A Microbe That Is Hard to Kill

1895

Professor Renk, who is engaged in making some interesting experiments on the vitality of the comma bacilli, the so called "microbe of cholera," has found that they will live for some time and exhibit all their usual liveliness in a temperature 10 degrees colder than freezing.

A single "culture" of these germs in a bowl of beef broth, reduced to a temperature of from 5 to 7 degrees below the zero of the centigrade thermometer, which is about the same as 20 to 23 above the zero mark of the Fahrenheit instrument, were unusually lively at the end of 100 hours' exposure.

He found, however, that as they were uninterruptedly exposed to such a degree of cold for a longer period than that mentioned above they gradually lost vitality and at the end of five days were perfectly lifeless and utterly unable to do damage should they be taken into the human system. — St. Louis Republic.


A Sight at Night

Smythe — Too bad Miss Brown's so awfully nearsighted, isn't it, Chawles?
Chumley — Y-a-as, me boy.
Smythe — Why, d'ye know, I've been told she weahs her glasses to bed.
Chumley — How's that, Haw-wy?
Smythe — So's she can wecognize the people she meets in her dweams. — Philadelphia Times.

Aged Ice Regarded Safe for Health

1910

PHILADELPHIA. — The Natural Ice Association of America, including dealers in natural ice in Philadelphia, has begun a "campaign of education" to inform the public that aged ice is free from bacteria.

Bacteria are the little wigglers in water that get into the insides of people and often give them typhoid, diphtheria and other diseases. A quart of water contains a million or two of these bacteria. Some of them, not all, are dangerous to health.

But the natural ice men say — and they produce scientific argument to support their assertions — that although the bacteria are frozen into the ice when the water congeals, they are killed off so rapidly that in 24 hours 90 per cent of them are dead, and within a few weeks the ice is sterile — absolutely free from bacterial life of any kind.

One Philadelphia natural ice dealer said recently: "Natural ice is cut in December, January and February. Seventy percent of it is used between June and September, when it is anywhere from sixteen to twenty weeks old, and when the bacteria are frozen in it, and have been without air, motion, warmth and food from four to five months."

A paper recently sent out with the endorsement of the national body of natural ice dealers says:

"The buyer of ice should really be as anxious to obtain, and the dealer in natural ice as quick to advertise, that he sells old ice, as the green grocer is to seek trade on the strength of the freshness of his tomatoes or peas, and the butter and egg man on his new-laid or freshly made products. Old ice is pure ice, sterile ice, free from bacteria harmful or helpful."

Dr. Edwin Jordan, professor of bacteriology in the University of Chicago and at Rush Medical College, says:

"Experiments have shown that when water freezes the great majority of typhoid bacteria that it contains are immediately destroyed. Those that survive die off progressively. According to Park, not one in a thousand lives in ice longer than one month, and at the end of six months all are dead. Relatively few epidemics of typhoid fever have been proved to be due to the use of ice."

Dr. Charles H. Lawall, chemist for the Pennsylvania dairy and food commission, said that bacteria can live without air, and that a temperature of 32 degrees was not fatal for a long time to many kinds of bacteria.

—Oelwein Daily Register, Oelwein, IA, Sept. 27, 1910, p. 2.

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.