The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1910-05-24
MENACE IN PAPER MONEY
Fumigate Your Bills II You Don't
Want to Catch Disease

New York, May 23.-"Paper money,
as an avenue by which disease can
be transmitted, has been an object of
suspicion for some time says The
Medical Record. Indeed, this partic-
ular form OF exchange has been
shown. more or less conclusively, to
be under favoring conditions an ac-
tual menace to the health of the com
immunity.
"Hildltch of the Sheffield Labora-
tory of Bacteriology and Hygiene,
Yale University, and Park of the Re
search Laboratory of the Board of
Health of New York have demonstrate
ed that dirty paper money is similar
to other paper and rags and capable
of carrying living tubercle and diph-
iberia bacilll for some days or long
| err
"Hilditch, however, does not re-
gard the danger as very great. He
obtained twenty-four bills, the very
dirtiest he was able to procure and
subjected them to a minute examina-
ton, the outcome being that he found
the average number of bacteria in
each OF twenty-one bills to be 10000
Further. 1t was established by subse-
quent experiments that these organ
isms were not in possession Of their
full yiru.ences. The publication Of
these results was apt to create a feel
ing Of confidence in, the comparative
harmlessness of the dirtiest paper
money, or, at least, to seem to dem
onstrate that as sources for spreading
infection such was not greatly to be
feared.
In recent issue of The Popular
Science Monthly A. Cressy Morrison
writes to point out that the menace
OF paper money must not be wholly
judged from the virulence or the ma
ture OF the germs discovered. He per-
tinently draws attention to the fact
that the infection of drinking water
with the germs of typhoid fever
should not be estimated from the
number of the bacilli typhosi found
for II that were the case water would
be seldom condemned, and those bac
iii are seldom discovered.
TN brief, Morrison contends, and
II appears contends with justice, that
II is not so much the question of vir
Iulence or even OF the nature OF the
, Organisms found on paper money, bu
that experiments have established
. that money is a medium of bacteria
communication from one individual t
, lanother. In order, therefore, to clue
,, Idate the matter, paper money know
TO have been exposed to cOntamina
ton by highly infectious organisms
: should be examined by sc
: entihc experts. II has been ascer
. tanned that money can be infected b,
y, handling; II has also been shown tina
y the germs of diphtheria and tubercu
! losis may live on infected bills 70
several days. Morrison says: I
y = SENS but step, then, to the fina
Y demonstration OF the actual trans
\ mission of these and similar disease
u by money In circulation and to tn
: prevention of such spread OF diseas
. by the proper measures to eradicat
: such possibilities.
u There is little doubt that diseas
. is spread in ways that we know nc
even in these times OF advanced r,
search. II paper money does sprea
disease, though but to an extremel
small extent, this Is reason sufIicier
to insist upon the more rapid will
" drawal from circulation Of soiled bill
A, and the issuing of new and clea
- notes.
y The results OF more minute an
y exhaustive investigations into tn
!. question OF infected paper money O
- means. of spreading disease shoul
y be interesting and valuable"