ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS ASSOCIATION 



43 



and had some correspondence with the 

 Department at Washington. He said 

 there were just two disinfectants — 

 sulphur and formaldehyde — and told 

 how the latter had been successfully used 

 in disinfecting a house with the windows 

 wide open; his theory being that to 

 secure the best results the air should 

 be freely admitted, the oxygen being 

 necessary to the proper action of the 



tion on this subject. I find that Prof. 

 Newman, of Kings College, London, 

 as well as Prof. Koch, the greatest Ger- 

 man bacteriologist, agree that formalde- 

 hyde is not a disinfectant of itself, but 

 that the gas-formaldehyde must be 

 united with oxygen in order to disin- 

 fect. The Department at Washington 

 claims that the gas is a disinfectant of 

 itself by its affinity to things nitro- 



Skcrbtary Jas. a. Stone. 



chemical. He advocated the McEvoy 

 theory. 



The question as to whether the bacilli 

 were in the beeswax was brought up. 



Mr. Dadant thought the only safe way 

 was to melt up all the combs and use 

 up all the honey. 



Mr. Johnson thought we should not 

 be satisfied with opinions of others, but 

 leave nothing undone to learn more on 

 this subject. He said: "The inspec- 

 tor of today should be an experimenter 

 all the time. You perhaps all know 

 that I have always condemned the for- 

 maldehyde treatment for disinfecting 

 when used in an air-tight compartment. 

 I want to give a little more .informa- 



genous. However, last summer there 

 were 3 cases of smallpox in our vicinity 

 in one family. The doctor "disinfected 

 that house in 5 days with formaldehyde 

 with the windows and doors open a 

 good share of the time,, and the family 

 ate and slept in the house during disin- 

 fecting. The children have gone to 

 school all fall and people visited them 

 and slept in the beds in which the pa- 

 tients were treated, no clothing nor bed- 

 ding being burned. And no spread of 

 the disease resulted. The disinfecting 

 was complete; while about 10 miles 

 north of us, where formaldehyde and 

 sulphur were used in tight rooms for 24 

 hours, the disease spread in an alarm- 



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