Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
Sept.,  1889. 
Disinfection  in  Medicine. 
483 
will  not  suffice,  although  the  chief  part  of  the  work  is  done  during 
the  first  hour.  Thus  the  following  numbers  show  the  results  of  a 
series  of  experiments  embracing  a  period  of  four  hours,  and  give  the 
number  of  cc.  of  Fehling  taken  by  5  cc.  of  a  1  per  cent,  solution  of 
extract  of  malt. 
Time   i  hour      1  hour      H  hour      2  hours      3  hours      4  hours 
Cc.  required....    10-8  11/5  12  12-5  13  13'5 
A  longer  time  than  four  hours  has  not,  in  my  experience,  been 
found  necessary. 
In  dealing  with  wort  make  a  5  per  cent,  by  volume  solution,  and 
proceed  as  above. — The  Chemist  and  Druggist,  June  29,  p.  873. 
THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  DISINFECTION  IN  MEDICINE.1 
By  Dr.  Carter. 
Dr.  Carter's  object  is  to  indicate  the  dawn  of  new  methods  of 
treatment  by  which  the  destruction  of  infection,  hitherto  only  prac- 
ticed outside  the  body,  is  to  be  transferred  to  the  tissues — a  proceed- 
ing which  he  fitly  calls  disinfection.  "As  an  indication  of  the  kind 
of  work  that  can  be  done  in  this  direction,  it  is  only  necessary  to 
allude  to  some  suggestive  experiments  by  Brieger,  who  found  that  the 
typhoid  bacillus,  although  it  grew  well  in  peptone,  appeared  to  form 
no  alkaloids  from  it.  .  .  When  he  cultivated  it  in  beef-tea,  how- 
ever, he  obtained  as  a  product  of  decomposition  an  exceedingly  small 
quantity  of  ptomaine,  which  among  other  effects,  caused,  when  in- 
jected into  guinea-pigs,  profuse  diarrhoea.  The  bacilli  were  not  killed 
by  the  peptone,  they  were  not  even  prevented  from  growing  and  in- 
creasing; but  they  were  rendered  powerless  for  evil.  Should  not  a 
single  fact  of  this  kind  afford  a  powerful  stimulus  to  renewed  study 
of  the  relations  of  diet  to  some  kinds  of  disease?" 
"How  new  and  how  strange  this  is  may  be  judged  by  the  following 
quotation  from  Dr.  Lauder  Brunton's  book  on  the  '  Disorders  of 
Digestion/  which  was  not  published  till  1886.  'One  author/  he  says, 
not  even  mentioning  his  name,  'has  gone  so  far  as  to  consider  that  the 
immunity  which  one  attack  of  an  infective  disease  confers  against  a 
subsequent  one  is  due  to  alteration  in  the  body,  not  by  bacteria  or 
other  low  organisms,  but  by  a  chemical  substance  which  they  produce, 
1  Liverpool  Medico- Chirurgical  Journal;  reprinted  from  The  Medical  Chronicle, 
June,  1889. 
