DEATH IN THE PILLOW.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 243, 25 February 1888, Page 7

DEATH IN THE PILLOW.

Another not© of domestic alarm is sounded this week by a correspondent of a medical journal, who bids us take note of the fact that disease and death lurk in the very pillows and bolsters on which we lay our heads at night. It is easy to talk of down and feathers; but, as a matter of fact, if they were cut open those articles would be often found to be more or less stuffed with the most heterogeneous materials. Pillows, bolsters and beds have been examined and found to contain portions of filthy coarse black serge, apparently parts of soldiers' old coat-sleeves, pieces of dirty, greasy silk dresses, old worsted braid from the borders of women's gowns, soiled linen rags and coloured calico, and even nuts and walnut shells and pieces of crinoline wire. The bedding in this case was bought new, wo are assured, a few years ago of an expensive and respectable upholsterer. Moreover, a woman who was employed to do the unpicking work for the trade informed the lady of the household that the practice of stuffing bedding with dirty rubbish and rags was very general, and that few beds or bolsters contain only the material of which they are supposed to consist. This is very terrible, and the worst of it is that it is only the last, for the present, of a long list of kindred discoveries which of late have contributed to give ironical force to the question, "Is lifo worth living ?" Fortunately, in this case, the remedy involves nothing more difficult than ripping a seam or two and stitching them up again as soon as wo haye ocular proof of the contents. Bedding, as all good housewives know, ought to be opened periodically, so that its contents may bo beaten with sticks. In Franco bed-clean-sing in this fashion is followed as a regular trade. It is more than probable that the neglect of such sanitary precautions is, as the " Lancet's" correspondent suggests, the cause of many of the mysterious outbreaks of infectious disease in schools and families, —" London Daily News."