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New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 14, 6 April 1910, Page 7

r He had handled books for forty years, and some of them had borne the dust of centuries. As a matter of fact, he once got a book that in the sixteenth century had been in the library of a monastery in which an epidemic of disease had been Very fatal to the monks. It was a very Carty book. He had cleaned up every page, and he was still alive. He had handled thousands of second-hand books in all stages, and had never been any the worse for doing so. Most sellers of second-hand books lived to a green old age. The bacteria to be found on the books did not affect them. He had never heard of any public librarian, •secondhand bookseller, or any collector suffering disease as a result of handling books. The bacteria on books was a very common sort of dirt microbe.—Vr. //. Shaw, of the Libraries’ Association,