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79
The Council's scheme, in terms of a room, is as follows:—
(a) Preliminary.
(1) Intimation notice to owner and occupier that the room is infested with bugs.
(2) Special "verminous" card completed by Inspector and handed to Inspector
in charge of disinfection.
(3) Letter from Medical Officer of Health to owner, offering co-operation.
(4) Convenient day fixed by disinfecting Inspector and owner.
(b) Disinfestation.
First Day. Owner removes skirtings, architraves and other wood fixtures to
walls. Subjects these to heat from a blow-lamp, strips the walls, applying the blowlamp
flame to all holes and crevices.
The disinfecting staff:—
(1) Place all pictures in metal box.
(2) Place in bags all bedding and other loose articles likely to be infested and
suitable for steam disinfection.
(3) Partially seal room.
(4) Spray walls of room with weak disinfecting fluid, providing a moist
atmosphere and possibly disturbing bugs in the walls.
(5) Light sulphur candles—1 lb. for each 250 cubic feet.
(6) Finally seal room.
(7) Remove bedding and pictures to disinfecting station where the bedding is
treated by steam, and the pictures are disinfested by a sulphur bomb in the
metal box.
The bedding is not returned until the next day, if this is at all possible, and
the pictures are not returned until they have been stripped and re-backed.
Second Day. The disinfecting staff again visit the house, unseal the room, take
the bedsteads to pieces and carefully remove all eggs and dead bugs from the
interstices; examine and cleanse all chairs and other articles of furniture where
bugs or their eggs are likely to be found, and re-fix. The room is finally sprayed
with a suitable disinfectant which leaves a fresh smell about the place instead of
the characteristic buggy odour.
In the actual disinfecting process it is useful to bear in mind that the bug
takes up the most favourable position for attack and for this reason I attach the
greatest importance to the removal of infested bedding and pictures and to the
systematic cleansing of the bed. It is important also to have regard to where the