Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 124, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1915 — Strange Disease That Affects the Liberty Bell [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Strange Disease That Affects the Liberty Bell

F[ ILADELPHI A. —Liberty bell, tbe most precious relic of the birth of this nation, is afflicted with an insidious disease of so serious a character that metallurgical experts have advised against sending it to San Francisco for

exhibition at the Panama-Pacific exposition. Liberty bell made the journey to New Orleans in 1885, to Chicago in 1893, to Charleston in 1902, to Atlanta in 1895, to Boston in 1903 and to St. Louis in 1904. But since its return from that last journey to Its home in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, the crack which has disfigured the old bell for the last 80 years has widened and extended alarmingly —a result of the strange disease

which the experts have discovered. Visible manifestations of the disease exist in the new crack, which begins at the top of the vertical old one and extends diagonally around the upper portion of the bell for more than a quarter of its circumference. As in the case of a human patients there has been a diagnosis and a course of treatment prescribed. The old bell’s doctor is Alexander E. Outerbridge, Jr., who holds the chair of metallurgy at Franklin institute, Philadelphia. In his report to the curator of the museum where the bell rests Mr. Outerbrldge wrote: “It is no hyperbolical figure of speech to say that the venerated Liberty bell is afflicted with a serious disease. Metallurgists have adopted into their technical phraseology the term ‘diseases of metals.’ and recognise several BUC h maladies. I myself have no hesitation in saying that the bell has a distemper which should insure its most careful preservation from all shocks such as it would be subjected to in a long journey."