View report page

64
course some patients will be able to pay their quota to the full, and
if they can, they ought; others cannot pay the whole, and perhaps
only a small part of the expenses incurred in their maintenance.
Somebody must pay. And I, for one, do not consider any money
thus spent, would be an unfair charge on a Metropolitan rate,
considering that the public generally would benefit by the removal
of such cases from their midst.
2. That after the case is well, the rooms should be efficiently
disinfected. I say after the case is well, for that anything
approaching the efficient disinfection of a room can be carried out
whilst a patient is ill in bed, is to my mind absolutely impossible.
In order to purify the air of a room, an aerial disinfectant is
absolutely necessary. Chlorine and Sulphurous Acid are active
aerial disinfectants, but the irritation they produce, even when
present in the air in very small quantities, is so great, that their use,
whilst the patient is in bed, may do more harm than good. It will
be understood, therefore, that if a disinfectant does not get into
actual contact with a polluted air its value is nil. A saucerful of
"Condy," or of "Chloralum," therefore, stuck on the landing or in
the corner of a sick room, and in which so many put their trust, are,
as serial disinfectants about as absolutely valueless as the china
saucer itself is in which the fluids are exposed. To my mind an
occasional free current of air is the best of all disinfectants for
a room where a patient is ill and in bed. After a patient gets well,
no trouble should be spared in carrying out active disinfection by
means of Chlorine or Sulphurous Acid, taking care that the walls of
the room are entirely denuded of the layers of paper which very
often, in course of time, have accumulated to an almost inconceivable
extent. I should wish to add that insisting upon stripping the
walls in every instance, was not my suggestion, but that of your
late Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Ballard. And I would wish to
add, as the effect of a rule which does not seem to meet with
universal satisfaction, that nothing pleases me better than to find
that no further paper hangings are employed to replace those
we have compelled the owners to have removed from the walls
previous to limewhiting and the action of Sulphurous Acid. If we