The old bandages and poultice cloths used at these dispensaries are generally reported as being burned. But in the State workhouse at Bridgewater some of them are cleansed in carbolic solution and used again, and at one dispensary they are simply thrown into the ash-bin.

d. Relative Frequency of Acute Infectious Diseases in Paper Towns and Elsewhere.

Supposing an ætiological relation to exist between a rag used as such articles frequently are- in the place of a handkerchief by a scarlatinous patient, and a case of scarlet fever in a paper-mill operative, it is manifest that from whichever end of the chain of cause and effect we attempt to trace the links, it will be difficult to progress far. At the causal end we shall soon find the infected rag inextricably intermixed with others, in no way differing from it in appearance, from adjoining houses, and, by the process of sorting in the paper-stock warehouse, possibly associated with rags of far remote origin.

If, on the other hand, we investigate the sick patient, we find that there are very many other sources from which he may have contracted a disease, which is almost always present somewhere in every community. A chance word with a stranger, a seat in a public conveyance previously occupied by some unknown infected person, the reception or handling of a letter, these, and many other events which are sufficient to baffle the investigator of cases in ordinary domestic practice, conspire to make an infection through rags wellnigh unprovable. Hence the absence of demonstrated cases of transmission by rags of the common eruptive diseases, which are always epidemic, is much less conclusive of the non-existence of the fact than would be a similar absence of proven instances in a disease whose means of epidemic introduction are few, as, for example, cholera.

In view of the impossibility of following out individual cases bearing on the question of the transmission of scarlet fever, measles, typhoid fever and diphtheria by rags, it was determined to make a comparison from the mortality tables as shown by the registration reports for the various towns in the State. These reports of separate cities and towns cover