12 QUATERCENTENARY STUDIES IN PATHOLOGY 



rooms infected by phthisis, the favourite method is washing the walls 

 with freshly made solution of bleaching powder (strength i per cent.). 

 In others the method is spraying of walls, floors, ceilings, furniture, etc., 

 with sufficiently strong solutions of formaldehyde, or carbolic acid, or 

 corrosive sublimate, or one of the many effective disinfectants now 

 available. In a room infected with the tubercle bacillus, it is absolutely 

 essential that all the dust should be sterilized ; otherwise the room 

 cannot be regarded as safe. And it is not enough that the objects in 

 the immediate vicinity of the patient should be dealt with ; it is equally 

 essential that the floors, walls, furniture, etc., should be treated with the 

 same scrupulous detail as if the room were to be prepared for an aseptic 

 surgical operation. But if this is to be done, obviously it requires 

 skilled and experienced officers to do it. 



Further, when a patient is treated at home, the clothing and the 

 room should be periodically disinfected. Works or workrooms where 

 phthisical patients are employed should be treated in the same way. In 

 no case should they be left to the chance and perfunctory methods of the 

 unskilled and uninformed. 



Are we not asking too much ? Is it necessary, in practice, to lay 

 such stress on infected rooms and infected workshops? The evidence 

 leaves us no alternative but to say that it is absolutely necessary. Case 

 after case has been known to result from sleeping in infected rooms and 

 infected bedding. Of the cumulative proof towards establishing the 

 practical infectivity of phthisis, no part is more striking than the clinical 

 and experimental evidences gathered from infected sick-rooms. 



Other Sections of the Act (51 and 53) confer special powers for 

 dealing with infected houses, or infected houses re-let without disinfection. 



Other Sections (50 and 56) enable the Local Authority to disinfect 

 public places and control the public movements of infectious persons. 

 For instance, no person suflering from any infectious disease ought 

 wilfully to expose himself without proper precautions against spreading 

 the disease in any street, public place, shop, inn, hotel, church, or any 

 place used in common by persons other than members of the family or 

 household to which the infected person belongs. And, as by Section 50, 

 it is an offence to expose infected matter in ashpits, etc., clearly the 

 Local Authority may, if they choose, prevent phthisical persons from 

 scattering their infected sputum in public places. The practice of 



(86) 



