Concerning Charcoal.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 2 October 1914, Page 2

Concerning Charcoal.

ONE OP THE MOST USEFUL HOUSEHOLD COMMODITIES.

How many housewives look upon charcoal as a valuable necessity in the home ? Few. Yet its uses are many. To begin withy it is the best and cheapest disinfectant and. deodoriser—in other words—charcoal is the best knoWn disease-catching-preventer and smell-ender.

The smell of cabbage water is not nice. A lump of charcoal in the saucepan prevents all odour. You may be afraid ?hat the joint, or a piece of fish may go bad. Simply lay pieces of charcoal on them, and they will keep perfectly fresh. If. say, the fish has manifestly "gone," cook it just the same, but place in the fish saucepan two or three pieces of charcoal. The fish will be as good as if hut just caught.

A wire gauze or muslin bag, filled with charcoal, and hung in the larder, will keep that important place perfectly sweet. A wardrobe which smells of clothes, and makes a bedroom study, can be made all right if two or three little bags of charcoal are hung from the -hooks. .] ugs or any other vessels which have a nasty smell—and nasty smells herald diseases —can at once be made sweet if rinsed with powdered charcoal and water.

Sinks, and the pipes leading away from them, would alwaj's be odourless if, now and again, they were swilled down .with water and a little powdered charcoal.

There is a slight disadvantage in using charcoal as a tool h-powder, it involves rinsing the mouth out two or three times, but if that trouble can be borne, then the use of charcoal will make the teeth gleaming white, the breath sweet, and bring to nought the ill effects of fermentation of little bits of food in the teeth crevices.

A piece of charcoal suspended in muslin in drinking water makes it quite safe to - drink. Expensive filters are but charcoal, after all.

In cases of burns, the application of powrlered charcoal soothes the pain and heals the .sore like magic.

Chronic sores which are unpleasant, if bandaged with cotton wool layered with charcoal, at once become all right.

"All odours end here" is charcoal's inflexible rule. '

Open drains and galleys—fruitful causes of fever—enn be made quite harmless, if a sort of sandwich of wire gauze and charcoal is fixed or laid over them. No smell, and no fear of catching anything.

The magical virtues of chnrcoal ar« greatly increased if it is made red hot before use and then cooled down. This can easily be done by getting an ordinary tin, making holes round the sides, fixing a wire handle, and then making one piece oi charcoal hot in the fire, and drop-" ping it in the tin with the rest.

Swing the tin to and fro, and the whole mass will soon be red hot.