Reprinted from 
Codex Medicus Philadelphia, October, 1895. 
Present Status of the Sanitary Movement for the Adoption 
of the Individual Communion Cup.* 
By Howard S. Anders, A. M., M, D., 
Lecturer and Clinical Instructor in Physical Diagnosis, Medico-Chirurgical College; Physician to 
the Samaritan Hospital, Philadelphia. 
PROFESSOR Agassiz once wrote : " Whenever a new and startling 
fact is brought to light, people at first say, ' It is not true then, 'It 
is contrary to religion and lastly, ' Everybody knew it before.' " 
The question whether the common mode of administering the commun- 
ion wine in most of our Protestant churches should be modified, for sanitary 
reasons, is no longer one upon which two opinions can be held. From a 
dispassionate medical and hygienic view-point, we do not now hesitate to say 
of this matter, emphatically, it is true ; and as a fact it rests upon a sound 
basis. The positive assertions of clear-minded, learned and progressive 
ministers of the gospel and Bible historians and interpreters, justify us in 
affirming, with equal stress, that it is not contrary to religion. Indeed, to 
the minds of a common-sense Christian community, untrammelled by the 
dogmas of mere human traditionalism and conventionalism, it cannot be 
otherwise. That " everybody knew it before" is either true or false ; if 
true, then thousands of the people of a nominally Christian nation were 
guilty of a neglect, the direful consequences of which upon their healths 
and lives are statistically unknown and obviously untraceable. The exist- 
ence of such universal, unfeeling indifference is paradoxical, if not well-nigh 
impossible ; therefore, the statement must be false. But, if false, then with 
our present advanced knowledge of hygienic facts and principles are we 
guilty of a wrong of omission now, to neglect so vital a matter, should it 
involve the physical welfare of but a score of worshipers. 
This question is, indeed, one of the ' * living issues" which the retiring 
President Maclean of the American Medical Association might have 
included in his masterly address, though not so far reaching in its beneficent 
influence as some of those he mentioned. One who is so unfortunate as to 
ridicule the reform now, is himself open to ridicule and the suspicion of 
ignorance,* indifference, narrowness, or wanton and stubborn animadversion. 
Attention and interest may be directed at the outset to the fact that, 
for years the possible, even probable disease dangers of the common com- 
munion chalice or cup were recognized privately, and, several times, publicly, 
by certain members of our profession. However, it has been little more than 
one year since the first use of the individual communion cup was made by 
any church. 
This method of administering the communion wine is now believed 
*Read before the Pennsylvania State Medical Society, Chambersburg, Pa., May 21, 1895. to be the only sanitary, reliable, and entirely practical and successful 
procedure. Besides, it has the sanction of scriptural precedent accord- 
ing to many theologians, and recently of ministerial argument .and recom- 
mendation. 
It might be interesting, instructive, and amusing even, were it not 
irrelevant and too long a story, to review the sarcasm and sneers, the 
bigotries and fallacies hurled at the devoted head of this sanitary move- 
ment during the past year. But it will be more profitable and to the pur- 
pose-the gauntlet having been victoriously run-to scan carefully over one 
year's history of this hygienic modification of a sacred church ordinance. 
From its inception to the present, the agitation has spread with truly 
marvelous rapidity, notwithstanding the earlier buffetings and opposition it 
had to contend against. Not only has there been revealed marked progress 
in the awakening of interest in, as well as some intelligent study of the 
grounds for the innovation ; but also in the ready adoption of the individ- 
ual communion cup in a steadily growing number of churches of most 
Protestant denominations. Condemned before it was fairly considered, the 
sanitary individual communion cup reform was contemptuously treated as 
based upon an imaginary menace to the health of the worshiping Christian 
public, and, therefore, merely a sensation or fad. The " pooh-bahs" pooh- 
poohed until they grew tired or convinced of the utter hopelessness of their 
vapid, illogical and unchristian resentments. Cahn, thoughtful and benevo- 
lent persons soon saw that the time was opportune for this sanitary improve- 
ment of a sublime symbolic ceremony, and that it was not a sacrilegious, 
though scientific proposition. It is almost needless to add that the move- 
ment was started and helped along essentially by medical men, because 
based upon bacteriological and clinical evidence of undoubted verity, and 
hygienic principles of common and general acceptance. The only doubts 
expressed in the discussion by members of the profession, have been as to 
the practicability of the individual cup method to meet the clear indications; 
these should surely be dispelled everywhere, since for one year the improve- 
ment has been in practical and satisfactory operation in many churches 
throughout the land. 
There is clearly no necessity, then, for arguing in favor of the cleanli- 
ness, sanitary safety or feasibility of the method, either in the abstract or in 
detail ; nor would time and the title of this paper permit me. Its ration d'etre 
is well established. 
