Infected Books

The long overdue reopening of 'non-essential businesses' in England is a welcome reminder of the 'old normal' (i.e. normal life) and seems to be helping to generate a more relaxed atmosphere. Among these 'non-essential businesses' are bookshops, with Waterstone's inevitably to the fore. It's a shop I only visit if there's nothing better (which, sadly, is the case where I live), but I'm glad they're open again and, by all accounts, doing a roaring trade. Buying books in an actual shop is certainly a richer experience than buying online (and if Waterstone's ever had anything I want, I'd do it more often). The down side, however, is that Waterstone's are bending over backwards to reassure the fearful returning shopper by reintroducing a practice that had long ago died out – disinfecting books. Customers will be asked to put aside any book they've touched but not bought, on a trolley which will in due course be trundled away into 72-hour quarantine.
  I'm pretty sure Patrick Kurp posted a piece on the disinfecting of library books a few months ago, but I can't for the life of me find it. The story, anyway, is essentially one of a panic, with no real foundation, that blew up in the late 19th century, peaked in the early years of the 20th, then died down – and the point is that it has long been known that there is no evidence that the handling of books can pass on any serious infection: this piece from the Smithsonian magazine gives an account of the panic and its groundlessness. However, I can personally attest that the practice of disinfection did not die out as early as is widely believed: certainly, in my childhood, it was common practice for public libraries to disinfect or incinerate books returned after contact with someone suffering from any of a range of infectious diseases.
  And now Waterstone's has revived the notion of infected books – it seems you can't keep a bad idea down, especially in this new age of anxiety.