394 
NEWS AND 8UNIVRIES. 
would supply all the wool we require, and, in addition to that 
from the sheep which the cur dogs kindly spare to us, would leave 
a good deal to sell abroad. What does the cur dog cost ? Forty 
million sheep would produce $50,000,000 worth of wool and 
$50,000,000 worth of lambs. The cur dog, then, costs us in this 
way alone, $100,000,000 yearly, besides his food and the fowls 
and eggs he destroys, and the invaluble lives which are lost by 
reason of his bite and the dreadful hydrophobia. We laugh to 
scorn the ancient people who sacrificed to the neither harmless 
nor necessary cat, but we ourselves worship the savage, unrelent¬ 
ing dog and sacrifice our invaluable sheep to its bloodthirstiness. 
Disinfectants. —All the at present known agents of disin¬ 
fection can be classed in three categories according to the nature 
of their action, viz.: the physical, physiological and chemical dis¬ 
infectants. 
As purely physical disinfectants rank dry heat and hot vapors. 
Both are powerful agents, but labor under the disadvantage of 
having but a limited applicability as to the area involved. 
The physiological method is based on the supposition that the 
majority of infecting agencies are living organisms, and intends 
their destruction by drugs which prove poisonous to them with¬ 
out, in the quantity exhibited, injuring the human organism. 
The chief representatives of this group are the corrosive sublimate 
and the products of dry distillation, as carbolic acid. The subli¬ 
mate is unfit for any extensive use on account of its powerfully 
poisonous action even in small quantities on man and animals 
whilst the carbolic products are not sufficiently energetic in their 
action. 
The third group is formed by chlorine, bromine and sulphurous 
acid and owes its effects to a chemical decomposition of complex 
compounds. Bromine, especially in its vaporous form, has 
proved the most efficient of the three, especially for the disin¬ 
fection of rooms and houses. It can be employed as a pure 
vapor, or mixed with air or steam. As a simple purifier of air in 
crowded apartments, ships, hospitals and barracks, bromine is the 
most eligible agent.— Therapeutic Gazette. 