So far as is known to me (through the kindness of Dr. Hasbrouck, of 
Brooklyn,'N. Y.), Dr. M. O. Terry, of Utica, N. Y., was the first physician 
to publicly and scientifically advocate the desirability of changing the 
common mode of administering the sacrament. This was done in a paper 
which he read before the Oneida County Medical Society of N. Y., in 
January, 1887. But no actual microscopical or bacteriological investigation 
of the communion wine before and after the service, with common cups in use, was made until in April, 1894, by Dr. Charles Forbes (U. S. M. H. 
S.1) of Rochester, N. Y. His results were embodied in a report to the 
Rochester Pathological Society, which promptly passed a resolution recom- 
mending " that the communion ordinance of churches should be so modified 
as to lessen the liability to the transmission of contagious diseases which 
attaches to the prevalent method of observance." It was he 
who also devised what is now known as the individual communion or chalice 
cup. 
Dr. Forbes found in the dregs of the ordinary cup, contamination from 
both the mouth and clothing ; from the former, epithelial cells, mucus and 
various bacteria and spores ; from the latter, fibrous material. All of which 
showed the possible danger of the common cup. Two epidemics of 
diphtheria, one occurring in 24 families in Rochester, and one in San Jose, 
California, were traced to a common communion cup, the wipings from the 
rim of which showed microscopically the Loeffler bacilli. 
Two months later, my own studies on a similar plan, revealed tubercle 
bacilli in two out of five specimens, as well as some pus staphylococci, pus 
cells and oral epithelial cells. Such facts are incontrovertible ; the inferences 
and conclusions to be derived from them are not less obvious to us all, in 
their vital and far reaching importance. 
September 26, 1894, the writer read a paper on the need of prophylaxis 
in churches by the adoption of individual communion cups, before the Phila- 
delphia County Medical Society (since published in the Vol. XV, Transac- 
tions for that year). The historical, rational (both inductive and deduc- 
tive), and practical argument for the abolition of the common and the 
substitution of the individual cup was stamped with the Society's approval, 
by a virtually unanimous vote in favor of resolutions recommending the 
individual cup system for general adoption in place of the common cup, 
wherever now used ; and believing that the change, if effected, would 
afford a clean, safe and reliable means for preventing the spread of con- 
tagious disease from such a source as may reside in the ordinary chalice. 
During the first year, just elapsed, of this sanitary communion reform, 
so many churches have practised the individual cup method of administering 
the communion wine, that it is difficult to estimate their number throughout 
the United States. 
The first church in Christendom to adopt the modification was the Nprth 
Baptist Church, in Rochester, N. Y. It began the use of individual com- 
munion cups, using over 2000, on Sunday, May 6, 1894. " The time con- 
sumed in distributing, partaking and collecting cups was a trifle less than 
eleven minutes. The old way required nearly forty-five minutes." The 
pastor, who was first opposed to the innovation, has been delighted ever 
since. "They" (the cups) he says, ''are beautiful, chaste, rich, refined 
and decidedly cleanly." 
1 Passed Assistant Sanitary Inspector. Health Officer of the port of Genesee, N. Y. Within one month thereafter, fourteen churches in that city had made 
the change and six more had signified their intention to do so. These 
included the Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist denominations. After the 
writer's investigations, the Fourth Baptist Church of Philadelphia adopted 
the individual communion cup. One Presbyterian, one Methodist and one 
Reformed Church have followed. Several pastors of some of these denomi- 
nations have agitated the subject before their respective ministerial and 
synodical associations with favorable results. My own efforts, supported by 
Drs. Griffith and Ely before the Philadelphia Baptist Minister's Conference, 
in the same direction, met with gratifying comments, and the individual cup 
was recommended. 
The movement is progressing with an undoubted vigor and rapidity 
quite wholesome and substantial, which argues well for its ultimate preva- 
lence among the churches. Individual communion cups are now in use in 
several New York City and Brooklyn churches, besides those referred to in 
Rochester; also in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, 
Illinois, Missouri, Virginia, Georgia and California, and in other States, 
perhaps, of which I have no knowledge ; the good seed has been sown and 
the fruitage is following, as it must, wherever met by the calm, intelligent, 
unbiased and reverential minds of a Christian community. 
However popular the modern novel with a purpose may be, whether 
from an altruistic or literary standpoint, it is roundly abused by the critics 
and writers of a growing reactionary school of fiction production, which is 
striving to revive the true novel as it should be (they say), of pleasing 
romance and thrilling adventure. This paper was written with a motive-a 
"medical missionary" motive, if you will grant this converse meaning 
to a current phrase-sanitary, not revolutionary, reverential, and not 
sensational. 
Finally my plea is that, as the representative Medical Society of Penn- 
sylvania, we should further the beneficence of this sanitary movement by 
giving it official sanction and recommendation, and thus earning indirectly 
the lasting gratituie of present unenlightened Christian congregations and 
communities at large. 
1836 Wallace St., Philadelphia, Pa.