30 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [January, 



Insects Transmit Contagion. — Bedbugs, according to Dr. 

 Dewevre, may be carriers of contagion. His attention was called 

 to this possibility by a case of tuberculosis occurring in a young 

 man who slept in a bed formerly occupied by his brother, who 

 had died of the disease. The room had been thoroughly disin- 

 fected, but the bedstead had escaped renovation. The Doctor ob- 

 served that the young man had been bitten by the insects, and 

 securing some of them found them full of tubercle bacilli. He put 

 some, presumably, healthy bugs in contact with tuberculous spu- 

 tum, and was able, several weeks after, to obtain from them excel- 

 lent cultures of tubercle hacWli. —Jl/edical Record. 



Peroxide of Hydrogen. — Peroxide of hydrogen (H.^O,,) in the 

 strong 15 volume solution is almost as harmless as water ; and 

 yet, according to the testimony of Giftbrd, it kills anthrax spores 

 in a few minutes. 



Dr. Paul Gibier, of New York, says; 



" The destructive action of peroxide of hydrogen upon patho- 

 genic germs, even diluted in the proportion of 3.3 per cent, solu- 

 tion, is almost instantaneous ; after a contact of a few minutes he 

 failed to cultivate the microbes which were submitted to the pe- 

 roxide, owing to the fact that the germs had been completely 

 destroyed." 



Many other writers have mentioned its power as a bactericide. 



Cholera Bacilli are reported to live in water i to 6 days ; in 

 butter, 6 days ; in cabbage, 3 days ; on postal cards, 20 hours 

 (dry) ; on silver and copper coins, \ hour. The authority for 

 these statements is Prof. Uftelmann, of Berlin. 



DRUG AND FOOD ADULTERATION. 



Buckwheat Flour Adulteration. — Prof. L. E. Sayre, of 

 Lawrence, Kansas, has made a report to his State Board of Agri- 

 culture on the adulteration which he has found in the market 

 supply of buckwheat flour. A microscopic examination has 

 shown that wheat flour and corn flour have been introduced to 

 such an extent for the purpose of adulteration that the character- 

 istic starch granules of buckwheat were scarcely visible in the 

 specimens. No mineral (earthy) adulteration was found in the 

 " buckwheat," though tlie proportion of buckwheat flour was very 

 small indeed. 



Digitalis and Senna Distinguished. — Prof. Sayre writes us 

 that these two drugs in the powdered state resemble each other so 

 closely that their difl'erences are unrecognizable with the unaided 

 eye. If a sample of powdered senna is mounted and examined 

 under a \ objective, numerous fragments of hairs will be found 

 mixed up with the debris, and these are unicellular. Digitalis, on 

 the contrary, exhibits multicellular hairs when mounted and ex- 

 amined in the same way. An illustration of these cells will be 

 found in The Microscope for February. 



