Pillow Talk

Ever since U.S. hospital authorities learned, to their horror, that dangerous, penicillin-resistant strains of Staphylococcus bacteria were floating merrily in supposedly sterile hospital corridors, no nook or cranny has escaped attention from sanitation experts. Faulty air-conditioning systems, surgical masks, dirty mopheads and bedside water carafes have been implicated as germ carriers. In a speech to last week's American Public Health Association conference in San Francisco, Dr. Howard E. Lind of Brookline, Mass. proposed another target for bug hunters: the pillows on patients' beds.

At Brookline's Brooks Hospital, Dr. Lind examined feathers in pillow stuffings that had been "sanitized" (washed, heat-treated and chemically disinfected) to Government standards. He found huge amounts of residual bacteria: up to 13 million organisms per gram. Most are probably harmless to humans, but at least three diseases--including psittacosis, or "parrot fever"--can be transmitted to humans from fowl; all three can be spread by feathers from infected birds. Dr. Lind found more than germs inside old hospital pillows. Items that turned up amid the feathers: stones, corn, glass, metal strips, nails, a broken thermometer, false teeth, wax crayons, a pencil, a chocolate bar, a chicken neck, hen manure, a dead sparrow, a rat skull and a whole mouse. Even if feathers prove to be poor disease carriers, concluded Lind dryly, "we should consider that the renovation of old feather pillows is of importance from the standpoint of general good housekeeping and psychological effect."

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