The disinfectant question : review of a book by Dr. R. Angus Smith, entitled Disinfectants and disinfection.

Date:
1869
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The disinfectant question : review of a book by Dr. R. Angus Smith, entitled Disinfectants and disinfection. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Powder gave a distillate so very alkaline, from am¬ monia set free, that acid was added at once, otherwise the permanganate could not have been $ried; ” but thisjias been suppressed in the reprint*. The latter mention of permanganate does not refer to the above trial of Condy’s Fluid, but to the use of this substance as the agent by means of which the results of the experiments were Judged of. It was made by Dr. Smith, and very properly so, the supreme cri¬ terion of the efficacy of all other substances. It might have occurred to him, we think, that the body which was so well suited, in its character of sovereign arbiter, for declaring the shortcomings of other disinfectants, was itself, on account of that very circumstance, the most powerful disinfectant; for its efficacy in the former capacity depends on its possessing exactly the same potency which would render it superior to all as a disinfecting agent,—namely, that derived from the active oxygen which it contains. In the deodorizing experiments summarized in the three tables above alluded to, the results were, or course, judged of only by the sense of smell. But with .carbolic acid and other such strong-smelling substances, it is utterly impossible to determine whether the effect produced be not that of merelj'1 masking a, disagreeable odour; whereas, with non- odorous disinfecting agents, such, for instance, as Condy’s Fluid, no difficulty of this kind can arise. A simple experiment which has been several times mentioned of .late in the French medical journals, shows how deceptive are the pretended deodorizing powers of carbolic acid. Foul bilge-water, after treat¬ ment with that substance till the stench was well masked, was found to' blacken silver plunged into- the mixture quite as rapidly as the bilge-water which had received no carbolic acid, thus clearly proving that free sulphuretted hydrogen was still present, notwith¬ standing that its odour had been disguised by the smell proper to the so-called deodorizer. Since the time when Pasteur first enunciated his infusorial theory of fermentation and putrefaction, it has become the fashion with many persons, and with none more so than those wlh>I\ave an interest in popu¬ larizing the tar acids as disinfectants, to produce him