CHAPTER XI. 



DISINFECTANTS AND DISINFECTION. FOOD PRESERVATIVES. 



INSECTICIDES. 



The pharmacist should be well informed regarding disinfectants and 

 their uses in order that he may assist physicians and health officers in carry- 

 ing out sanitary rules and regulations in which disinfectants play so important 

 a part. The pharmacist should know how to disinfect sick rooms, private 

 homes and public buildings. He should in addition be informed regarding 

 the essentials in the construction of sanitary homes, shops and stores. He 

 should be able to give good advice regarding water supply, sewage disposal 

 and on preventive medicine generally. He should be well informed regard- 

 ing the preservation of foods, the use and abuse of food preservatives and on 

 food adulteration and should be prepared to test foods as well as drugs as to 

 quality and purity. He should be informed regarding the nature and use 

 of insecticides and pest exterminators generally. 



Disinfectant is synonymous with germicide and means any substance, 

 usually in the form of a liquid or gas, capable of destroying bacteria and 

 their spores, more particularly the pathogenic forms. A septic substance 

 is one contaminated or infected with pathogenic or otherwise objectionable 

 bacteria. An aseptic substance is one free from bacterial infection or con- 

 tamination, but not necessarily possessed of disinfecting or even preserving 

 power. More broadly speaking, disinfectant means any ponderable or im- 

 ponderable agent or substance, destructive to bacterial life and it is in this 

 sense that the term is here used. Preservatives may be defined as mild 

 disinfectants; that is, when used in larger amounts or stronger concentration, 

 preservatives become disinfectants. Furthermore, the term preservative 

 usually applies to substances added to foods for the purpose of preventing or 

 retarding microbic infection and microbic development. It is, however, also 

 applied to other substances. We speak, for example, of wood preservatives, 

 leather preservatives, fur preservatives, etc., meaning thereby substances 

 which will prevent certain decomposition or other destructive changes in 

 the articles named, due to a variety of organisms as mould, larvae, insects, 

 mites, etc. 



The chief purpose in disinfection is to check and prevent the spread of 

 communicable diseases, by destroying the primary causes thereof, namely, the 

 pathogenic bacteria or other disease producing organisms. The agents or 



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