A SOURCE OF INFECTION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 134, 7 June 1906, Page 2

A SOURCE OF INFECTION.

PLEA FOR THE USE' OF PAPER TABLE-NAPKINS. Dr. Alexander Paterson, of this city, laioes a matter of general interest in tlie following contribution: — "How few, while carefully spreading 011 their kntes or tucking intb their waistcoats, in tlie pleasing anticipation of the gastronomic pleasures of the table awaiting them, tiho ordinary cloth tablenapkin, think of the danger which lurks unsuspected in its folds. Yet it is there. In hotels, steamboats, and reflUiuranls tho cloth table-napkin in such universal use too often becomes a source of infection and danger. "I have seen a. person suffering from tubercular laryngitis— consumption of the throat— sitting at the table with others, meal after meal. During the course of his meals he frequently -»vipes his mouth with his lable-napkin, and if he coughs he puts itl to hie mouth, the secretions of which are more or less impregnated with tho fatal germs of his disease. Ho, and others, frequently leave their napkins unfolded on the table, which the waiter, too occupied with bis work, and too indifferent ag fa whether each one again receives his own napkin, folds up, and puts, it may be, each one m Mie wrong ring, "thus ; each at next meal unsuspectingly uses the napkin of the other. Again, frequently after usage the napkins are not properly washed, but simply damped and mangled or ironed and supplied to fresh guests. In this way consumption, cancer, and other constitutional diseases may be unsuupectedly introduced into the system. "One haa only to visit some of the more largely frequented restairrants at dinner time to aep how wide a source of