232 Microbes and You 



period is commonly accepted by health authorities who have 

 control of the sale of ice harvested from open bodies of water. 



Artificial, or manufactured, ice presents a little different aspect 

 to the problem. Since the entire volume of water in the container 

 is to be frozen, the bacteria cannot escape the way they might 

 on an open body of water where they can be squeezed out, so to 

 speak, as they are pushed downward by the forming ice crystals. 

 For this reason it is of the utmost importance that all water used 

 in manufacturing artificial ice be of the highest purity, and the 

 containers in which freezing is to take place must be scrupulously 

 clean to avoid the spread of disease. It goes almost without 

 saying that the persons emploved in such ice plants should be 

 known to be typhoid-free, and thev should be made to understand 

 and to practice the accepted rules of sanitation. Hilliard found 

 relatively high bacterial counts in artificial ice, traceable to a 

 cloth filter used by the manufacturer to strain out coarse dirt and 

 sediment from the water prior to freezing it. 



It should be emphasized, however, that there is little, if any, 

 authenticated proof that ice has been instrumental in the dissemina- 

 tion of disease. The topic is discussed merely to point out that ice 

 may be a potential source of certain pathogenic bacteria, and 

 more work needs to be done to prove the point one way or another. 



COMMON DRINKING CUPS AND PUBLIC DRINKING 

 FOUNTAINS 



It was not until a few years ago that the common drinking 

 cup was eliminated from the faucets on the public square of many 

 towns. The verv thought of the types of diseases one might con- 

 tract from these fomites makes the hair stand up on the back of the 

 neck of anyone who understands bacteriology. It is impossible 

 to calculate the number of persons who might have contracted such 

 diseases as septic sore throat, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and possibly 

 syphilis from the common drinking cup. 



Due to the perseverance of public health authorities, the 

 common drinking cup is a thing of the past except in "uninformed" 

 communities. Public drinking fountains have replaced these cups, 



