1894.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 295 



ers, 122; and in grocers, 167; while in tailors the num- 

 ber reaches 290 ; in drapers, 301 ; in printers and com- 

 positors, 461, or nearly 50 per cent. Among the Cornish 

 miners the number is said to exceed 60 per cent. In 

 prisons and other public institutions where insufficient 

 ventilation and exercise, lack of variety in food, and over- 

 crowding are combined with infection of the apartments 

 the death rate from tuberculosis ranges between 40 and 

 50 per cent. 



Cornet's observations are interesting and instructive. 

 Of 118 samples of dust collected from the walls and bed- 

 steads of hospital wards and the rooms of phthisical 

 patients, 40 were infective and produced tuberculosis on 

 being inoculated into susceptible animals. With the 29 

 samples collected from localities only occasionally visited 

 by consumptives the results of inoculation were all 

 negative. Virulent bacilli were obtained in 15 out of 21 

 medical wards. In two wards containing several con- 

 sumptives the results were negative. 



BEDBUGS AS SOURCES OF INFECTION. 



Among the novel sources of infection are bedbugs. 

 Dewevre relates an example. Tuberculosis having oc- 

 curred in a young man occupying the bed of his brother, 

 who had previously died of this disease, but in a room 

 thoroughly disinfected, the inefficiency of the disinfection 

 was explained when an inspection of the corpse showed 

 that it was covered with the bites of bedbugs, and that 

 his bed, which had escaped disinfection was filled with 

 these animals. Thirty of the bugs were gathered and 

 inoculated in three gainea-pigs, which soon died of tuber- 

 culosis. Sixty per cent of the bugs were found to be 

 tuberculous. In the other series of experiments the 

 bedbugs were placed in contact with sputum and some 

 weeks afterwards virulent cultures were obtained from 

 them, If these bugs can transmit the disease from one 



