DO HANDKERCHIEFS PROLONG COLDS?
[To the Editor of the Sesx-rAron.]
Sin—As managing director of the firm who used this heading to their advertisement will you permit me space to explain that the words " cambric " and " linen " were accidentally used in place of "ordinary fabric handkerchiefs," a term we usually employ on the labels of our packets? We shall in future leave out of our advertisements the words cambric and linen, for the last thing we had in mind was to draw any distinction between cotton, linen and silk. The one feature we emphasize with numerous testimonials from medical men and the medical Press to back us is that our handkerchiefs should be destroyed after use, because any fabric lumdkerchief used more than once, when dealing with influenza colds, nasal catarrh, &c., which are frequently infectious and generally objectionable, leads to the re-infection of the patient, and so prolongs the duration of the malady.
In his laudable desire to prevent the exploitation of the
linen trade by unscrupulous ' lotions mind adulterations your correspondent has missed this point. It may interest him to know that our handkerchiefs were the first paper handkerchief, so-called, put on the market, and their advent synchronized with the crusade for the prevention of con- sumption at the beginning of this century, and when spitting in public places and vehicles was for the first time prohibited, they came as a boon to those who, constitutionally, must
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