COFFEE A DISINFECTANT.

Southland Times, Issue 1260, 3 June 1870, Page 3

COFFEE A DISINFECTANT.

. — —• " We (Illustrated Midland News) dare say very few persons are aware that; coffee is a valuable disinfectant. Experiments, however, have proved that it is the most powerful means, not only of rendering animal and vegetable effluvia innocuous, but of actually destroying them. A room in which meat in an advanced degree of decomposition had been kept for some time, was instantly deprived of all smell on an open coffee-roaster being carried through it, containing a pound of coffee newly roasted. In another room, exposed to the effluvium occasioned by the clearing out of a manure-pit, so that sulphuretted hydrogen and ammonia in great quantities could be chemically detected, the stench was completely removed in half a minute, on the employment of three ounces of fresh-roasted coffee, whilst the other parts of the house were permanently cleared of the same smell by being simply traversed with a coffee roaster, although the cleansing of the pit continued for several hours after. The best mode of using the coffee as a disinfectant is to dry the raw bean, pound I it in a mortar, and then roast the powder on a moderately heated iron plate, until it assumes a dark brown tint, when it is fit for use. Then sprinkle it in sinks or cesspools, or lay it on a plate in the room which you wish to have purified. Coffeeacid or coffee-oil acts more readily in minute quantities.