Disinfection.—Spraying the room with an antiseptic is hardly necessary, since all germ life descends to the floor and can best be removed by washing with a 1-1000 bichlorid solution.
Should it be necessary to perform an unusually extensive operation in a private house, the room must be cleared of all furniture, pictures, drapery, and carpet. After plugging up the crevices in the windows and doors it should be well fumigated either with sulphur candles, as now commonly furnished, or, better, with formaldehyd.
The superiority of formaldehyd as a disinfecting agent is now well established. An illustration of an apparatus, largely doing away with the difficulties and dangers encountered in the use of the older and ordinary styles of the pressure or nonpressure type, is shown in [Fig. 3]. The main difficulty with these has always been their almost inaccessibility for cleansing purposes, and in such where this is not the case, the size of the aperture has been made so small that the inside could not be reached. In the pressure apparatus the tops are bolted on, making them exceedingly difficult to remove, with the result that the necessary cleaning was not properly attended to. The corrosive action of formaldehyd gas is such that under these conditions any apparatus would soon become useless.
In the type shown a single clamp arrangement is used (a). By the turning of the hand screw (b) two planed metal faces (the upper surface of the boiler and under surface of the cover) are brought together and sealed. When the cover (c) is removed the entire inside of the boiler is in sight and can be thoroughly cleansed, which should be done each time the apparatus is used. The pipes through which the formaldehyd gas passes after generation are arranged so that they can be taken off and cleaned.
Fig. 3.—Formaldehyd Disinfecting Apparatus.
The gas is generated in the boiler (d) and passes out from the top, down through the pipe (e), and from thence through a series of pipes (f) underneath the boiler, which are subjected to direct heat from the lamp (g). By this means the gas becomes superheated, the polymerization of the formaldehyd is almost entirely prevented, and a dry gas is insured and given off at the pipe (h).