endless persecution of the much-maltreated germ.
We are ta'en from home and hearthstone, from the newly-wedded bride,
To be looked at by cold optics on a microscopic slide;
We are boiled and stewed together, and they never think it hurts;
We're injected into rabbits by those hypodermic squirts:
Never safe, although so very insignificant in size,
There's no peace for poor Bacillus, so it seems, until he dies.
It is strange to think how men lived in the days of long ago,