DR. J. W. POUCHER. 267 



This material, when expectorated, frequently lodges in 

 pieces wiicre ii .ales, as on the street, floors, carpets, 

 handkerchiefs, bedding, etc. After drying in one way 

 or another it is very apt to become pulverized and float 

 in the air as dust. The bacilli have been found in almost 

 all kinds of public conveyances, and in all conceivable 

 places. The bacteriologist of the Brooklyn Board of 

 Health has recently made cultures of dust from dried 

 sputum found in the street cars in that city, and has 

 found bacilli which produced fatal tuberculosis in guinea 

 pigs inoculated with it, and the health commissioners 

 have ordered that all stations and cars in Brooklyn be 

 thoroughly cleaned every three days with a solution of 

 corrosive sublimate. Dr. Cornet has made some very 

 interesting observations. Of 112 samples of dust col- 

 lected from the walls of hospital wards and bedsteads 

 and rooms of phthisical patients, forty were found to be 

 infective and produced tuberculosis on being inoculated 

 into susceptible animals. Among other novel sources of 

 infection are bedbugs. Two young men having died 

 from general tuberculosis in a room that had been es- 

 pecially disinfected, examination showed the bedstead 

 to be filled with these parasites. Thirty of the bugs 

 were gathered and inoculated into three guinea pigs, 

 which soon died of tuberculosis. Sixty per cent of the 

 bugt: were found to be tuberculous. In another set of 

 experiments the bugs were placed in contact with spu- 

 tum, and some weeks afterward virulent cultures were 

 obtained from them. 



RULES FOR AVOIDING CONSUMPTION. 



In 1889 the New York Board of Health formulated 

 these rules, by which it hoped to lessen in a measure the 

 spread of the infection : 



(1) Do not permit persons suspected to have consump- 

 tion to spit on the fl'ior or on cloths, unless the latter be 



1©5 



