I was asked today if you can catch Ebola from coins or paper money. I looked quickly on theInternet and the disease is spread by direct contact with bodily fluids, so presumably the answeris no.

I wondered if there have been health scares before where coins were suspect. Apparently duringthe plague in England in the Seventeenth Century smallholders from the villages around London wereunable to enter the city and left vegetables in market areas, and sold their goods by shouting.They collected their payment after the money had been left in a bucket of water to"disinfect" the coins.

As late as 1990 there was an outbreak of bubonic plague in Glasgow which lead to calls fordisinfecting all the trams, all the ferries, even all the coins which are in people's pocketsin case they should carry some kind of contagion.

Probably you cannot catch disease from coins but by being generous with them you can helpprevent it. What do readers think?