2. Fumigation. Fumigation with sulphur is the only practicable method for disinfecting the house. For this purpose, the rooms to be disinfected must be vacated. Heavy clothing, blankets, bedding, and other articles which cannot be treated with zinc solution, should be opened and exposed during fumigation, as directed below. Close the rooms as tightly as possible, place the sulphur in iron pans supported upon bricks placed in washtubs containing a little water, set it on fire by hot coals or with the aid of a spoonful of alcohol, and allow the room to remain closed for twenty-four hours. For a room about ten feet square, at least two pounds of sulphur should be used; for larger rooms, proportionally increased quantities.[[55]]
3. Premises. Cellars, yards, stables, gutters, privies, cesspools, water-closets, drains, sewers, etc., should be frequently and liberally treated with copperas solution. The copperas solution is easily prepared by hanging a basket containing about sixty pounds of copperas in a barrel of water.[[56]]
4. Body and bed clothing, etc. It is best to burn all articles which have been in contact with persons sick with contagious or infectious diseases. Articles too valuable to be destroyed should be treated as follows:
(a) Cotton, linen, flannels, blankets, etc., should be treated with the boiling-hot zinc solution; introduce piece by piece, secure thorough wetting, and boil for at least half an hour.
(b) Heavy woolen clothing, silks, furs, stuffed bed-covers, beds, and other articles which cannot be treated with the zinc solution, should be hung in the room during fumigation, their surfaces thoroughly exposed and pockets turned inside out. Afterward they should be hung in the open air, beaten, and shaken. Pillows, beds, stuffed mattresses, upholstered furniture, etc., should be cut open, the contents spread out and thoroughly fumigated. Carpets are best fumigated on the floor, but should afterward be removed to the open air and thoroughly beaten.
Books for Collateral Study. Among the many works which may be consulted with profit, the following are recommended as among those most useful: Parkes Elements of Health; Canfield’s Hygiene of the Sick-Room; Coplin & Bevan’s Practical Hygiene; Lincoln’s School Hygiene; Edward Smith’s Health; McSherrys Health; American Health Primers (12 little volumes, edited by Dr. Keen of Philadelphia); Reynold’s Primer of Health; Corfield’s Health; Appleton’s Health Primers; Clara S. Weeks’ Nursing; Church’s Food; Yeo’s Food in Health and Disease; Hampton’s Nursing, its Principles and Practice; Price’s Nurses and Nursing; Cullinworth’s Manual of Nursing; Wise’s Text-Book of Nursing (2 vols.); and Humphrey’s Manual of Nursing.
Chapter XV.
Experimental Work in Physiology.
406. The Limitations of Experimental Work in Physiology in Schools. Unlike other branches of science taught in the schools from the experimental point of view, the study of physiology has its limitations. The scope and range of such experiments is necessarily extremely limited compared with what may be done with the costly and elaborate apparatus of the medical laboratory. Again, the foundation of physiology rests upon systematic and painstaking dissection of the dead human body and the lower animals, which mode of study very properly is not permitted in ordinary school work. Experiments upon the living human body and the lower animals, now so generally depended upon in our medical and more advanced scientific schools, for obvious reasons can be performed only in a crude and quite superficial manner in secondary schools.
Hence in the study of physiology in schools many things must be taken for granted. The observation and experience of medical men, and the experiments of the physiologist in his laboratory must be depended upon for data which cannot be well obtained at first hand by young students.
407. Value of Experiments in Physiology in Secondary Schools. While circumstances and regard for certain proprieties of social life forbid the use of a range of experiments, in anatomy and physiology, such as are permitted in other branches of science in secondary schools, it by no means follows that we are shut out altogether from this most important and interesting part of the study. However simple and crude the apparatus, the skillful and enthusiastic teacher has at his command a wide series of materials which can be profitably utilized for experimental instruction. As every experienced teacher knows, pupils gain a far better knowledge, and keep up a livelier interest in any branch of science, if they see with their own eyes and do with their own hands that which serves to illuminate and illustrate the subject-matter.