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Once in a blue moon a journal is privileged to publish an article which introduces an important revolutionary concept. The cloud baby concept of Eichenwald's is, in our opinion, as revolutionary as the term is clever. One of the most puzzling facets of staphylococcal nursery epidemiology has been the utter inability of careful workers to agree on the importance of some of the most obvious pathways of transmission of staphylococci. R. E. O. Williams, the British staphylococcologist, aptly points out the tendency of investigators confronted with a frustrating complexity of epidemiologic factors to accept the first or the most obvious pathway which evidence seems to incriminate. Undoubtedly this is true in many instances.
Ravenholt was unable to detect the influence of carriers in his epidemic which was characterized by abundant contamination of the air by his epidemic strain. On the other hand, in Shaffer's epidemic a similar attack rate seemed