DIOXIDE OF HYDROGEN 57 



Sulphur Dioxide. Sulphur dioxide is used for hos- 

 pitals, apartments, and ships, and is especially well 

 suited to the destruction of rats and insects. It is 

 more efficient when there is considerable moisture in 

 the air. When conditions are suitable for disinfection, 

 anthrax bacilli in the vegetative condition are destroyed 

 in thirty minutes when there is 1 volume per cent, of 

 the gas in the given space. "Four pounds of sulphur 

 burned for each 1000 cubic feet will give an excess of 

 gas." Some water should be sprayed in the room or 

 an open vessel containing water should be there. It 

 has been suggested that the sulphur candles of com- 

 merce be burned, resting on a brick in a bucket of 

 water. 



Dioxide of Hydrogen. A 2 per cent, solution of the 

 pure substance will kill anthrax spores within three 

 hours. In 20 per cent, solution it kills vegetative 

 bacteria, pus cocci, and the like in a few minutes. Its 

 activity depends upon the liberation of free oxygen. 

 It should be kept tightly sealed, since it easily gives 

 up this gas. 



This substance has been widely used in the great 

 European war, in the treatment of gas bacillus infec- 

 tion, its beneficial effects being widely commented 

 upon and attributed to the liberation of oxygen in 

 the tissues with bactericidal effect. It seems to me 

 that this cannot be all the reason, as this gas is soon 

 utilized by the tissues. A much more probable explana- 

 tion is that the liberation of bubbles tears the tissues 

 into large webbed meshes and allows other disinfec- 

 tants free play or permits a penetration of atmospheric 

 oxygen inimical to the anaerobic germs. 



