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

Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    4/32 (page 4)
    lime, associated with about that proportion of magnesia which occurs in many natural lime-stones, and holding in combination, in the form of insoluble sulphite gf lime, a certain modicum of sulphurous acid, the whole being impregnated with a very moderate dose of carbolic acid.* Both of the ingredients on which its efficacy is said to depend, namely, carbolic and sul¬ phurous acids, have been universally classed by chemists among antiseptic or preserving substances, as distinguished from oxidizing or destructive disin¬ fectants. Dr. Smith does not demur to this description of them, nor does he contest the soundness of the principles on which the modus operands of antiseptics and disinfectants proper is usually explained. It is to be feared, however, that the position in which he stands to carbolic and sulphurous acids, by reason of his invention, has caused him to allow himself to be betrayed into disregarding the distinc¬ tion between those two classes of substances, and treating of them as if they were identical in their effects. We cannot help suspecting that it is under the influence of this circumstance that Dr. Smith writes—“ They are clearly one in principle. We cannot separate these two in taking a survey of the subject as it stands (p. 1).” Yet, the re¬ sult is, that common salt and chlorine are by him placed in the same category. Both, according to our author, are disinfectants—salt, which when applied, to tainted meat, preserves it from further rapid decom¬ position but shuts up undiminished the existing taint, forming a putrid pickle, as well as chlorine, which effectually frees meat from taint, but cannot, in the smallest degree, help to preserve or pickle it. Can it be doubted that, but for Dr. Smith’s prepossession in favour of antiseptics, so intelligent an observer in other respects would have seen the error and disad¬ vantage of classing together such substances P It is evident, therefore, that some degree of taint runs through the whole of his treatise, and that his state¬ ments respecting the comparative utility of antiseptic * This does not differ rery materially from the composition of “gas lime.” The chief difference is that the principal tar product in gas lime is naphthaline and not carbolic acid. But there is reason to think that both of these products possess much the same properties aa -uititepuc.:.