did mischief, and were
therefore discontinued. This has been verified by reports from the seats
of the disease everywhere. In regard to other contagions I can speak,
not without knowledge, at least not without experience, for it was the
business and the duty of my military life, during a long course of
years, to see them practised in ships, barracks, hospitals, and
cantonements, and I can truly declare I never saw contagion in the
smallest degree arrested by them, and that disease never failed to
spread, and follow its course unobstructed, and unimpeded by their use.
In the well-conditioned houses of the affluent where ventilation and
cleanliness are matters of habit and domestic discipline, they may be a
harmless plaything during the prevalence of scarlet fever and such like
infections, or even do a little good by inspiring the attendants with
confidence, however false, as a preservative against contagion; but in
the confined dwellings of the poor they are positively mischievous,
because they cannot be used without shutting out the wholesome
atmospheric air, and substituting for it a factitious gas, which for
aught we know, or can know of the nature of the contagious vapour,
whether acid, alkaline, or anything else, may actually be adding to its
deleterious principle instead of neutralising it: but in thus striking
away a prop from the confidence of the poor, I thank God I can furnish
them with other preservatives and disinfectants, which I take it upon me
to say, they will find as simple and practicable as they are infallible.
For the first, the liberal use of cold water and observance of free
ventilation, with slaked lime to wash the walls, and quick lime when
they can get it, to purify their dung heaps and necessaries, are among
the best; but when actually infected, then heat is the only purificator
yet known of an infected dwelling. Let boiling water be plentifully used
to every part of the house and article of furniture to which it can be
made applicable. Let portable iron stoves, filled with ignited charcoal
only, be placed in the apartment closely shut, and the heat kept up for
a few hours to any safe degree of not less than 120 deg. Farenheit, and
let foul infected beds and mattresses be placed in a baker's oven heated
to the same,[21] and my life for it no infection can after that possibly
adhere to houses, clothes, or furniture. The living fountain of
infection from the patient himself, constantly giving out th