Page 3 Advertisements Column 5

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 108, 22 April 1876, Page 3

PRECAUTIONS AGAINST THE SPREAD OP TYPHOID FEYA>x Drawn up by William Oglr. M.A*, JVI.D., Oxoil, F.R.C.P. Loud., Modi Oiil Officer of Health for the combined districts of East Herts ; and circulated by the Sanitary Authorities. nnYPHOID, enteric, or gastric lever are the names given to one and the same infections disease, this being a fever produced by exeremental poisoning and almost invariably accompanied by diarrhoea. Of all exeremental matter, the most poisonous is that which comes from persons themselves ill with the fever; and it is principally by means of their stools that the disease spreads from one person to another. The poison may be taken in by breathing the effluvia from these discharges, or from the privy, cesspool, or drains into which they have been emptied ; or by drinking water from wells into which they have soaked ; or by swallowing particles that have adhered to clothes, bedding or other objects, and thence been accidentally transferred to articles of food or cooking utensils. Destruction of the fever poison in the etoolc, the moment these leave the body, by means of disinfectants, and (inasmuch as the action of disinfectants is not thoroughly certain) the safe disposal of the stools themselves, are the means by which we should try to prevent the disease from spreading. Let all persons, therefore, who would keep themselves and their neighbours free from infection, observe strictly the following rules shnold the disease occur in their houses: — 1, Remove at once from the sickroom all carpets, curtains, and other objects likely to get fouled. 2, Keep every one whose presence is not absolutely necessary out of the sick room, and by means of open windows and open doors give the patient as much fresh air as possible. 3. Put a piece of waterproof sheeting under the bed clothes, in the middle of the bed, so as to prevent the bed from getting soiled. 4. Put a teaenpful of the following disinfecting fluid into a bed-pan or other vessel each time before the patient uses it, and add some more immediately after:—Soda water, a gallon ; sulphate of iron (i.e., copperas), a pound; carbolic acid (the common impure kind), half a pint. In preparing this fluid the iron should first be dissolved by stirring in boiling water, and the carbolic acid added when the iron is dissolved and

the fluid cool. Remember that carbolic acid is a poison; keep the mixture therefore in a safe place. The same fluid may be used with great advantage to disinfect any accumulation of filth, such as a dung-pit or cesspool. As a general rule two quarts will suffice to disinfect one cubic foot of foul matter. 5. Take care that the discharges are thoroughly mixed with the disinfecting fluid, and then carry them immediately into the garden or field, and bury them in a deep trench, previously dug for the purpose, as far as possible from any well or otfier water supply. On no account let them be thrown on to a refuse heap. If the house be in a town, and without a garden, so that the stools must of necessity be thrown down the closet, add a double allowance of the disinfectant, and take care that the emptying be done without splashing the seat, and that the closet be flushed until basin and pan are thoroughly clean. 6. Let bed and body linen, immediately it is taken off, be put into a tub of water, to which carbolic acid has been added, in the proportion of half a pint of acid to a bucket of water. Have the tub and fluid ready prepared and at hand before the linen is taken off. Let the linen soak in this for two hours, and and then let it be actually boiled in washing. On no account must the linen be sent to a laundress without thorough previous disinfection, nor without informing her of its character, so that she may not wash it with the linen of other persons. 7. Let the nurse observe the most scrupulous care to keep everything clean. Let her wear a dress of washing material, as this is more easily disinfected than wool. As her hands must almost unavoidably get soiled in helping the patient, let them wash them frequently in water to which some disinfecting fluid has been added, and let her take care that the water thus used, as w r ell as all other slops, be emptied carefully into the garden trench. 8. When the illness is over, the bed if soiled, should be burnt; or the tick or sacking cover may be disinfected by thorough boiling, and the flock or straw stuffing burnt. Should there be a disinfecting oven available,the stuffing of hair mattresses may be teased out and then disinfected by baking at a temperature of 250deg. P. Otherwise this also should be destroyed. 9. If fever be in your neighbourhood but not as yet in your house, take the following precautions to keep it out: —Drink no water that is open to the least suspicion, or, if yon can get no other, boil it before drinking. Use no closet or privy that is used by bouses in wbicb there is already fever. Give immediate notice to the Sanitary Inspector of any nuisance in your neigh bourhood, such as a stinking drain or gully, heaps of offensive refuse, and the like. Use all your influence influence o insist upon the proceeding precautions teing strictly carried out by your beinghbours whose houses are alrady infected.