The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01Brann, William Cowper
General
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
Just why the bicycle affects woman so unfavorably, the
Leaguers do not inform us. We are left to surmise why
tramping a bike should make her more reckless than
treading a sewing-machine; why exercise in the open air
should be more deleterious to health and morals than the
round dance in a heated ball-room, or even the delightfully
dangerous back-parlor hug; why segregation on the cycle
should be more potent to evoke those passions which
make for perdition than the narrow-seated buggy, with its
surreptitious pressure of limb to limb and the moral
euthanasia which the man of the world knows so well how
to distill into the ear of womanhood. Why the bike should
be more dangerous to morals than the French fiddle
mentioned by Shakespeare appears to be a question solely
within the province of the pathologist. As pantagruelism is
proceeding almost exclusively on micrological lines, we may
expect that, sooner or later, some "eminent physician" will
startle the world by discovering the bicycle bacillus. All our
ills appear to be caused by minute insects that get inside of
us, demoralize our system of government and inaugurate a
reign of anarchy. Everything, from mugwumpery to the
meddler's itch, from corns to crime, is now traced to the
pernicious activity of some microbian. Even our currency
system is blasted by goldbugs, and Prohibition milk-
sickness is being treated with vermifuge. A Kansas M.D.
has succeeded in hiving the old-age microbe, and is now
treating the ballet girls whom Weis & Greenwall and Rigsby
& Walker will bring South next winter, while a New York
empiric has discovered the insanity insect and is fumigating
the brain of the Rev. Mr. Parkhurst. Thus does medical
science go marching from conquest to conquest, reforming
and rejuvenating this wicked and suffering world. Clearly
the Rescue League should have cried for aid to the doctors
of medicine instead of to the doctors of divinity. If the
bicycle bacillus can be caught and killed, the red-light
district will disappear and the Rescuers turn their
wonderful energies in new directions. Once the existence
of this nymphomania-micrococcus--as we philomaths would
call it--is established, the rest will be dead easy. Whether
patients will be treated externally or internally depends, of
course, upon the habits of the infinitesimal vulture that is
feeding on our social vitals. We do not know as yet
whether it is a moral microbe or a physical phylloxera. If
the former, the mind will have to be taken out, sand-
papered, carefully rinsed in a strong aseptic solution and
treated with soothing antaphrodisiacs after each meet of the
bicycle brigade; if the latter, the evil can easily be obviated
by providing the softer sex with medicated cycling suits, or
half-soling their bloomers with asbestos. If the Rescuers
really have the good of their frail sisters at heart they
should cooperate with the physician--should provide
themselves with compound microscopes and search
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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