Infections, and How to Avoid Them : Part 5

A Handbook of Health
by Woods Hutchinson

(Page 31 of 34)

It was found that by hunting out a dozen or twenty little pools of this sort in the neighborhood of a town full of malaria, and filling them up, or draining them, or pouring kerosene over the surface of the water, the spread of the malaria in the town could be stopped and wiped out absolutely. This has been accomplished even in such frightfully malarial districts as the Panama Canal Zone, and the west coast of Africa, whose famous "jungle fever" has prevented white men from getting a foothold upon it for fifteen hundred years. Since the young mosquitoes, in the form of wrigglers, or larvæ, cannot grow except in still water, draining the pools kills them; and, as they must come to the surface of the water to breathe, pouring crude petroleum over the water - the oil floating on the surface and making a film - chokes them.

The common garden mosquito, while not dangerous, is decidedly a nuisance and can be exterminated in the same way - by draining the swamps and pools, or by flooding them with crude petroleum, - or by draining swamps or pools into fresh-water ponds and then putting minnows or other fish into these ponds. There is no reason why any community calling itself civilized should submit to be tormented by mosquitoes if it will spend the few hundred, or the thousand, dollars necessary to wipe them out. It is prophesied that the use of quinine will soon become as rare as it is now common, because malaria will be wiped out by the prevention of the mosquito.

Disinfectants. So far we have been considering how to attack the germs after they have got into our bodies, or to prevent them from spreading from one patient to another; but there is still another way in which they may be attacked, and that is by killing, or poisoning them, outside the body. This process is generally known as disinfection, and is carried out either by baking, boiling, or steaming, or by the use of strongly poisonous fluids or gases, known as disinfectants.

While fortunately none of these disease germs can breed, or reproduce their kind, outside the human body, and while comparatively few of them live very long outside the human body, they may, if mixed with food or caught upon clothing, hangings, walls, or floors, remain in a sort of torpid, but still infectious, condition for weeks or even months. Consequently, it has become the custom to take all the bedding, clothing, carpets, curtains, etc., that have touched a patient suffering from a contagious disease, or have been in the room with him, and also any books that he may have handled, any pens or pencils that he may have used, and either destroy them, or bake, boil, or fumigate them with some strong germicidal, or disinfectant, vapor.

This is usually done by closing up tightly the sick-room, putting into it all clothing, bedding, pictures, books, hangings, and other articles used during the illness (except wash-goods, which, of course, can be sterilized by thorough boiling; and dishes and table utensils, which also can be scalded and boiled); draping the carpet over chairs so as to expose it on all sides, opening closets and drawers, and then filling the room full of some strong germ-destroying fumes.

One of the best disinfectants, and the one now most commonly used by boards of health for this purpose, is formaldehyde - a pungent, irritating gas, which is an exceedingly powerful germ-destroyer. This, for convenience in handling is usually dissolved, or forced into water, which takes up about half its bulk; and the solution is then known as formalin.

When formalin is poured into an open dish, it rapidly evaporates, or gives up its gas; and, if it be gently heated, this will be thrown off in such quantities as to completely fill the room and penetrate every crevice of it, and every fold of the clothing or hangings. One pound, or pint, of formalin will furnish vapor enough to disinfect a room eight feet square and eight feet high, so the amount for a given room can thus be calculated. The formalin vapor will attack germs much more vigorously and certainly if it be mixed with water vapor, or steam; so it is usually best either to boil a large kettle of water in the room for half an hour or more, so as to fill the air with steam, before putting in the formalin, or to use a combination evaporator with a lamp underneath it, which will give off both formalin and steam. This, if lighted and placed on a dish in the centre of a wash-tub or a large dishpan, with two or three inches of water in the bottom of it, can be put into the room and left burning until it goes out of its own accord.

Another very good method is to take a pan, or basin, with the required amount of formalin (not more than an inch or two inches deep) in the bottom of it, get everything ready with doors and windows fastened tight and strips of paper pasted across the cracks, pour quickly over the formalin some permanganate of potash (about a quarter of a pound to each pound of formalin), and then bolt for the door as quickly as possible to avoid suffocation. The resulting boiling up, or effervescence, will throw off quantities of formaldehyde gas so quickly as to drive it into every cranny and completely through clothing, bedding, etc. The room should be left closed up tightly for from twelve to thirty-six hours, when it can be opened - only be careful how you go into it, first sniffing two or three times to be sure that all the gas has leaked out, or holding your breath till you can get the windows open; and in a few hours the room will be ready for use again.

Another older and much less expensive disinfectant for this purpose is common sulphur. From one to three pounds of this, according to the size of the room, is burned by a specially prepared lamp in a pan placed in the centre of a dishpan of water, and the vapor thus made is a very powerful disinfectant. This, however, is a very poisonous and suffocating gas (as you will remember if you have ever strangled on the fumes of an old-fashioned sulphur match) and, compared with formalin, is nearly five times as poisonous to human beings, or animals, and not half so much so to the germs. Where formalin cannot be secured, sulphur is very effective; but its only merit compared with formalin is that it is cheaper, and more destructive to animal parasites and vermin such as bugs, cockroaches, mice, rats, etc., when these happen to be present. Formalin has the additional advantage of not tarnishing metal surfaces, as sulphur does.

Houghton Mifflin Company
Copyright, 1911, By Woods Hutchinson
All Rights Reserved
Tenth Impression

About the Author

Woods Hutchinson (1862-1930) was an American physician, born at Selby, Yorkshire, England. He graduated from Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1880 and received his medical degree from the University of Michigan four years later. He worked as a professor of anatomy at the State University of Iowa and then became a professor of comparative pathology at the University of Buffalo.