THE PARASITES OF MONEY.

Kumara Times, Issue 2531, 1 August 1884, Page 3

THE PARASITES OF MONEY.

The Frankfurter Zeitung stales that Dr. Reinsch has found, as the result of a long series of minute investigations, that the surfaces of fifty pfennig pieces (sixpences), which have been long in circulation, are the home and feeding ground of a minute bacteria and vegetable fungus. An extended series of observations showed that this is the case with the small coins of all nations, the thin incrustation of organic matter deposited upon their surfaces in the course of long circulation rendering them very suitable for this parasitical settlement. Dr, Reinsch scraped some of these incrustations, and with a small scalpel divided them into fragments ■which were subsequently dissolved in distilled water. The employment of lenses of very high power showed the bacteria and fungi distinctly. This is a matter of no little importance from a hygienic point of view. It has now been conclusively established that bacteria form the chief agency in the propagation of epidemic disease. The revelation that they have a chosen domicile in the most widely circulating medium which probably exists in the world presents us with a new factor in the spread of infectious disease. There is, however,*a remedy. Where coins have been in circulation for a number of years, if they are washed in a boiling weak solution of caustic potash they will be cleaned from their organic incrustation, and so freed from the guests which they harbored.