VITALITY OF DEADLY GERMS.
By L. A. S.
Disease germs are often very tenacious of life. It is known that many of them will survive freezing, and even immersion in liquid air, and it appears also that some varieties will survive almost indefinitely in places that seem in no way adapted to their propagation; as, for example, upon the surface of children's toys. Toys that have come in contact with a child sick with a contagious disease would better be destroyed if they will not survive through sterilization. The New York Sun calls attention to a case in which diphtheria germs proved to be alive and of deadly virility, fifteen years after the occurrence of the sickness from which they took their origin. We quote:— “Indianapolis, Ind., Aug. 26.—Irene Keck, daughter of Bert Keck, of Marion, is ill of diphtheria, and a playmate of the same age was taken with the disease at the same time, and neither is expected to live. In the investigation which was made to discover in what manner the disease was contracted, it developed that the two children had made their way to an attic, and had there opened an old trunk and played with toys that belonged to a child who had died of diphtheria fifteen years ago. “There was no other way in which the disease could have been contracted, and the local health authorities are convinced that the diphtheria germs have existed in the toys for fifteen years, and that the two children contracted the disease by playing with them.” L. A. S.