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THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TEANSACTIONS. [October 14, 187U 
the sums also actually paid out for machinery, there re¬ 
mains Es. 51,631-15-2 as the actual current expenditure 
at Rung-bee for the year. There is included in this the 
cost of the manufacture, in buildings, superintendence, 
labour, wood, charcoal, etc., and also the cost of cutting 
and stripping bark, drying, packing and dispatching it. 
There is also included a very considerable miscellaneous 
expenditure, as on fibrous plants, in collecting seeds, 
orchids and ferns, and packing and dispatching them. 
All these calls on the cinchona plantation, though appa¬ 
rently trifling where labour is cheap, really cost a good 
deal, as they require the supervision of a European gar¬ 
dener. These considerations must not be overlooked, or 
the cost of the Government plantations may appear too 
high as compared with that of private planting. 
The plantation of the Darjeeling Cinchona Association 
at Pomong, which adjoins the Government Rungbee 
plantations, has been considerably extending its opera¬ 
tions, and by the end of this spring there may be 1000 
acres of C. succimbra on the Pomong plantation. The 
course taken by the directors of Pomong lends a strong- 
support to the belief that cinchona will prove economi¬ 
cally successful in Sikkim within a very limited time. 
DISINFECTION. * 
No. II. 
In practising disinfection it has been sought either 
directly to influence the state of the atmosphere sur¬ 
rounding us, or else to operate upon the solids and liquids 
with which we come into relation more or less closely in 
the course of daily life; and, if we would have definite 
ideas on the subject, the distinction between these two 
methods of operation must bo kept clearly in view. 
The direct disinfection of the general atmosphere of a 
town is a task too hopeless to be undertaken by man; as 
w-ill be manifest from the mere consideration of the vast¬ 
ness of the mass of air to be dealt with, and the com¬ 
parative minuteness of the materials wherewith to deal 
with it. Not by one-tenth per cent, can all the breath¬ 
ing of all the inhabitants of a town, and the burning of 
all the fires in it, alter either the percentage of carbonic 
acid, or of oxygen in the general atmosphere pervading 
the town. If, then, our means of influencing the at¬ 
mosphere are so limited that we cannot add to it so much 
as the one-tenth per cent, of any material, what chance 
should we have—even if w T e were to expend the entire 
national revenue on the undertaking—of so thoroughly 
dealing with the mass of the atmosphere pervading a 
town as to eliminate any impurity ? 
In the days of the cattle plague, those who were set 
in authority over us made an assault of this description 
on the atmosphere of the country. They swept the air 
of the fields -with towels dipped in carbolic acid, and 
borne aloft on the horns of the cattle, hoping thereby to 
rid the air of cattle-plague germs. As well might they 
have tried to alter the composition of the water of the 
Irish Sea. The first step in practical disinfection is the 
comprehension of the fact that, wdiether it be poisons or 
germs w r e fear in the out-door atmosphere, w r e cannot 
remove them from it by the employment of anything 
either to decompose them or to kill them. 
Leaving the streets and entering the houses, one thing 
at least is possible, and that is, to ventilate and secure 
that the air within the house is not much worse than 
the air outside. Obviously, too, the limited air of a room 
lies within the compass of the action of such quantities 
of chemicals as we are able to command. But whether 
it is economical to attempt the purification of the air of 
a room by acting upon it by chemicals, or whether the 
* Reprinted from the Lancet, Sept. 30, 1871. 
means which are in vogue are effectual, are other ques-- 
tions. The last we will now take up. 
We have before us an excellent little card (excellent- 
we say in the sense that it affords a graphic representa¬ 
tion of the more useful expedients) bearing on it the in¬ 
scription “ Disinfectants and how to use them,” by Ed¬ 
ward T. Wilson, M.B., F.R.C.P.; and among other 
directions are the following :— 
“ For an Unoccupied Room .—Pour two wineglassfuls of 
dilute sulphuric acid (oil of vitriol) over two ounces of 
chloride of lime in an earthenware saucer, placed high 
near the window. It bleaches and is apt to make white- 
limed walls sweat. Useful for cabs. 
“ For an Occupied Room .— Put a crystal or two of 
chlorate of potash into a saucer of muriatic acid (spirit 
of salt) placed high, as the gas is heavier than air.” 
We presume that the rooms are of ordinary dimen¬ 
sions ; say 14 feet square and 10 feet high, and for con¬ 
venience of calculation let us take the contents of a room 
4 metres square and 3 metres high. This gives 48 cubic- 
metres, or 48,000 litres capacity. Now from the 2. 
ounces of bleaching powder v/e should do well if we got 
5 litres of chlorine gas. Yv r e have, therefore 5 volumes of 
chlorine in 48,000 volumes of air, or about 1 volume of 
chlorine in 10,000 volumes of air; or, in percentage, 0-01. 
This is for the unoccupied room, but for the occupied room 
the proportion of chlorine (from the crystal or two) 
would be very small indeed.* Chlorine so highly diluted 
is not the energetic reagent that it is when pure. If 
there were traces of sulphuretted hydrogen in the at¬ 
mosphere of the room, they would co-exist for a long 
time with so weak a gaseous mixture of chlorine, and 
germs would probably bo untouched by it. In short, 
such a chlorinous atmosphere, though dreadfully dis¬ 
agreeable to human inhabitants, might be organically 
impure. 
The card from which -we have quoted falls foul of 
scents. “ Scents are useless,” says the card, after having 
recommended how we may make the sick-room stinking 
under pretext of purifying its atmosphere. Wiser far 
were it to make it fragrant with perfumes, which, if: 
they neither decomposed the organic poison nor killed 
the germs, would delight and not distress the patient. 
Dr. Wilson’s card, although recommending fumigation, 
does not omit to recommend ventilation and to enforce 
the necessity of it, and herein he has our most cordial 
assent. 
In fine, if the atmosphere of a room be foul, let it out 
which is the cheapest and wellnigh the only practicable, 
if not the only possible, method of improving it. The- 
proper sphere of disinfectants is the solids and liquids 
which harm us either by direct contact with our bodies 
or by their proximity to us and action on us through the 
atmosphere, the purity of which may to a great extent 
be preserved by suitable means. How this may be done 
will form the subject of another notice. 
*' Some notion of the quantity of chemical substance requi¬ 
site to effect a real disinfection of the atmosphere of a dwell¬ 
ing-room of ordinary dimensions may be gathered from a 
recent Oxford disinfection minute, which prescribes 4 oz. of 
sulphur to be burnt in every 100 cubic feet of air. Sulphur 
yields twice its weight of sulphurous acid, so that there would- 
be about 80 litres of sulphurous acid gas to 3000 litres of air,, 
equal to 2'6 vols. of gas in 100 vols. of air. The minute in¬ 
forms us that “ no disinfection of this kind is thorough if a 
man can live in the room whilst it is going on,” from which 
we see that it cannot be resorted to for the sake of the atmo¬ 
sphere in the room (which must be sent up the chimney or 
out of the window, and replaced by fresh air, before the room 
becomes habitable), but for the sake of the walls, and ceiling,, 
and clothes hung up on poles, etc. In short, it is a method 
of treating the solids. 
