night, or when such articles cannot be instantly boiled.

Throw the soiled articles immediately into a tub of water, in which there has been dissolved an ounce of the permanganate salt to every three gallons of water. Boil the clothing as soon as it is removed from this colored solution.

Carbolic Acid for Clothing.-Carbolic acid, when used to disinfect clothing, should be of good quality, thoroughly mixed with its own quantity of strong vinegar, and next be dissolved in two hundred times its own quantity of water before the clothing is immersed in it. This mixture with vinegar insures such complete solution of the carbolic acid that the clothing will not be "burned" by undissolved drops of acid when disinfected in the carbolic water. This weak solution-1 part to 200-will not injure common clothing. But to destroy clothing as well as infection, instantly, use the acid diluted only 10 to 30 times its quantity of water. The disinfecting and antiseptic power of good carbolic acid is so great that 1 part to 50 or 100 parts of water is sufficient for ordinary purposes. For drains, sewers, foul heaps, stables, and privies, the cheap "dead oil" of coal tar, or the crude carbolic acid, answers every purpose when freely applied. Coal tar itself is available as a disinfectant to paint upon the walls of stables, privy vaults, and drains. By mixing with sawdust or dry lime, coal or crude acid may be used on foul grounds or heaps of refuse.

How to Fumigate Rooms.-To fumigate and cleanse the air of an apartment, there is no more simple way than to heat a common iron shovel quite hot, and pour vinegar slowly upon it. The steam arising from this process is pungent, and of a disinfectant character. Open windows and doors at the same time.

Another way is to fumigate with sulphurous acid, thus: Arrange to vacate the room for twelve hours. Close every window and aperture, and, upon an iron pipkin or kettle with legs, burn a few ounces of sulphur. Instantly after kindling it, every person must withdraw from the place, and the room must remain closed for the succeeding eight hours.

If any other kind of fumigation is resorted to, as that by chlorine, bromine, or nitrous acid, a sanitary officer or chemist should superintend the process. Fumigation should be resorted to in dwelling-houses only by official orders or permission, as the disinfecting gases are very poisonous.

To Disinfect Water-closets. To disinfect a water-closet or a quantity of earth that is contaminated by cholera excrement, or liable to be infected, use solution of carbolic acid and copperas, mixed, as follows: To every cubic foot of soil or filth give from one to three pints of the strong solution. To every privy and water-closet allow at the rate of one pint, to be poured in daily at evening, for every person on the premises. This practice should be kept up while cholera is in the country. This method of systematic dis

infection would be useful in every household; but when cholera is present in any city or country, such thorough application of this means of protection cannot be safely neglected in any city or place to which persons may come from towns where cholera is epidemic. The best sanitary chemists advise that the estimated quantity of these privy and sewer disinfectants required for each person daily, in the presence of cholera, should be half an ounce sulphate of iron, and half a dram or half a teaspoonful of carbolic acid.

To Disinfect Dead Bodies.-All chances of infection will be prevented and all effluvia destroyed from dead bodies by wrapping them in sheets saturated with a solution of carbolate of camphor.

Comparative Permanent Value of Different Disinfectants.—Owing to its cheapness, the impure sulphate of iron, ordinarily known as copperas, (green vitriol,) is the most available chemical disinfectant for sewage, outhouses, etc. The common mistake is in not using it in sufficient quantity. Its value does not rest, it must be remembered, upon theory only, but also upon experiment. In February, 1873, Albert Eckstein published an account of his attempts to disinfect an outhouse which was used daily by one hundred persons, and the results are so interesting that they are here transcribed :

1. Two pounds of sulphate of iron in solution. After from two to three hours all bad smell had disappeared, but in twelve hours all the influence of the disinfectant was lost.

2. Sulphate of copper, (blue vitriol,) in solution, the same.

3. Two pounds of sulphate of iron in crystals; its effect lasted two days.

4. Sulphate of copper, the same.

5. Sulphurous acid in solution rapidly lost its effect, and was exceedingly irritating to the respiratory organs.

6. Two pounds of impure carbolic acid filled the house for two days with such a disagreeable smell, that it was impossible to tell whether the original odor was destroyed or covered up.

7. Two pounds of sulphate of iron in a parchment sack exerted a disinfecting influence for full three days, and when the parchment sack was drawn up it contained only some dirty, odorless fluid.

8. Two pounds of the best chloride of calcium in the parchment sack dis. infected the outhouse for at least nine days.

In conclusion, to sum up the points.

1. It is useless to attempt to permanently disinfect the atmosphere, and, therefore, great care should be exercised to destroy, as far as possible, the poison-germs so soon as they leave the body.

2. Copperas is the most available disinfectant for ordinary purposes; in certain cases, (chiefly for water-closets,) chloride of calcium is very good.

3. Carbolic acid, on account of its odor, is very disagreeable; further, it is not so efficient as some other substances. For the purpose of killing diseasegerms, and for the purifying of cholera discharges, copperas in solution or powder is to be preferred.

Caution in Removing Foul Air from Wells.-It is well known that many accidents occur to persons going down into wells to clean them, owing to the noxious gas in such places. To remove the gas before descent is made in any well, a quantity of burned but unslaked lime should be thrown down. This, when it comes in contact with whatever water is below, sets free a great quantity of heat in the water and lime, which rushes upward, carrying all the deleterious gas with it, after which the descent may be made with perfect safety. The lime also absorbs carbonic acid in the well. Always lower a light before descending; if it is extinguished there is still danger of suffocation.

