The natural disinfectants are air and water.
Air, when in violent motion, as is the case during a hurricane, has in many instances been known to arrest the course of certain epidemics; whilst in the form of ordinary ventilation, although inadequate alone to destroy the causes (whatever they may be) of contagion or infection, it is nevertheless found to supplement, to a considerable extent, the application of artificial and specific disinfectants. Hence the paramount necessity of perfect ventilation in all apartments in which the sick are placed, and hence also the measures taken in all hospitals to ensure by this means an increasing supply of fresh air to the wards in which the patients are lying.
The diminution in the amount of sickness prevailing in an army caused by the removal of the soldiers from barracks and placing them in sheds or under canvas is another illustration, tending to show the disinfectant properties possessed by an atmosphere in a state of circulation, when, of course, other hygienic precautions are not neglected.
In Hammond’s ‘Hygiène’ for 1863 the author, who was surgeon-general in the United States army, says that he only met with one instance of hospital gangrene in a wooden pavilion hospital, and not a single one in a tent; and the same result is recorded by Kraus, of the Austrian army in 1859, who says he never discovered that gangrene originated in a tent; that, on the contrary, cases of gangrene at once began to improve when those suffering from the disease were sent from hospital wards into tents. In his work on ‘Practical Hygiène’ Dr Parkes advises all cases of typhus occurring in barracks, whenever practicable, to be sent to tents or wooden huts having badly-jointed walls.
The great solvent power of water, superadded to its being able to hold matters in suspension, renders it a most important disinfectant, and thus enables it in the form of rain to remove from the atmosphere many noxious and pestilential bodies that would doubtless, if allowed to increase, become a source of disease. The air-current which constitutes the ventilation of the House of Commons, before entering the Commons’ chamber, is made to pass over a fine spray of water, by which means it has any dust or other organisms washed out of it. The beneficial effect of rain also in flushing drains and canals, and sweetening the superincumbent air, and of washing out of it many solid as well as gaseous objectionable impurities, is well known. The year 1860 was one of the wettest on record, as it was also one of the healthiest. Dr W. Budd recommends that when a room is to be disinfected, a short time before the process is commenced a tub of boiling water should be placed in the apartment, so that the steam may become condensed on the walls, and diffused throughout the air, as he believes there is a greater chance of ensuring the destruction of the disease germs by the aërial disinfectants than if these latter were allowed to act on the germs in the dry state.
We have already enforced in these pages the importance of the habit of personal cleanliness as being one of the greatest aids to the preservation of health; and although the unstinted use of soap and water will alone fail to effect the removal of any infectious or contagious maladies, their use will be found important auxiliaries in assisting recovery. But personal ablution is not the sine quâ non. The frequent cleansing of our dwellings, streets,[259] alleys (more particularly culs-de-sac), lanes, and the sheds and habitations of animals, by soap and water, or water alone, as well as the removal of all decaying or refuse materials from our midst, is of equal importance, and must not be disregarded, if we desire to make our sanitary surroundings such as they ought to be.
[259] In streets where there is much traffic the air above has been found to contain large quantities of dust composed, amongst other matters, of the remains of horse droppings; hence the great importance of assiduously watering and cleansing the thoroughfares of all large cities and towns. A plan for laying the dust of streets has been suggested by Mr Cooper, and consists in watering them with waste chlorides of calcium and magnesium. Carbolic acid has been employed for the same purpose by many urban authorities for some years past.
We extract the following from Dr Parkes’ valuable and standard work—‘Practical Hygiene,’
“Disinfection of Various Diseases.
“Exanthemata, Scarlet Fever, and Rothëln. The points to attack are the skin and throat. The skin should be rubbed from the very commencement of the rash until complete desquamation, with camphorated oil, or oil with a little weak carbolic acid. The throat should be washed with Condy’s fluid, or weak solution of sulphurous acid.