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feet square, the heat of which can be regulated, and into which sulphurous acid
vapour can be introduced; and of a closed iron truck or carriage, provided with
shelves, racks, and doors. Into the latter are collected the articles to be disinfected,
and in it they are conveyed to the chamber. The truck is run in and opened, the
door of the Chamber closed, and when the disinfection is completed, is with its disinfected
contents taken back to the place from whence the articles were brought, the
clothing, &c., not being removed until returned to the owner. The total cost of the
apparatus and its erection is about £65.
During the hottest weeks of the year, I obtained the sanction of the Sanitary
Committee to the watering of some of the lowest streets and courts of the parish
with a weak solution of Carbolic Acid. The power possessed by this cheap disinfectant
to arrest putrefaction was evidenced by the sweetening of the atmosphere,
which was remarkable wherever it was used. For the streets, the acid was put into
the watering carts, and the courts were watered by hand. Rose and Crown Court
was thus treated during the period of prevalence there of relapsing fever, while
Macdougal's Powder was used in the privies, and the court kept cleansed by one of
our own men. The use of Carbolic Acid in watering is highly spoken of in the
third report of the New York Board of Health; but there the yards and heaps of
refuse on poor premises were also regularly disinfected in a similar manner. At a
time when the mortality from diarrhœal affection was steadily rising, an immediate
check was thus placed upon it in the worst wards where this plan was adopted, while
it continued to rise in those where it was not adopted, or adopted inefficiently.
It is a preventive measure which there is every encouragement to extend in future
seasons.
During the hot weeks of the summer, complaints arose of the offensive smell on
Sundays, proceeding from the roadside and the gutter in the Essex Road, in consequence
of the refuse and foul matters left by the costermongers who occupied stalls
there up to late on Saturday night. On two occasions a man was hired to sweep up
the refuse and cart it away early on the Sunday morning, after which, some of
Macdougal's Powder was sprinkled along the gutter. There would be an advantage,
and it would conduce to public convenience if some arrangement could be made for
a similar proceeding being habitually carried out in the summer months, not in the
Essex Road only, but in other parts of the parish where costermongers' stalls are
permitted to stand on Saturday night. The duty might probably be included in
one or other of the cleansing contracts.
On making a personal visit to all the families in Rose and Crown Court, when relapsing
fever broke out there, I found so much real destitution, that I communicated
with the Board of Guardians. They showed every anxiety to assist in arresting its
spread by giving relief, and directed the district Surgeon, Mr, Turner, to order such
food as he thought necessary to endangered families.