CHEMICAL STERILIZATION AND DISINFECTION 95 



in the light shed by them many of our previously formed 

 ideas concerning the action of disinfecting agents have 

 been modified. 



The process of disinfection is not a catalytic one — i. e., 

 occurring simply as a result of the presence of the disin- 

 fecting body, which is not itself decomposed during its 

 process of destruction — but is, as said, a definite chemical 

 reaction occurring within more or less fixed limits; that is 

 to say, with a given amount of the disinfectant just so much 

 work, expressed in terms of destruction of bacteria can be 

 accomplished. 



Another point in favor of this view is the increased 

 energy of the reaction with elevation of temperature. Just 

 as in other chemical phenomena the intensity and 

 rapidity of the reaction become greater under the influence 

 of heat, so in the process of disinfection the combination 

 between the disinfectant and the organisms to be destroyed 

 is much more energetic at a temperature of 37°-39° C. 

 than it is at 12°-15° C. 



A number of important and novel suggestions with regard 

 to the modus operandi of disinfection were brought out 

 through the work of Kronig and Paul,^ who took up the 

 subject from its physico-chemical standpoint. The compre- 

 hensive nature of this elaborate investigation precludes 

 more than a brief mention of some of the conclusions reached, 

 and in order that these may be intelligible, certain beliefs 

 (working hypotheses) of the physical chemists should be 

 borne in mind. In 1887 Arrhenius proposed the theory 

 that when an electrolyte (a compound decomposable by an 

 electric current) is dissolved in water its molecules break 

 down, not simply into their component atoms, but into 



1 Zeitschrift filr Hygiene und Infektionskrankheiten, 1897, xxv, 1-112. 



