The Flora of Bank-Notes

Abstract

“LA Flore des Billets de Banque” is the title of an article in Science et Nature, an article which, in spite of an amusing tendency inseparable from all things savouring of sensational science, may suggest thoughts more or less alarming in view of recent discoveries in bacteriology. It is no new fact that books, coins, and other articles of a durable nature which pass much from hand to hand may be the means of transmitting infectious diseases, and if these infectious diseases are caused by visible and tangible agents, it is not going far to expect that the agents should be discoverable on the transmitting media by means of the microscope, and by other methods employed by the specialists who devote themselves to tracing the awful bacterium to its home. Of course it is now matter of fact that “bacteria”(using the term in its widest sense) can be and are causal agents in disease, and the writer of the article referred to shows that bacteria and other minute organisms always occur on bank-notes; there is, perhaps, no more in this observation than that it demonstrates a fact in a particular case which scientific biologists have shown to be true much more generally. All objects exposed to the air and passed from hand to hand are apt to have minute organisms settling upon them, and we should expect such things as bank-notes, which pass through many hands, to be favoured by more than their usual share of “germs,” knowing that simple abrasion is no satisfactory means for removing such minute bodies. Nevertheless it is interesting to see what really have been found on European banknotes. M. Reinsch some time ago undertook to examine the money in circulation, with the result that two very small algæ, which were named as species of Chroococcus and Pleurococcus respectively, proved to be not uncommon on coins. M. Jules Schaarschmidt has since undertaken to examine the paper currency of various States, with the result that such living organisms and other objects as those in the annexed woodcut were discovered. According to the statements to hand, the notes examined were particularly those of Austro-Hungary and Russia, and new as well as old ones furnished “an abundant crypto-gamic vegetation,” as well as “microbes,” and objects such as grains of starch, particles of hair, &c.