DID YOU KNOW

That bacillus subtilis...... was discovered by the Nazi German medical corps in 1941, toward the end of their African campaign. At the time, the German military victory was at its height. But the German high command became genuinely alarmed when hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers in North Africa suddenly began dying every week. Oddly, the Nazi soldiers weren't dying because of British General Montgomery's retaliatory bombs and shrapnel, but instead, they were dying of uncontrollable dysentery.
Of course, the Germans were aware that dysentery was caused by pathogenic (i.e. disease-causing) bacteria from local food and water sources. But in those days, there were no antibiotics. Sulfur was already on the market, but only in a topical non-ingestible form. So with no medication available with which to stop the plague of dysentery, the Nazis quickly began looking for other means to help their dying soldiers.
The German high command immediately sent out a contingent of scientists, physicians, chemists, biochemists, bacteriologists and other experts to help solve the problem. With typical German circumspection, these top experts reasoned that there must be a natural way to counteract the deadly bacteria causing the dysentery because, if there wasn't, the millions of Arabs living in the region would have been dead long ago.
Therefore, the Germans' first step was to closely scrutinize the native Arabs, and see whether or not they were affected by dysentery. What they discovered was that the Arabs also caught dysentery, but at the first sign of diarrhea [the #1 symptom of dysentery --- Ed.] the Arabs would do something quite incredible: They would immediately begin following around a horse or camel until it would drop its dung. Then, the affected Arab would pick up the warm dung droppings, and quickly gulp them down! This strange procedure effectively eliminated the dysentery almost overnight.
Once the good hygienic Germans finally recovered from the shock of seeing the Arab natives gulping down warm camel dung, they quickly realized that there must be something in the dung that somehow counteracted the harmful bacteria that caused the dysentery. They questioned the Arabs, who told them that they had no idea why it worked, but that their fathers had always done so, as had their forefathers, and it had always worked. The only caveat was that the camel or horse dung had to be ingested while still warm and fresh, because it had no effect on the dysentery if ingested cold.
So the Nazis began carefully examining fresh camel and horse dung. What they discovered was that it was teeming with a powerful bacterial microorganism which later came to be called Bacillus subtilis. This bacteria, it turned out, is so strong that it practically cannibalizes all harmful microorganisms in the human body --- particularly pathogenic bacteria like the virulent strain which was causing dysentery in the German troops.
Within a very short time, the Nazis began producing hundreds and thousands of gallons of active Bacillus subtilis cultures for their troops to ingest. And bingo, no more dysentery! Soon afterwards, the Germans even discovered the process by which the Bacillus subtilis cultures could be dried and placed into easily ingestible capsules. From that time forward, the resourceful Germans had no more problems with losing troops from dysentery.

Answer…Dick Van Patten
Who played Ethel and Fred on “I love Lucy”