Library Action

Everybody will approve of the action for the management of the Sheffield Free Library in stopping the circulation books during the time that smallpox is raging. Although we are free at present from epidemic disease we may yet learn a lesson that may be useful at some future time.

Most patients when convalescing, spending a bit of time reading, and any infectious disease may be spread by the books or papers been taken from the sickroom into other houses.

For instance, it is dangerous in cases of scarlet fever to allow the patient, when convalescing, to use books that have to be taken to other people.

Been in contact with the sick person they gather the very germs of the disease, and it is scarcely possible to disinfect a book and at the same time preserve it.

It is to be hoped that various articles that have lately appeared in many newspapers on this subject have been widely read and thought about.