Of course it is much pleasanter if you can destroy the source of the disease, and keep it from getting into the human body. Every few years the southern part of our country used to be devastated by yellow fever epidemics. Every kind of weird and fantastic remedy was tried; people would go around with sponges full of vinegar hung under their noses; they would burn the clothing and bedding of those who died of the disease; they would wear gloves when they went shopping, so as not to touch the money with their hands. But at last medical experimenters traced the disease to a certain kind of mosquito, and now, if we drain the swamps and screen our houses and stay in doors after sundown, we do not get yellow fever, nor malaria either. In the same way, if we keep our bodies clean with soap and hot water, we do not get bitten by lice, and so do not die of typhus. If we take pains with our drains and water supply, so that human excrement does not get into it, and if we destroy the filth-carrying housefly, we do not have epidemics of typhoid. But under conditions of battle it is not possible for men to take these precautions, and so when they go into the army they get a dose of typhoid serum. And this illustrates the difference between a true or hygienic remedy for disease, and a temporary or emergency remedy. If you say that you want to abolish war, and with it the need for typhoid vaccination, I cheerfully agree with you in this. All that I am trying to do is to point out the folly of flying to extremes, and rejecting any remedy which may help. What is the use of making the flat statement that vaccinations and serums never aid in the cure of disease, when any man can see with his own eyes the proof that they do? In the Spanish war, before typhoid vaccination, many times more soldiers died of this disease than died of bullets; but in the late war there was practically no typhoid at all in the army camps. On the other hand, it was noticed that the men who had just come in, and who therefore had just been vaccinated, were considerably more susceptible to influenza; which shows that vaccination does reduce the body condition for a time. The reader may say that in this case I am trying to sit on both sides of the fence; but the truth is that I am trying to keep an open mind, and to consider all the facts, and to avoid making rash statements.