The ravages of the disease in both of them were frightful to behold. The professor's case developed with especial rapidity, so that in a few months both were in the same stage.
Stage? Yes, the stages of this disease are very clearly marked. In the first stage, you are attacked by a noticeable degree of thirst for knowledge about microbes; you read and talk about them constantly, and attend lectures on them at the university and the club.
This is a mild stage. You are for the most part amused, and only occasionally entertain the strange hallucinations which afterward come to possess you so thoroughly. Just to quiet your conscience, however, you adopt a few precautions--such as the use of bottled spring water, and the increase of your interest in the appearance and personal habits of the dairyman. This stage is termed _microbophobia intellectualis_. The professor and his wife early passed through it, with no serious results.
The second stage is more grave. You insist on a certificate from your dairyman, visit his barns, have the milk examined by your friend in the university laboratory, and finally, to be absolutely sure, pasteurize it. The drinking water you begin to filter and boil, you withdraw your patronage from the Chinese laundryman because you have heard of the dreadful way he sprinkles the linen, and you take an active interest in the enforcement of the anti-salivation ordinance and the encouragement of the bubble-cup campaign.
It is at this point that Dread, the most characteristic manifestation of the malady, begins to assume really noticeable proportions. You dread going out to dinner, for example, because you are afraid that the water and milk on your friend's table will not be properly sterilized. You don't like to abstain from both, and you don't like to attract attention by taking a bottle of boiled water or milk with you. The result is, that you avoid going out at all, and when you are compelled to go, you take a double dose of microbicide. You dread the effects of the public school system, with all its opportunities for the distribution of microbes. Your dread extends even to the communion, and so grows on you that you omit the sacrament because of the common cup--or, if you are a Foot-washing Baptist, because of the common basin. The second stage is denominated _microbophobia alarmans_.