VII. Bed-clothes and wearing apparel should be aired and exposed to the sun daily. As frequently as possible floors and passages should be well washed with a disinfectant solution and then well dried.
VIII. There should not be any over-crowding in bed-rooms.
IX. Drinking water should be boiled before use. Raw vegetables, such as salad, cucumber, &c., should only be used after thoroughly washing them, and then with vinegar.
X. Personal cleanliness should be strictly observed. Daily bath, cleaning the teeth with carbolic tooth powder, and carefully washing hands and mouth before and after meals are essential.
XI. Those who have to attend on plague cases should be very careful. Hands should be thoroughly washed with a disinfectant solution, and a nail brush used soon after the patient or anything in contact with him is touched. A bath to which some antiseptic is added should be taken immediately after coming in contact with plague patients. Workers in plague hospitals should be warned about scratches or wounds on their bodies. Use of respirators with an antiseptic sprinkled over the entrance valves is recommended. Only very healthy people should approach plague cases. On the appearance of slightest headache, languor, or fever an attendant should be relieved from duty.
XII. As a prophylactic 5 grains of quinine sulphate may be taken twice daily, or a small bottle containing eucalyptus or some other volatile disinfectant, may be carried in the pocket, and a few drops may be occasionally poured on the handkerchief. Smoking good tobacco may have a prophylactic value.
XIII. If plague occurs in the house, the following steps should be taken:—
(a) The patient should at once be put in bed and kept in a temporary room, which may be put up on the roof of a house. No healthy inmate of the house should go in that room or have any connection with the sick, except those who have to nurse the patient.
(b) All discharges, fæces, urine, sputum, vomited matter, &c., should be taken in vessels with disinfectant solution in it, and some quicklime should immediately be sprinkled over them. On no account should anything leave the room but to be disinfected.
(c) Floor and bedsteads should be washed with a disinfectant solution, clothes and other articles that touch the patient should be carefully disinfected. Crockery and glass should be scalded. If great care and cleanliness are not observed with regard to the bed and body linen of the patient, the infection may be diffused through the air immediately around the patient.