596 
ON VETERINARY HYGIENE. 
the moment put in practice, to ascertain, so far as we could within 
a short period of time, what properties these alleged disinfectants 
possessed when used in stables, and whether any and what 
amount of benefit was likely to accrue from their employment. It 
was suggested to us that we should make trial of the common oil 
of vitriol — sulphuric acid — in the stables, as a neutralizer or de- 
stroyer of the offensive odour. The prescribed method of using 
the vitriol was, that it should be diluted with nine parts of water, 
and that saw-dust thoroughly wetted with the mixture should be 
sprinkled over the flooring of the stables, those places being the 
most plentifully supplied which afforded any lodgment for the 
urine. This was done, and the result was more or less efferves- 
cence wherever the acidulated saw-dust came in contact with the 
horses’ urine, with evident extrication of gas, and of that ex- 
ceedingly offensive description that it became a question whether 
such gaseous emission was not likely to be even more obnoxious 
to the inmates than the urinous exhalation itself. What, however, 
rendered this discharge of gas most perceptible and unpleasant to 
us who were in the stable at the time was, the pouring of the acid 
and water mixture, without the saw-dust, over the flooring of the 
stable through a garden watering-pot. When thoroughly wetted 
in this manner, and the mixture had begun to soak into the 
soil between the crevices of the pavement of the stable, which 
had become super-saturated with urine — the deposit of years — 
the surfaces became everywhere covered with creamy efferves- 
cence, while the disengagement of offensive gas was so great that 
to hold our noses over the effervescing surfaces was, from the in- 
tolerable sour foetor arising, next to impossible. On the following 
day the same acid watering was repeated, and for two successive 
days afterwards, the effervescence on each day being manifestly 
less, and a vitriolic or sour odour becoming prevalent over the 
sickening gaseous discharge which the first watering occasioned. 
Since this the stables have remained without any farther dressing, 
and the result has been such a complete super-saturation with acid 
that the ammoniated and urinous odours have been altogether sup- 
pressed. The vitriol used was the brown — the sulphuric acid of 
commerce — which, at the manufacturers, is purchaseable at about 
a penny a pound. 
