d to every
care and excuse from exertion, every exemption and privilege that can be
given them until the last whoop has been whooped, would prevent at least
two-thirds of the almost ten thousand deaths from whooping-cough that
yearly disgrace the United States.

To sum up in fine: intelligent, effective isolation of all cases, the
mild no less than the severe, would stamp out these Herods of the
twentieth century within ten years. In the meantime, six weeks'
sick-leave, with all the privileges and care appertaining thereto, will
rob them of two-thirds of their terrors.

CHAPTER XII

APPENDICITIS, OR NATURE'S REMNANT SALE

We were not made all at once, nor do we go to pieces all at once, like
the "one-hoss shay." This is largely because we are not all of the same
age, clear through. Some parts of us are older than other parts. We have
always felt a difficulty, not to say a delicacy, in determining the age
of a given member of the human species--especially of the gentler sex.
Now we know the reason of it. From the biologic point of view, we are
not an individual, but a colony; not a monarchy, but a confederacy of
organ-states, each with its millions of cell-citizens. It is not merely
editors and crowned heads who have a biologic right to say "We."
Therefore, obviously, any statement that we make as to our age can be
only in the nature of an average struck between the ages of our heart,
lungs, liver, stomach; and as these vary in ancientness by thousands of
years, the average must be both vague and misleading. The only reason
why there is a mystery about a woman's age is that she is so intensely
human and natural. The only statement as to our age that the facts would
strictly justify us in making must partake of the vagueness of Mr. A.
Ward's famous confession that he was "between twenty-three summers."

As we individually climb our own family-tree, from the first, one-celled
droplet of animal jelly up, none of our organs is older than we are,
but a number of them are younger. The appendix is one of these. Now, by
some curious coincidence, explain it as we may, some of our oldest
organs are youngest, in the sense of most vigorous, elastic, and
resisting, while some of our youngest are oldest, in the sense of
decrepit, feeble, and unstable. It is perhaps only natural that an organ
like the stomach, for instance, which has a record of honorable service
and active duty millions of years long, should be better poi