|
U p F r o n t
By Karl Keating
|
This Rock
Volume 3, Number 4
 April 1992 
|
|
|
The word "decimation" means the destruction of one-tenth of the whole, sort of a negative tithe. Over the last few weeks our staff has been decimated five times over, which is to say half of us have been felled--not by weapons of war, but by microbes.
As I lay at home yesterday, ingesting enough medication to open my own pharmacy, I watched Paul Muni star in The Story of Louis Pasteur, a 1936 Oscar-winner. How odd to realize that hardly more than a century ago the "assured results of modern medicine" insisted there were no such things as bacteria or viruses--and therefore no need to sterilize surgical instruments or to wash surgeons' hands. Today we appreciate the threat of these microscopic predators.
I survey the damage done by these creatures (loved by God but despised by folks with aching joints and high fevers): I've been down three weeks, including most of the time Patrick Madrid and I were in Rome (a report on that trip next month); Patrick himself has bron-chitis, and I'm wondering whether my voice will return in time for a debate this weekend in Nebraska. Our receptionist, Melanee, is out with an infection, Clayton Bower is on the verge of contracting what-ever the rest of us have had, and everyone else here is bleary-eyed.
"Intimations of mortality"--and the reason why this issue of This Rock is late. Our apologies.
|
C A T H O L I C A N S W E R S :
[TOP]
of
