William Eassie

“ THERE are certain rules to be promulgated respecting the protection of human life from contagion, or from the injurious effects of decomposing organic matters, which may be gleaned from the experience of ages, and which as yet have never been laid down with sufficient clearness. ”

“ Having attempted to show that disinfection must be an everyday practice in the household, and that disinfectants must necessarily be harmless antiseptic deodorizers, it is not difficult to establish a code of rules of almost universal application. There is a caution that should be given at all times in a household: Servants cannot be expected to understand the use of disinfectants any more than they can be trusted to carry out a system of ventilation. Disinfection and ventilation, therefore, should, to a large extent, be automatic processes and, happily, such things are to be found. ”

“ A poor woman is sent to the oil shop for a little chloride of lime; a foul room is thereby rendered unbearable, the place has to be thrown open, disinfection is not attained, and the maximum of discomfort is attended with a minimum of benefit.
Some medical men are, I fear, blamable for not estimating with greater precision the real benefits derived from the use of volatile disinfectants. They are all irritating and of bad odor, and a popular belief has arisen that, unless they are foul and caustic, they can do no good service. ”

“ It is, however, necessary to learn that, in practising Disinfection, we have to neutralize the products of, or check the decay of healthy matter separated from living plants or animals, and that we have likewise to destroy specific elements of contagion, elements which differ in the various maladies that are known to be transmissible from the sick to the healthy. ”

“ Disinfectants are employed as deodorizers and as contagion destroyers. Such agents as carbolic acid prevent the decomposition of organic matter, and therefore favor a state of atmospheric purity; but carbolic acid is not a deodorizer. It makes, but it does not absorb or destroy, fetid vapors: and it is for this reason that M. Lemaire and others have recommended the use of carbolic acid in conjunction with sulphate of zinc, salts of iron, chloride of lime, and so on. ”

“ It is desirable that a disinfectant should be an antiseptic—viz., an agent that arrests chemical change in animal or vegetable matters, and it must be a deodorizer, or capable of fixing the most noxious gases evolved. It has been erroneously believed that sulphuretted hydrogen is the principal deleterious gas which disinfectants have to encounter the worst kind of vermin to ferret out. ”

“ The object is to deliver at every upheaval of the handle a certain portion of a fluid disinfectant; formerly it was exclusively Condy's fluid, now it is chloralum. The construction is the essence of simplicity. In a metal, glass, or earthenware vessel, holding a gallon of disinfecting fluid, a metal siphon is fixed, and the bottom is coiled and has a small inlet as shown, by which means the siphon fills itself. When the closet handle is raised, the water rushing down the supply pipe to flush the basin causes a vacuum in the disinfecting siphon, and its contents are blended with the water. ”

“ If we even let them pass in any quantity from room to room or house to house in atmospheric currents, we cannot trace them until they have victimized fresh subjects susceptible to their pernicious influences. ”

“ In dealing with the excreta of the sick, it is not the volatile elements and simple gases that we have to fear, but the materials that adhere to any thing and every thing on and around the sick, and, if ever we allow them to pass from the sick room, it is quite impossible to control them. ”

“ The excreta of healthy human beings decompose, and the sewer gases belong to the class of irrespirable gases which cannot be absorbed into the system without producing serious ill effects, and even symptoms such as characterize a putrid fever—vomiting—faintness followed by prolonged stupor—fetid diarrhœa, and even death. ”

“ The destruction of valuable property, a senseless panic, and a relapse into the indulgence of time honored abuses, are the common results of outbreaks of typhus or typhoid fevers, of smallpox, cholera, or any other of the many diseases by which we are punished for grave derelictions of duty. ”

“ It is highly satisfactory to add that not the least deterioration of texture or color results." At the wash houses referred to by this lady, a great number of women are employed, and nothing but the washing of the sick is carried on. ”

“ John's, Canada, claims not only to absorb the watery vapor of the incoming air by the sponge, and disinfect any foul air that may seek entrance by means of the charcoal, but also to warm the cold air by the amount of friction it has to undergo in its ingress through the body of a ventilator which is already somewhat heated by the warmth of the room. If the wind blows too strongly upon the outside mouth of the ventilator, Dr. ”