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Difficulty in carrying out Disinfection in a Satisfactory Manner.
Mr. Battram, the Senior Sanitary Inspector of this District, who has
had considerable experience in the use of disinfectants in the houses of the
poor, says that the difficulties in carrying out disinfection in a satisfactory
manner are very great;
Because the friends of the patients sometimes objeet to have them removed
to the hospital, or the patients themselves often refuse to go there,
thereby preventing the disinfecting of the rooms from being carried out
until they are sufficiently recovered to be able to leave the house
with safety, which, perhaps, they are unable to do for ton days or more.
A case of epidemic disease frequently occurs in a room in which, four
or five other persons live and sleep; and it sometimes happens that before
the patient has recovered another person in the same room is taken ill
with the same disease. Under these circumstances it is impossible to
disinfect the room, or the bedding, as they ought to be done. In most
cases persons object to have their clothes removed, because they are so old
and dirty, and consequently they do not like to have them exposed. Besides,
it is in many cases impossible to obtain possession of the rooms for a sufficient
length of time so as to properly stop up the windows, fire-places, &c.,
in order to prevent the rapid escape of the fumes of the disinfecting gas
from the rooms, as the rooms can seldom be obtained for the purpose of using
disinfectants for more than an hour, as the occupants have no other room
to remain in during the operation. They are therefore compelled to
remain in the streets, which, during a cold and damp season, would perhaps
bo very injurious to such as are in a debilitated condition.
Mr. Battram has accordingly acted very cautiously in this matter.
Again, a sick person may be visited by friends or neighbours, and it sometimes
occurs that as many as six or seven persons are at the same time in a
room, in which a patient is suffering from an epidemic disease.
If a death take place in an Irish Roman Catholic family, a Wake is held
over the body, when, perhaps, twenty or more persons will be present in the
small room in which the patient died. This is no doubt a cause of extending
the disease, and carrying the contagion into other homes. Further, the
father, and perhaps some of the family, go out to work, and the children
mix with other children at play, the mother, perhaps, taking in washing and
mangling. Again, some of the rooms in which patients are suffering from
contagious disease are occupied by tailors, bag makers, &c., who have work
given them from shops or warehouses to do at home, and thus the germs of
the disease may be extensively spread. In order, therefore, to prevent the
diffusion of the germs of contagious diseases, when the patient cannot be
isolated, it is necessary to cause him to be removed under the advice of the
medical attendant to a hospital.
If the Board had vacant houses at their disposal in different parts of
the District, to which the healthy could be removed, much, in the way of
imiting the ravages of disease, might be done ; but in such a place as London,