86 Dr. Ure on Disinfection. 



to be Deprived of its unpleasant smell and unwholesome 

 effluvia. 



In 1796, Dr. Carmichael Smith applied the fumes of nitric 

 acid, disengaged from nitre by sulphuric acid, to the disin- 

 fection of a ship's hospital, for which he received a consider- 

 able parliamentary reward. 



Since that time the progress of chemical research has made 

 us more fully acquainted with the intense affinity which exists 

 between chlorine and all hydrogenated compounds, and with 

 the resulting anti-putrescent quality of chloride of lime. 

 Hence chlorine has naturally come to be regarded as the most 

 energetic antiloimic agent. In this respect, likewise, the merit 

 of its introduction belongs to M. Guyton, who recommended 

 medical men, nurses, and other attendants on contagious dis- 

 ease, to carry about with them phials containing manganese 

 and muriatic acid, and to open the glass stopper from time 

 to time in situations replete with infectious effluvia, in order 

 that the chlorine exhalations might decompose them, and pre- 

 serve a healthy atmosphere for respiration. In the sequel of 

 the present paper, facts will be adduced apparently proving 

 the efficacy of this antidote to the contagion of cholera. 



As gaseous chlorine in the state in which it is evolved from 

 muriatic acid and manganese, has been thought to be too con- 

 centrated for diffusing in apartments occupied by the sick, 

 recourse has been had in a great variety of cases to the exha- 

 lations that spontaneously rise from chloride of lime exposed 

 in an extensive surface, either in its pulverulent form or dis- 

 solved in water. It is true, indeed, that under both of these 

 forms the chloride exhales its peculiar odour, but it gives out 

 no appreciable or operative portion of gas, and instead of 

 losing, it gains weight. I have suspended a piece of moist 

 litmus paper within three inches of good chloride of lime, in a 

 stoppered phial for upwards of an hour, without its being 

 blanched ; nay, the paper retained much of its colour at the 

 end of twenty-four hours. As the paper would have become 

 white in a few minutes by the admission to the phial of one- 

 tenth of a cubic inch of chlorine gas, it is obvious that even 

 that minute volume was not disengaged from the chloride, 

 which amounted to nearly 500 grains. But by the agency of 



