"I was in Toledo on professional business. With the city health officer, I visited a sausage factory where sausages were made from condemned meat. Some of the meat showed tapeworms, and some parasites. Some was putrid, some from diseased animals. I asked, 'Why do you allow this?' The officer replied: 'Oh, there is no Ohio law preventing such manufacture, but there is a law preventing sale of such stuff.' 'Where is it sold?' I asked. 'Mostly in Indiana,' was the reply."

Last summer there were twenty-three cases of sausage poisoning reported in Indiana. How many occurred which were not reported is unknown.

CHOICE AMERICAN PORK IN GERMANY.

Says a traveler for one of the largest of the Chicago pork-packing houses, to the New York "Times": "It was while I was making my trip through Bavaria a few months ago that I discovered a rather clever game that the Danes are playing on the good people of Germany who have such a hatred of the American hog. Germans are very fond of pork, and the sort that commands the highest price among the imported products is the Danish article. I was in an establishment where they were disposing of lots of pork when a little twist in the method of packing attracted my attention. I carefully kept an eye on the 'made-in-Denmark' pig products after that, and made a visit to Denmark in my Sherlock Holmes capacity. After a lot of investigation I at last clinched things, and then was able to prove, if necessary, that the Danes had been 'doing' both Germans and Americans. Those thrifty Danes, who have always been comfortably large buyers of our pork, had been taking good Chicago-packed pork, changing the packings and labels, and sending it to Germany, where it was sold as pork of Danish making. Then I went off to the nearest rathskeller and had a quiet laugh to myself over the way the Germans were being taken in. Naturally, I kept my mouth shut about the discovery until I reached home and reported to the firm. As we happen to have a pretty good sort of a trade with Denmark, I'm not saying a word now that will interfere with our business. But I can't help having a quiet chuckle when I hear of one of those German Agrarian outbreaks in the Reichstag about the danger of eating and importing American pork products."

SOUND POULTRY AND HOW IT IS KEPT.

Of that kind which is unsound, Boston seems to have recently had an unusual supply. In the few days preceding the Thanksgiv

ing rush they seized and condemned between three and four tons of bad birds which came from the West, showing that the condition of the market, while vastly better than last year, was not much above the average. One short spell of warm weather in the West, whence came the majority of the turkeys, contributed largely to the number of bad birds, this spell coming just at the time when the fowls were being killed for the Boston market.

The New York "Times," referring to this subject, says: "In these days, when every one is eating poultry, the New England woman has her days of woe when marketing. Go where she will she cannot find drawn poultry on the stands. At home she has never bought any other kind. She revolts at first because she declares that poultry sent to market containing the viscera intact cannot possibly be so good as that sent 'clean'; that is, with the internal organs removed. Then, too, her economical mind protests against paying for a lot of dead weight that she does not use and that is removed from a fowl as soon as the butcher has weighed it. Finally, she is forced to smother her New England prejudices or go without poultry. She won't do the latter, for a cardinal principle in her housewifery has been that turkeys, geese, ducks and chickens were specially created for the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. Her butcher will only explain to her that poultry always comes to market with the 'innards' intact, and that it is the only way in which it can be had. So she talks it over with the head of the house-nominal at least-and if he cares to appease his wife's misgivings he goes on an exploring expedition to satisfy his curiosity and her prejudices. Then he learns that the whole question of drawn versus undrawn poultry was thrashed out years ago by the Health Department of the city in a series of official investigations, and that it was proved beyond dispute that fowls would keep better and longer when undrawn than when drawn. Practical tests with hung fowls were made, birds being killed from the same flock and at the same time for the tests. In every instance the undrawn fowl of whatever sort kept sweet and free from taint much the longer time-days, in fact. There is a safeguard, too, in the fact that when one buys an undrawn fowl she knows she is not buying one that has been disinfected by treatment in a soda bath. That was a trick of the trade when drawn poultry was commonly to be had in New York markets. Having learned this, the head of the house is able to satisfy his wife that the best way to buy poultry, in New York at least, is to buy it when undrawn. There are some sorts of small game birds that may be had drawn or undrawn

as one wishes, but even with these the demand is almost entirely for the undressed and undrawn bird."

HOW DANGEROUS DISEASES ARE SPREAD.

A short time ago a child died of diphtheria in Baltimore, and the mother of the child, having no mourning clothes of her own, borrowed some from a friend. After the funeral, which, under the rules of the Health Department, must take place within twentyfour hours after death, the funeral garments were returned. A day or so afterward diphtheria developed in the family of the owner of the clothes. Dr. C. Hampson Jones, Assistant Health Commissioner, when asked about the case, said that there was no telling how frequently disease was carried from one house to another in this way.

