most important method of disinfection. Chloride of lime and
other disinfecting fluids will decompose the offensive and noxious
odours, but pure air will sweep the organisms of disease themselves
away. Fresh air kills the microbes of certain diseases, _e.g._,
consumption, and is hostile to all disease. The stools of typhoid
patients should be disinfected, and great care taken that no water or
other fluid is contaminated by them through imperfect sanitation, etc.
(_see_ Fever, Typhoid). Seeing that the seeds of disease are all around
us, the best method of warding off their attacks is to keep the body in
a state to resist their inroads by strict attention to diet, exercise
and ventilation. Let all be done also, by fires if necessary, to
thoroughly _dry_ the room and house. See that all the family breathe
fresh air by night as well as by day; have open windows where and when
possible.

Acetic acid is as powerful a disinfectant as carbolic acid, in
proportion to its strength, and has the advantage of being harmless,
unless in the glacial form.

In all cases of infectious disease these precautions are almost certain
to prevent its spread, with, in addition, the special ones given under
the head of the disease.

Inflammation, Deep-seated.--Often inflammation occurs in the centre of,
or beneath, a mass of muscle, as the hip or thigh. We refer not to the
formation of an ABSCESS (_see_), but to the violent, hot inflammatory
action that often _issues_ in an abscess. For this the treatment should
be strong moist heat applied to the back, where the _nerve roots_ of
the inflamed part lie, and _persistent_ cooling of the part which is
painful. The heat may be by bran poultice, fomentation, or hot-water
bag and moist flannel. The cold must not be ice, but only cold water
cloths frequently renewed.

It is curious to see how people are frightened at the only thing that
gives relief, and not at all at that which does the most damage. A
gentleman wrote us once that he had had eighteen blisters on, but was
afraid to apply a cold cloth. We wrote him that if he still lived after
eighteen fly blisters, he would surely not die under a cold cloth. They
will say they have tried so many things. We reply, that if they had
tried a million wrong things, and shrunk from the right one, they would
be only so much the worse.

If there is local swelling, and signs that an abscess is forming, then
treat as recommended for Abscess.

Inflammati