Remarks on deodorization and disinfection, and on Dr. Sir William Burnett's disinfecting fluid, the solution of the chloride of zinc / by T. Stratton.

  • Stratton, T. (Thomas), 1816-1886.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on deodorization and disinfection, and on Dr. Sir William Burnett's disinfecting fluid, the solution of the chloride of zinc / by T. Stratton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    might be considered a proof that the fluid perfectly de- stroyed infection. To use the fluid in part of the hos- pital only, would not be sufficient, as air from non-fluid- ized wards might he admitted, or the nurses might be visiting these, and be there infected. In the past season I had not an opportunity of making a trial like the above, as, generally speaking, the physicians and nurses had already had fever. In the autumn of 1847, in the Quebec Marine and Emigrant Hospital, I had the fluid used (latterly) in se- venteen wards and sheds containing 317 patients, (being about a third of the whole number in the hospital,) of whom about two-thirds were ill of typhus, and the re- mainder of dysentery. When I began visiting them, these wards were the worst in the hospital for ventila- tion, &c.; half of them were in the stone building ; in other respects they were situated similarly to the other wards and sheds. I had the fluid used once a-day, in the way of waving and sprinkling, and I daily noted the num- ber of deaths in those wards, and compared this, and the number of inmates, with the total mortality and total sick of the hospital as published weekly in the newspa- pers. Thus, for the week ending 4th September, in the wards where the fluid was not used, there was one death in about every nine patients; and in the wards where the fluid was employed, there was one death in about every fourteen sick. On account of having to be occasionally abtent from Quebec for a day or two, I was unable to note daily for any great length of time continuously, the mortality in the fluidized wards; but I have no reason to doubt that while the fluid was used, there was a difference in the comparative mortality somewhat like what is stated above. The difference is one too great to have depended on accidental circumstances, and T do not sec to what it can be attributed, except to using the chloride of zinc solution. It was not till the middle of January that I compared the deaths in the fluidized wards with the to- tal mortality as published in the newspapers, when I was greatly delighted to find that my exertions had had