"People who have a sudden death in the family," he said, "often find themselves without proper funeral garb, and, in the case of infectious diseases where the law requires almost immediate burial, are obliged to fall back upon their friends or relatives to obtain the clothes. In this way the germs of the disease are very easily transferred from one house to another. But

VILLAINOUSLY

one Killoran, a street car conductor on a much-used line in New York, and performing duties that required ordinary intelligence, has not only neglected to protect himself by vaccination which would not have cost him a single penny or interfered in any appreciable degree with his work-but has, while suffering with smallpox, continued to collect fares from his crowded passengers for days after his illness had developed. His claim that he did not know what was the matter with him is unworthy of consideration. If he did not know, he must have suspected, for he belongs to a class that reads the papers more or less and has opportunities for frequent discussion of current events. Unquestionably he contributed to the widespreading of the disease in the city, and he did it with a willfulness which the circumstances do not mitigate to the extent of relieving him from a heavy moral responsibility that ought to be also a legal one. Something of his burden, however, might well be transferred to the company that employs him. It is the obvious duty of the street railway corporations to see to it that the men with whom a very large fraction of the city's population is forced to come into daily and close association are neither voluntary nor involuntary distributers of infection. Nevertheless, this would-be murderer with smallpox is no less deserving of punishment than he would have been for administering arsenic.

INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPREAD BY MANGLING MACHINE.

In the parish of Lambeth (London) within less than three weeks 105 cases of infectious disease were reported to the medical authorities recently, comprised mostly of typhoid and scarlet fevers. The investigations into the outbreak revealed the distribution of the contagion in an unusual manner. The locality affected is inhabited mostly by the artisan class, the wives of whom, after washing their clothes, are in the habit of sending them to some neighbor or neighbors who possess a mangling machine, to have them wrung out or mangled. Consequently, the infected linen taken from one house to another to be so treated contaminated the mangle, which conveyed the infection to other non-infected clothes.

THE DANGER OF INFECTION BY SALIVA SPRAY.

HERMANN KOENIGER has recently shown by a series of experiments ("Zeitschrift f. Hygiene u. Infectionskrankheiten," xxxiv, 119) that minute drops of saliva emitted during the acts of speaking, coughing and sneezing, in a room where there is no perceptible air current, may be driven forward to a distance of twenty-one feet and more or less scattered in all directions; upward to at least half that distance, and even behind a person speaking or coughing.

The saliva drops are expelled only when the expired air meets with a certain amount of resistance. They are not disseminated by a simple act of expiration without effort, nor in the pronunciation of vowels. Their dispersal during speech takes place very differently in different individuals. It is trifling from speaking in a deep voice, but may be quite forcible as a result of whispering. The germs thus carried into the air do not remain long suspended. In Koeniger's experiments they were almost always deposited within an hour-most of them in ten minutes-when doors and windows were tightly closed and the air was still.

Koeniger agrees with Fluegge in thinking that it is the constitution of the saliva drops which prevents the germs from remaining longer in suspension. These drops are real microscopic balloons, each having in its centre an air bubble. When this bursts the contained germ, being heavier, falls to the ground. The author's experiments show that colonies of bacteria developed upon the surfaces of sores originate not from a single germ, but from several.

The diffusion of saliva drops is most marked when caused by coughing or sneezing. If the germ is bigger than the Bacillus prodigiosus-as large, say, as the Bacillus mycoides-it is carried a shorter distance, and the resulting danger is proportionally less.

Hence the dispersal of germs by this means is most to be feared in the case of the smaller micro-organisms, such as those of influenza, of the plague, whooping-cough, pneumococci, streptococci and staphylococci.

The bacillus of tuberculosis, that of the plague and that of diphtheria are larger than the Bacillus prodigiosus, but smaller than the Bacillus mycoides.

The more pathogenic microbes there are in the mouth the greater the danger of infection. Washing out the mouth and frequent gargling will lessen the number of such diphtheritic bacilli as are capable of removal, and so far will be of service. Simply holding the hand or a handkerchief before the mouth prevents the ejection of saliva charged with tuberculous bacilli. Talking should be avoided during an operation. Other precautionary measures will readily suggest themselves in connection with this important subject.

SINGULAR FATALITY OF ALCOHOLISM?

London, Nov. 27.-The Manchester mystery has not yet been solved and the excitement over the sickness in the city grows. A similar outbreak is appearing in neighboring places, including Liverpool, Stourbridge and Chester. Many reports are current and some of them are undoubtedly exaggerated for the sake of sensation. An official report by Dr. Tattersall, the health officer of Salford, issued yesterday, deals especially with the recent sickness and deaths. It says that the deaths from alcoholism in Salford during the first four months of the year were twenty-two, and that during the past four months they numbered sixty-six. Dr. Tattersall confirms the report of the discovery of arsenic in the sugar employed in making the commoner grades of beer, but there has not yet been time to make the quantitive analysis to ascertain whether the arsenic reaches the beer in sufficient quantities to cause the symptoms that have been noted.

Others who are investigating the subject say that the origin of the trouble is undoubtedly in contaminated sugars, but they are not yet prepared to vouch for the arsenic theory. Dr. Reynolds testified at the inquest in the case of one of the victims that he bought a sample of beer at Hulme, which is within the municipal limits of Manchester, and found that it contained any amount of arsenic. Dr. Niven, the health officer of Manchester, has ordered an analysis of the cheap candies and jams. There are now about a hundred cases of the mysterious sickness in the Manchester hospitals, ninety at Liverpool, and a large number are reported from the towns and villages in a wide area.