ON A FERMENTATIVE ACTION OF THE BLOOD. 203 
fectants in small-pox wards or rooms is to make such a stink 
that the place must be ventilated. For this reason I prefer 
those that have the most unbearable smell. First comes 
sulphurous acid, then chlorine, then the black carbolic acid 
—and I defy anyone to stand a combination of carbolic acid 
and small-pox smell without abundant ventilation. Condy's 
fluid is perfectly useless as a disinfectant of the atmosphere, 
though very good for bathing the varioles with. I used to 
carry a little bottle of iodine with me to smell at when there 
was any very bad case to examine closely. I don't think it 
was of much use, but it was more agreeable than confluent 
small-pox. 
The best way to disinfect clothes and bedding used by 
small-pox patients is to burn them. This is the safest plan. 
If this cannot be done, they should either be baked or boiled 
—it does not much matter which, so long as either is done 
effectually. I do not think any small-pox germ will survive 
a temperature of 212° for half an hour 
For disinfecting rooms, fumigation (with all apertures 
closed) with burning sulphur should be done first. The 
room must then be stripped of its paper, if papered; the floor 
well scrubbed, and washed over with solution of chloride of 
lime or of zinc; walls and ceiling thoroughly lime-washed; 
and then the doors and windows thrown open for a couple of 
days and nights, if possible .-—Medical Times and Gazette. 
ON A FERMENTATIVE ACTION OF THE BLOOD. 
By E. Tiegel. 
The author attempted in vain to separate the hepatic 
diastatic ferment by treating dried and pulverised livers with 
glycerin or with solutions of various salts. When dog's 
liver was rubbed up with solid sodium chloride and washed 
with saturated solution of salt, the latter portions of the 
filtrate were free from sugar, but showed a decided diastatic 
power when digested with starch-mucilage. 
All attempts to separate the ferment from this solution 
failed, as all precipitants seemed to destroy its activity. 
The hepatic appears to differ from the pancreatic ferment in 
being insoluble in glycerin. When blood-corpuscles are in 
process of destruction, the blood has a decided diastatic 
power, and converts both glycogen and starch into sugar, but 
it has no such action either when the corpuscles are perfectly 
intact or when they are completely destroyed. 
