Hygenic Libraries in the 1950s

 I'd been assuming that hygenic libraries were a feature of the years between the first and second world wars, especially after the 1919 flu pandemic and subsequent repeat outbreaks, as well as several severe outbreaks of polio in Melbourne in the 1930s.

While it's true that the arrival of antibiotics after the second world war got rid of a whole range of bacterial diseases such as tuberculosis,  almost overnight, that was not the case with viral diseases such as polio - there was no effective vaccine until the mid 1950s, and treatment was still pretty basic.

So, it's probably no great surprise that commercial hygenic libraries persisted into the 1950s as seen in this library sticker inside a Mills and Boon romance published in 1952.

Perhaps, not such a surprise - I remember as a child in Scotland in the early 1960s (well before vaccination for measles, rubella and mumps) that library books from the city library came with a stern warning that in the event of an outbreak of disease in the household they should be returned not to the library but to the town medical officer for sterlisation. 

I even have a vague memory of going to the old mansion in Randolphfield (long gone, and now replaced by the police headquarters building) used as offices by the Chief Medical Officer with my mother to return books for sterilisation after a bout of chickenpox when I was seven or eight, which would make it 1963 or 64...