238 CIVIC BIOLOGY 



Even the air of the sick-room has no dangers if modern 

 methods for bacteriological cleanliness are strictly observed — 

 that is, if all waste matters or discharges go straight from 

 the patient into the fire or sterilizer, and if the rubber gloves 

 with which all handling of the patient is done are disin- 

 fected immediately after using. Except by the cough spray 

 a bacterium cannot leave a moist surface, and Ijy the above 

 precautions no living germs can become dry and so enter 

 the dust of the room. 



Fomites. '' Persons and not things transmit diseases." 

 This slogan is coming more and more to dommate the whole 

 field. Ships, in numbers, have been sunk, cargoes and all, 

 to insure against purely imaginary fomites. No sharp line 

 can be drawn between infection by contact and infection 

 by fomites. Contact infection implies the more immediate 

 transfer of germs, as in shaking hands, exchanging pipes, 

 swapping gum, using the same drinking cup or towel, inter- 

 changing dishes at successive meals, touching foods, candies, 

 fruits, etc. with unwashed hands ; while the theory of fomites 

 implies infection by germs carried alive and virulent in cloth- 

 ing, merchandise, baggage, and mail matter for long distances 

 and during considerable periods of weeks or even years. As 

 we shall see in the next paragraph, wdien w^e begin to pay 

 attention to them, there are so many ways by which bac- 

 teria are carried fresh and green from mouth to mouth, by 

 direct or indirect contacts (and not only from mouth to 

 mouth but from dejecta to mouth), that it is sheer dis- 

 honesty to crowd our own responsibilities for really inex- 

 cusable contacts over onto the theory of fomites. If common 

 notions of fomites were true, we should have to arm our 

 postal mail clerks with fumigator masks and rubber gloves 

 or bury the whole force every night. As a matter of fact, 

 bank tellers, handling '' dirty money " all the time, mail 

 clerks, handling letters sealed and stamped in everybody's 



