182 GENERAL THERAPEUTICS FOR VETERINARIANS 



Preliminary Preparation. — A thorough cleaning is an indis- 

 pensable preliminary preparation for disinfection. This will 

 make the infectious material more accessible to the antiseptic, 

 so that a relatively simple and mild disinfectant will be sufficient, 

 or it may entirely remove the infection. Water and soap alone 

 are often sufficient for disinfection. The aseptic treatment of 

 wounds was based entirely upon a careful cleansing of the wound, 

 the instruments and the hands, and the exclusion of infection. 

 Infected rooms, walls and other objects may be disinfected by 

 thorough washing with warm water and soap. A preliminary 

 disinfection must, however, precede the cleaning when disease- 

 producing organisms may be scattered by the cleaning, or when 

 the dirt cannot be collected in such a manner as to exclude the 

 possibility of spreading the infection; in addition, when the clean- 

 ing is done without a preliminary disinfection those doing the 

 work are in danger of infection. In these exceptional cases the 

 work should be done in the following order: first, preliminary 

 disinfection; second, cleanmg; third, thorough final disinfection. 



Cost of Disinfection. — In every disinfection the question of 

 cost is an important consideration. In the interest of agriculture, 

 the veterinarian is obliged to adopt the cheapest possible method 

 of disinfection. For instance, the free use of iodoform, ichthargon, 

 glutol or protargol by the veterinarian in the treatment of wounds 

 must be regarded as a luxury. The use of silver nitrate as a dis- 

 infectant in outbreaks of disease is forbidden by its high cost. 

 Carbolic acid must also be regarded as a relatively expensive 

 disinfectant. A 5 per cent, solution of carbolic acid is ten times 

 as costly as the much more powerful 1 per cent, corrosive subfimate 

 solution and 3 per cent, creolin solution. Properly carried out, 

 chlorine and bromine disinfection is very expensive. The cheap- 

 est disinfectants, and therefore the easiest to obtain, are lime, 

 soda, potassium, soap and tar. Other cheap disinfectants are 

 corrosive sublimate, creolin, lysol, solveol, solutol, bacillol and 

 cresol-sulphuric acid. In the following table is given the present 

 average wholesale price per pound of the most frequently used 

 antiseptics or disinfectants: 



