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Articles, including wearing apparel, carpets, hangings, bed
clothes, and mattresses, which admit of such treatment will be
disinfected at the Corporation Station free of charge, on application
being made to the Medical Officer of Health. Articles which
admit of washing with boiling water may be so washed. Other
articles, as well as the floor, walls, and ceiling, should be thoroughly
cleaned down with a disinfectant.
Having once got the rooms quite clean, it becomes easy,
though necessary, to keep them so. In order to effect this, the
floors and skirtings of rooms used by consumptive persons should
be thoroughly cleansed with soap and water at least once a week,
and at all times the rooms should be kept free from dust. It is
always desirable in dusting a room to moisten the floor with tea
leaves or otherwise, and to use a damp duster to other parts of
the room. In this way one makes sure of not scattering infectious
dust in the air of the room. This is especially necessary
in a room occupied by a consumptive, whose lungs are, moreover,
likely to be injured by the dust left in the room.
12. The walls ought to be rubbed down with dough every
three months and the dough burnt.
13. The most essential thing in preventing the spread of
this disease, and in aiding the recovery of the consumptive person,
is extreme cleanliness in his person and in the living and sleeping
rooms used by him, with special attention to the points mentioned
in this paper.
Harold Coates, M.D.,
Medical Officer of Health.
Municipal Offices, Highgate, N.