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105
tenement of perhaps 2 rooms. The chief aims of
official disinfection are reliability and speed of work.
It will be convenient to describe here the present
method of house disinfection, before proceeding to
inquire into its efficiency. The room to be fumigated
is first roughly measured up and its cubic contents
approximately ascertained. All openings, such as the
fireplace, crevices round the window frames, ventilators,
etc., are then sealed up by pasting paper over
them. Any boxes, drawers, or other closed receptacles
in the room, are opened and their contents opened
spread out to allow the fumes to come into contact
therewith as freely as possible. The disinfectant used
is Sulphur Dioxide gas (S02), which is obtained by
the combustion of either cake sulphur, in the form of
"candles," or of Carbon Bisulphide (CS2). A few
years ago the latter was almost exclusively used, but
now the former. The tin containing the candle, or
the vessel containing the Carbon Bisulphide, is set in
a second vessel containing water, mainly as a precaution
against fire, but the water which is vaporised
by the heat of the burning sulphur assists in the process
of disinfection. As soon as the sulphur is
lighted, the door of the room is shut, locked, and the
cracks round the frame carefully closed up from the
outside by pasting on paper, not forgetting the keyhole.
The rule is to keep the room shut up for 24
hours, after which it is freely ventilated until the
sulphur fumes have entirely disappeared. The only