ON DEODORIZATION AND DISINFECTION. 
459 
and introduced on the point of a pen into the cavity of a tooth, is a 
good application in some cases of toothache. The action of the di- 
luted fluid on ulcers is twofold — it removes the foetor, and also it 
improves the action of the sore in some alterative manner. 
VI. — Of the Burnett Fluid , as compared with some other Agents 
employed or recommended for similar purposes. 
1. Burning sulphur in the air, and so producing sulphurous acid, 
has been employed for purifying the atmosphere, but the odour is 
unpleasant, and the vapour is sometimes irritant to the air-passages. 
2. Dr. Johnstone proposed, and Dr. Carmichael Smith obtained 
,s£5000 from parliament, for suggesting the employment of nitrous 
gas (made with nitrate of potass and sulphuric acid) ; but this gas 
is disagreeable to most persons, and in some diseases its inhalation 
is injurious. 
3. Producing chlorine gas with common salt, manganese, and 
sulphuric acid, is troublesome and disagreeable, and making it 
with oxymuriate of potass is the same. 
The use of the chloride of lime is attended with the inconve- 
nience of making white spots on floors, carpets, furniture, or any 
other surfaces to which it is applied ; it likewise changes colours, 
and is corrosive. The inhalation of chlorine gas is disagreeable to 
most persons, and in some chest diseases it is injurious, so that 
among the mixed cases in a large hospital its general employment 
is inadmissible. 
The diluted Burnett fluid is preferable to the above agents, as 
while it destroys odours, it is of itself odourless, and it does not 
injure the colour or texture of cloth ; on the contrary, it is largely 
used for the preservation from decay of cloth and wood. In her 
Majesty’s dock-yards, canvass and timber are immersed in it, and 
these articles are found to last much longer than others. 
VII. — Of the Burnett Fluid as compared with Ledoyens 
Disinfecting Fluid. 
As the Ledoven fluid is a solution of the nitrate of lead, it is, 
like the other preparations of lead, liable to produce some one or 
other of their long-known bad effects, such as cholic, palsy, pain in 
the course of the spine, giddiness, coma, apoplexy, constipation, 
indigestion, wasting of the muscles of the body generally, and per- 
manent decrepitude : likewise, employed in typhus, according to 
the Ledoyen method (by means of wet cloths over the person), it 
is apt to produce a sedative and depressing effect, which is exactly 
