3. Coat puncheons with tar after they are leaded up, or at least work lime-wash well into the joints and crevices.
4. Line the bread-rooms of the ships with tin, so that if the Ephestia has got into a puncheon it may not infest the rest of the ship.
5. If other means fail, expose the woodwork of puncheons to a heat of 200° F. for two hours, or they might be destroyed by driving into the puncheon a stream of carbonic oxide, and afterwards exposing it well to the air. Weevils in biscuit have frequently been exterminated by this method, and there appears to be no reason why this treatment should not be equally efficacious for getting rid of the larvæ of the Ephestia Eletella.
EPHIAL′TES. See Nightmare.
EPIDEM′IC. Common to many people. In pathology, an epidemic disease (EPIDEMIC; EPIDEMY) is one which seizes a number of people at the same time and in the same place, but which is not dependent on any local cause, but on some extraordinary condition of the air. When a disease is peculiar to a people or nation, and appears to depend on local causes, it is said to be ‘ENDEMIC’ or ‘ENCHORIAL,’ Thus, Asiatic cholera may be taken as an example of the first, and the agues of low countries, and the goitre of the Alps, as examples of the other.
Epidemics may be divided into indigenous and exotic. Amongst the former may be included scarlet fever, measles, hooping-cough, influenza, typhoid; whilst the latter embrace such as are imported, viz. Asiatic cholera, plague, &c.
No year passes without the prevalence of an epidemic of one kind or the other in this country.
The following enactments for the prevention of epidemic diseases are now in force:—
“Whenever any part of England appears to be threatened with, or is affected by, any formidable epidemic, endemic, or infectious disease, the Local Government Board may make, and from time to time alter and revoke, regulations for all or any of the following purposes, viz.:—
“(1) For the speedy interment of the dead; and—