6 QUATERCENTENARY STUDIES IN PATHOLOGY 



addition of glycerine has since been found to be unnecessary, the 

 employment of the 40 per cent, formaldehyde solution being quite as 

 efficacious. 



Koch, in 1898, from a series of comparative experiments with different 

 methods of gaseous disinfection, concluded that the Lingner method was 

 superior to the other methods of gaseous disinfection. He found that, 

 after ij hours' exposure, Bacillus anthracis and Staphylococcus pyogenes 

 were killed ; that faeces exposed on a shelf was sterilised, but that faeces 

 in the pocket of a coat gave positive results. These satisfactory results, 

 coming, as they did, when plague was prevalent, led many sanitary 

 authorities on the continent, especially in Russia, to adopt it as a means 

 of disinfecting plague-infected houses. 



In this country, Lingner's apparatus is not yet well known, and rela- 

 tively few scientific tests have been made of its efficiency. Accordingly, 

 attracted by the continental reports of its value, Professor Hay, four years 

 ago, procured the apparatus for use in the work of the Public Health 

 Department of the city, and the immediate incitement to the present 

 inquiry was his desire to have it tested under conditions that would 

 reproduce, as nearly as possible, those under which the work of 

 disinfection of a room and its contents has to be carried out in 

 Aberdeen. The following series of experiments with the apparatus 

 were designed to ascertain not only (i) its power as a disinfector, and (2) 

 its powers of penetration, but also (3) to test how far these good results 

 were obtainable where no special precautions were taken to seal up 

 every aperture in a room, further than roughly stopping up the chimney, 

 as often happens in ordinary fumigation. 



Experiment i. 



The first experiment was carried out in an old working-class 

 dwelling, forming part of a three-storey tenement in the heart of the 

 city, and consisting of one principal room, with two small rooms or 

 sleeping closets opening off it. The large room measured 18 ft. by 11 ft. 

 by 8 ft., and had an open fireplace and two windows, both windows 

 being loose in their frames. Two panes of glass had been broken, and 

 were roughly covered wdth paper tacked to the frames. The entrance 

 door of the room fitted very loosely, there being a considerable space 



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