Drinking Cup Sediment Kills a Pig

1910

CHICAGO — Public drinking cups are dangerous. They are excellent mediums for transmitting the germs of disease. Especially is this true in public and parochial schools where a large number of children are compelled to use the same cups, according to the health bureau.

Statistics show about one person in sixty has tuberculosis, and among school children there always are those who have some of the communicable diseases in light form, and these undoubtedly are communicated by the use of the common cup.

So fully is this understood that several states have passed laws abolishing the public drinking cup, and compelling railroads and public carriers to supply individual ones. The plan also has been advocated in schools, but the better and safer plan is believed to be the installation of what are known as "bubbling" cups with the water flowing over the rims all the time.

A cup used in a high school for several months without having been washed was found to be lined inside with a thick brownish deposit. Under the microscope this deposit proved to be composed of particles of mud, thousands of bits of dead skin, and millions of bacteria. Some of this sediment was injected under the skin of a healthy guinea pig and forty hours later the pig died. An examination afterward showed that pneumonia germs had caused death. A second guinea pig was inoculated with some of the sediment from the same cup and developed tuberculosis. Careful inquiry showed that several pupils in this school from which the cup was taken were then suffering from consumption.

An agitation is urged asking the school board to install the "bubbling" cups in all schools.