Penny Licks: When Ice Cream Spread Tuberculosis

In the crowded cities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ice cream was not a sealed product served with disposable utensils. It was sold on street corners and sidewalks, scooped into thick glass cups, and handed from one customer to the next. These glasses were briefly rinsed—sometimes not at all—before being reused. They were known as penny licks, and they were considered perfectly normal.

At the same time, tuberculosis was one of the most widespread and deadly diseases in the world.

Penny Licks: When Ice Cream Spread Tuberculosis explores how an ordinary treat became an efficient vehicle for infection long before modern sanitation, refrigeration, and public health regulations existed. Drawing on social history rather than medical jargon, this book examines how shared customs, limited scientific understanding, and economic convenience allowed disease to move quietly through everyday life—often unnoticed, often through children.

This is not a story of malicious intent or careless individuals. It is a record of how entire systems can fail when harmful practices are normalized. Vendors reused glasses because it was cheap. Customers accepted them because everyone else did. Officials hesitated to intervene because the practice was familiar, popular, and profitable. The danger was invisible, and so it persisted.

The book traces the rise of penny licks in rapidly growing cities, the public’s understanding of disease before germ theory became widely accepted, and the slow, uneven response of authorities when evidence of contamination could no longer be ignored. It also examines why early warnings were dismissed, why reform took so long, and how resistance to change delayed life-saving improvements.

Calm, factual, and quietly unsettling, Penny Licks shows how public health disasters are rarely dramatic in the moment. They unfold through routine, habit, and collective blindness. What made penny licks dangerous was not recklessness, but familiarity.

By revisiting this forgotten practice, the book offers more than a historical curiosity. It reveals how easily societies accept risk when it is wrapped in comfort, tradition, or affordability—and how quickly those lessons fade once the danger disappears.

Clear, accessible, and grounded in historical reality, Penny Licks: When Ice Cream Spread Tuberculosis is a micro-history of everyday life gone wrong, and a reminder that the most disturbing stories are often the ones that once felt completely normal.