Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/68

58 sulphuretted hydrogen is the principal deleterious gas which disinfectants have to encounter the worst kind of vermin to ferret out. Prof. Way, however, asserts that the gaseous elements that are usually foul smelling and hurtful are ammoniacal.

The best disinfectant to deal with sulphuretted hydrogen, such as is evolved in the emptying of a foul ash pit, would be salts of iron or chloride of zinc. Salts of iron and copper are antiseptics and very active deodorizers, and would have been used even more extensively than they have been, had they been harmless. But the iron salts stain all they come into contact with, and copper salts are injurious to life. Zinc salts are also inimical in this latter way. A disinfectant, to be available in the homes I am endeavoring to depict, must necessarily be harmless, and until quite recently it was not easy to find such an agent. The alkaline permanganates have been extolled as disinfectants. They are in many instances admirable deodorizers, but the fact that permanganates are sparingly soluble in water renders their employment very difficult, except in dealing with small accumulations of putrid matter. The use is too limited to enable us to rely on them for systematic disinfection.

There is one volatile deodorizer and disinfectant that has been recommended very strongly in some cases by Dr. B. W. Richardson and Mr. Spencer Wells, and that is iodine. In some virulent diseases attended with fetid discharges, a little iodine placed in a box, with a little muslin to confine it, is sufficient to render the room tolerable to the attendants upon the sick. For similar purposes, peat, seaweed, wood, or animal charcoal, have been recommended, owing to the avidity with which they condense the gases of decomposition within their pores. For some years, Prof. Gamgee has used charcoal charged with sulphurous acid as an active antiseptic, and he now suggests the use of charcoal mixed with chloride of aluminium, or, as he popularly calls it, chloralum. The sulphurous acid renders air irrespirable, but chloralum, which is a deliquescent chloride of aluminium, attracts and neutralizes the noxious elements of a poisoned atmosphere.

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 fusion of the two processes of disinfection and ventilation has been tried, of late, in the following manner: The space occupied by a top pane of glass is fitted up with a piece of metal which slants from the bottom upward, and the top is rounded in shape and perforated.