Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1875 — Books and Dogs as Propagators of Disease. [ARTICLE]

Books and Dogs as Propagators of Disease.

Among the many agents for the spread of infectious diseases are, it seems, “ our domestic pets.” For the propagation of fever a dog is sometimes as bad, or worse than a drain, and a case is re - ferred to in the Sanitary Record in which scarlet fever was carried from one child to another by a favorite retriever. The dog had been reared in a house where scarlatina prevailed, and was subsc quently given to a friend of the family : Shortly after one of the children in the dog’s new home was attacked with nia lignant scarlatina and died. Disinfect ants were used plentifully, and every precaution taken to prevent a recurrent'" of the malady, but in two months’ time »>' second child took the same disease, in it* worst form, and died. As the dog had been the constant companion and play fellow of these children, its woolly coat, it is alleged, became so charged with eon tagious m after as to render it a source of disease and death. Although it is only fair to the dog to admit that the children may have caught the fever from other sources than his woolly coat, yet there ireason to fear that both dogs and cats, especially the latter, do occasionally as sist in the circulation of infections illnesses, and where fever prevails the sooner they are lodged out of the house the better. They are, however, probably not more dangerous in this respect than books. No one who takes up a book from a library ever troubles himself of herself as to the antecedents of the volume; it may have just left the hand* of the fever patient. —Pall Mall (London > Gazette.