MONDAY, 8.30 A.M.

Hokitika Guardian, 20 October 1917, Page 1

MONDAY, 8.30 A.M.

Some Reflections on a Boiling Copper. “The copper’s boiling” —this is the common phrase of early Monday, the housewife s call to the weekly task. Let us follow it with a question that is not so simple as it sounds : “What is it boiling for?” Most people would answer, “Why, to boil the dirt out of the clothes, of course.” Quite so, but for health 3 sake something more than dirt has to be done away with in the household washing, namely, the seeds of infectious disease. Infection may he communicated to a whole city (and beyond it) from one single patient, of which the smallpox epidemic is a case in point. It is due to tiny organisms, hardly visible through a microscope but intensely alive, thrown off in the course of the disease. These float in the air or dust and drift to clothes and house linen as naturally as steel draws to a magnet; we call them “ Germs, or seeds of disease, because just as an ordinary seed grows to a plant, so a disease germ on a human body breeds disease; the only protection against germs is to destroy them. The question is: Will boiling water and common soap do it? Not always; some disease germs may thrive, or even breed, in both. So we must use a cleanser that will not only clean clothes and house linen thoroughly, but also kill all disease germs that have lodged in them. Fortunately for us, manufacture and science have combined to meet this want with Lifebuoy Soap. By using Lifebuoy Soap in the laundry the germs of infectious diseases are caught and killed wholesale, because Lifebuoy Soap is both a perfect laundry cleanser' and a strong disinfectant as well, Sind when the household clothing and linen are washed with it, disease germs find destruction instead of a refuge. Our crowded population doubles the risk of infection, Litebuoy Soap reduces it; but Lifebuoy Soap must be so used as to cover both cleansing and disinfection ; Lifebuoy Soap for the bath, Lifebuoy Soap for floors and walls, Lifebuoy Soap for kitchen and scullery, «and when the copper* boils on Monday morning, then let it be especially and always Lifebuoy Soap for the days washing.