p. 24 | Death in School Drinking-Cups

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 4, 1909

Death in School Drinking-Cups

THE evidence condemning the use of common drinking-vessels upon any occasion, whether at school, church, or home, is derived from three sources: (1) The frequent presence of disease-producing bacteria in the mouth; (2) the detection of pathogenic germs on the public cups; (3) the discovery that where a number of persons drank from a cup previously used by the sick, some of them became ill.

During the past six months I have investigated, by means of direct microscopic examination, by cultures, and by guinea-pig injections, the deposits present on various public drinking-vessels. Cup No. 1, which had been in use nine days in a school, was a clear thin glass. It was broken into a number of pieces, and properly stained for examination with a microscope magnifying one thousand diameters. The human cells scraped from the lips of the drinkers were so numerous on the upper third of the glass that the head of a pin could not be placed anywhere without touching several of these bits of skin. The saliva, by running down on the inside of the glass, had carried cells and bacteria to the bottom. Here, however, they were less than one third as abundant as at the brim.

By counting the cells present on fifty different areas on the glass as seen under the microscope, it was estimated that the cup contained over twenty thousand human cells or bits of dead skin. As many as one hundred fifty germs were seen clinging to a single cell, and very few cells showed less than ten germs. Between the cells were thousands of germs left there by the smears of saliva deposited by the drinkers. Not less than a hundred thousand bacteria were present on every square inch of the glass. Most of these were of the harmless kind, abundant in the mouth, but some were apparently the germs of decay, feeding upon the bits of the human body adhering to the cup. In order to determine how much material each drinker is likely to leave on the cup, I requested ten boys to apply the upper lip to pieces of clean flat glass in the same way they touch the cup in drinking. These glass slips thus soiled were properly stained for microscopic examination, which showed an average of about one hundred cells and seventy-five thousand bacteria to each slip.

More than ten thousand churches have now adopted the individual communion cups, and many schools either provide a sanitary drinking-fountain or require the pupils to use individual cups. In many places in Germany pasteboard cups are furnished, which, after being once used, are destroyed. Wherever hygienic measures have been adopted in a community, sickness and death have decreased. By living more in accordance with the rules of hygiene, New York City reduced her death-rate from twenty-five per thousand to eighteen per thousand during the period from 1890 to 1905. Within the same years, Chicago reduced her death-rate from nineteen to fourteen per thousand. — Technical World Magazine.