Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/91

Rh offices, banks, drug stores and individuals in different part of the state"? When the facts of the transmission of cholera and typhoid by drinking water were discovered it was not by the demonstration of the corresponding germs in water, dirty or otherwise, which was taken at random. Indeed, these demonstrations were the last and most difficult steps in the whole chain of evidence and were only successful directed to water known to have been closely associated with epidemic outbreaks of the disease. By what reasoning, then, may we expect any more ready demonstration of infected money and why should not the same outside evidence of the possibility of infection guide as in the selection of money samples to be examined? Likewise, the demonstration of malaria in mosquitoes and bubonic plague in fleas was the last, not the first step in the chain of evidence, proving the avenues of infection of these diseases. The possibility and even the probability to a high degree were previously established by other evidence so that the material examined was advantageously selected.

Precisely as with cholera and typhoid the examination of water casually selected offers practically no opportunity of proving the transmission of these diseases by the demonstration of their specific infective organisms in the samples; exactly as with malaria, yellow fever and bubonic plague the examination of mosquitoes and fleas selected at random offers no promise of proving the transmission of these diseases by these hosts; so the examination of 24, of 240 or even of 2,400 bills not selected with intelligent appreciation of the opportunity for infection will contribute nothing at all to the solution of the transmission of infection by dirty money.

Great saving of human suffering and even life has resulted from triumphs referred to; likewise, the closing of other avenues of infection will certainly act as a prophylactic measure in regard to other infections. It is particularly desirable to discover the transmitting media of the more common but no less fatal organisms, such as the germs that infect the respiratory passages, notably the germs of colds, grip, diphtheria, pneumonia and tuberculosis. It is probable that the avenues of transmission of these germs are limited as are those of the diseases already discovered. It is, therefore, much more difficult to demonstrate the exact part that any particular avenue plays in the transmission. That dirty money, which, according to Mr. Hilditch, of the Sheffield Laboratory, Dr. Park, of the Research Laboratory of the Board of Health of New York, found to be "similar to other paper and rags and capable of carrying living tubercle and diphtheria bacilli for some days or longer," plays an important and unfortunate part in such transmissions is not only highly probable but is rendered more so by the very conditions found by Mr. Hilditch on the twenty-four bills selected by him from various sources, none of which is known to have had any direct connection with infectious material.