DISEASES SPREAD BY SALIVA. 21 



it in fifteeu out of twenty samples of string beans, in ten out o? 

 twelve samples of baked beans, in twenty-four out of forty-one cases 

 of corn, and so on. 



This testimony from so many expert and unbiased sources, fully 

 justifies the heading given to our article. The chemicals used to pre- 

 serve our food and drink have become a serious menace to health. 

 There are thousands of invalids whose chances of recovery and life de- 

 pend on their getting the purest drugs and food, and there can be no 

 doubt that some of these are killed every day by the poisons in milk, 

 butter, and meat, put there by farmers, grocers, and butchers to save 

 trouble or avoid the risk of goods spoiling on their hands. To per- 

 fectly robust individuals these chemicals may be comparatively harm- 

 less, but Americans are a nation of dyspeptics, and salicylic acid, the 

 favorite preservative used here, has been pronounced by the Paris 

 Academy of Medicine especially injurious to dyspeptics. Their life is 

 made wretched by the systematic food poisoning for the profit of dis- 

 honest dealers; salts of zinc or copper in a dish of canned peas, for 

 example (put there to give them a pretty green color!) , may result in 

 a sleepless night, colic, headache, loss of a day's work, and general 

 misery; and this may go on indefinitely, rendering life a burden, 

 without any suspicion in the victim of the real cause. Last summer a 

 Western hotel lost hundreds of guests, who left, one after the other, 

 because they all became ill for some mysterious reason. The water 

 and ice were held responsible, but careful experiment showed that the 

 illness was due to the use in the kitchen of cheap coal-tar flavoring 

 extracts. In saving $10 by buying this stuff the proprietor of the 

 hotel lost $10,000. These coal-tar extracts are used to a very great 

 extent in confectionery, ice cream, soda water, etc., and to many per- 

 sons they are poisonous. They deserve a special investigation. 



DISEASES SPREAD BY SALIVA. 



Among recent discoveries in medical science there are none more 

 important or far-reaching than those which have to do with the pre- 

 vention of contagion from ordinary diseases like la grippe, consumption, 

 influenza, pneumonia as well as diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc. 



Hermann Koniger, the renowned German physicist, in a series of 

 experiments conducted during the early spring and summer months of 

 the year 1900, proved conclusively that the germs of disease, even 

 before the disease has developed so as to be recognized, are expelled 

 in droplets of saliva in the act of speaking or of coughing or sneezing. 

 In a room where there is no current of air, a person could thus 

 scatter germs to a distance of more than twenty-two feet, and to a 

 height of more than six feet. They are even found behind the per- 

 son who speaks or coughs. Ordinarily, however, they are not thrown 

 more than a few feet from the person. They are not scattered in 

 ordinary expiration without effort, nor in the pronunciation of vowels 

 It is scarcely noticeable in persons who speak in a low tone, but 