Precautions in Visiting Infected Rooms.—When the great philanthropist Howard was asked what precautions he used to preserve himself from infection in the prisons, hospitals, and dungeons which he visited, he responded with his pen as follows:

"I here answer once for all that, next to the free goodness and mercy of the Author of my being, temperance and cleanliness are my preservatives. "Trusting in Divine Providence, and believing myself in the way of duty, I visit the most noxious cells, and while thus employed I fear no evil. "I never enter a hospital or prison before breakfast; and "In an offensive room I seldom draw my breath deeply."

No better precautions than these need be given. The answer of Howard should be indelibly impressed on every memory.

Heat and Steam.-Heat has long been known as among the most efficient of disinfectants. And the use of steam, as a facile means of communicating it, against yellow fever especially, was effectually demonstrated as long ago as 1848. Since that time, in addition to the common use of steam for the disinfection of vessels, it has been extensively used for the disinfec tion of personal clothing and bedding, and to this end steam disinfecting chambers, abroad, at least, have long since ceased to be a novelty. The first one constructed in this country was in connection with the New York Quarantine hospitals, where it continues to be a prominent feature.

A New Disinfectant.-Dr. John Day, of Geelong, Australia, reccmmends for use in civil and military hospitals, and also for the purpose of destroying the poison germs of small-pox, scarlet fever, and other infecticus diseases, a disinfectant, ingeniously composed of one part of rectified oil of turpentine and seven parts of benzine, with the addition of five drops of oil of verbena to each ounce. Its purifying and disinfecting properties are due to

the power which is possessed by each of its ingredients of absorbing atmospheric oxygen, and converting it into peroxide of hydrogen-a highly-active oxidizing agent, and very similar in its nature to ozone. Articles of cloth. ing, furniture, wall paper, carpeting, books, newspapers, letters, etc., may be perfectly saturated with it without receiving the slightest injury; and when it has been once freely applied to any rough or porous surface, its action will be persistent for an almost indefinite period. This may, at any time, be readily shown by pouring a few drops of a solution of iodide of potassium over the material which has been disinfected, when the peroxide of hydrogen, which is being continually generated within it, will quickly liberate the iodine from its combination with the potassium, and give rise to dark brown stains.*

SUNLIGHT AND HEALTH.

Power of Sunlight.—Sunlight is one of the most powerful forces in nature, kindling the whole vegetable world into being, and making animal life possible by its extraordinary chemical agency.

Seclusion from Sunshine.-Seclusion from sunshine is one of the great misfortunes of our civilized life. The same cause which makes the potato vines white and sickly when grown in dark cellars, operates to produce the pale, sickly girls that are reared in our parlors. Expose either to the rays of the sun, and they begin to show color, health, and strength.

Philosophy of the Influence of Sunlight.-Recent discoveries seem to prove that there is conveyed to animals, by the direct action of the sun's rays, a subtle current of iron. It does not exist in light, or but very slightly, if at all, but it is a part of the sun's rays. Therefore, we must enjoy these rays if we would feel their full effect. This iron it is which is supposed to give color to plants and animals, and to impart strength and beauty. With strength and beauty come health and good spirits, and despondency and fear are banished.

Sunlight and Plants.—It is well known that no valuable plant can grow well without being visited by the direct rays of the sun; no plant can bear reed, no fruit can ripen without it. Any vine grown in the dark is white and strengthless. Grass, grain, and flowers do not thrive under the shadow of a

tree.

Sunlight and Domestic Animals.-It is well known that no valuable domestic animals can thrive without being visited often by the sunshine. The fish of the Mammoth Cave are white; their eyes are not opened, because they

* British Medical Journal.

have never felt the glorious light; they are weak and imperfect, a kind of idiots, if fish are liable to that wretchedness.

Swine which are shut under the farmers' barns, and where every thing is favorable except the lack of sunshine, do not thrive as well as those which have the ordinary run in the open air.

Cows and horses stalled continuously in dark stables become feeble and unhealthy, and become useless in less than half the time of those which run in the open air, or whose stalls permit them to enjoy the influence of the sunlight. The same is true of all other domestic animals.

Dr. Ellsworth, of Hartford, says: "Take a rabbit and shut him from the sunlight, and he will die of consumption in a few weeks. The tubercles will be just as perfectly formed in his lungs as in the human species, and the symptoms in every respect will be the same."

Sunlight and Human Life.-Sir James Wylie says that, "The cases of disease on the dark side of an extensive barrack at St. Petersburgh, have been uniformly, for many years, in the proportion of three to one to those on the side exposed to strong light."

Dr. Forbes Winslow in his volume entitled "Light, its Influence on Life and Health," uses the following language: "It may be enunciated as an indisputable fact, that all who live and pursue their calling in situations where the minimum of light is permitted to penetrate, suffer seriously in bodily and mental health. The total exclusion of the sunbeam induces the severer forms of chlorosis, green sickness, and other anæmic conditions depending upon an impoverished and disordered state of the blood. Under these circumstances the face assumes a death-like paleness, the membranes of the eyes become bloodless, and the skin shrunken and turned into a white, greasy, waxy color; also emaciation, muscular debility and degeneration, dropsical effusion, softening of the bones, general nervous excitability, morbid irritability of the heart, loss of appetite, tendency to syncope and hemorrhages, consumption, physical deformity, stunted growth, mental impairment, and premature old age. The offspring of those so unhappily trained are often deformed, weak, and puny, and are disposed to scrofulous affections."

Another Testimony.-" It is a well-established fact that, as the effect of isolation from the stimulus of light, the fibrine, albumen, and red bloodcells become diminished in quantity, and the serum or watery portion of the vital fluid augmented in volume, thus inducing a disease known to physicians and pathologists by the name of lukæmia, an affection in which white instead of red blood-cells are developed. This exclusion from the sun produces the sickly, flabby, pale, anæmaic condition of the face or exsanguined, ghost-like forms so often seen among those not exposed to air and light. The absence of these elements of health deteriorates by materially altering the physical