INFECTION AND DISINFECTION. 775 



at the beginning of the present century. It was freely employed in 

 hospitals, both civil and military, in prisons, workhouses, etc., and 

 was supposed to be efficacious against fevers, cholera, and small-pox. 

 Whenever its characteristic odor could be perceived, danger of infec- 

 tion was no longer feared. Persons carried about with them small 

 flasks containing chemicals which generated this gas, and inhaled a 

 little when they considered themselves exposed to risk. It soon, how- 

 over, became evident that these precautions were useless ; but even 

 so recently as I860, during the war between Austria and Prussia, it 

 was thought sufficient to distribute saucers containing chloride of 

 lime throughout the military hospitals, while only feeble efforts were 

 made to insure cleanliness and other important sanitary requirements. 

 In order to act as a real disinfectant, chlorine must be employed in a 

 very different manner. The terrible mortality after surgical opera- 

 tions and severe injuries, a feature of which was that a large major- 

 ity of patients died with symptoms of blood-poisoning, showed the 

 futility of such attempts at disinfection. 



In spite, however, of many similar failures, deodorization has been 

 almost universally regarded as the main object to be accomplished, and 

 other chemical agents have been used in order to combat the gaseous 

 products of decomposition. This object could certainly be attained if 

 the sense of smell were to be the sole judge of success, and the practice 

 of deodorization led also to the discovery and use of many substances 

 which have the power to prevent or retard putrefaction, and were 

 therefore termed antiseptics, and regarded as equivalent to disinfect- 

 ants. The conclusion, however, was soon forced upon the minds of ex- 

 perimenters that the infective agencies of fevers, small-pox, etc., were 

 neither offensive gases nor the products of putrefaction, but something 

 of an entirely different character. When an infectious disease became 

 associated with the idea of a transportable material which increases 

 and multiplies in its new ground, the discovery was not far off that 

 organisms capable of reproduction are the real causes of the disease. 



Definite ideas now prevail as to what is meant by disinfection, and 

 as to the methods by which this object can be attained and the tests 

 whereby their efficacy may be proved. Any substance may be re- 

 garded as a true disinfectant which, when added to a quantity of fluid 

 swarming with bacteria, abolishes the reproductive power of these 

 organisms. If the bacteria are capable of producing disease, or the 

 poison of disease, a successful experiment has been made in the way 

 of disinfection. This fact explains the paucity of the real experiences 

 we possess of disinfection proper. Heat, exposure to air and sunlight, 

 and the use of chemical agencies are the means at our disposal ; it will 

 be sufficient to point out a few of the methods in which they may be 

 employed. 



A very high temperature will, of course, destroy all forms of organ- 

 ized matter, and if we could always isolate the germs of disease and 



