Volume 3

Modern buildings : their planning, construction and equipment / by G.A.T. Middleton ... assisted by a specially selected staff of contributors.

  • Middleton, G. A. T. (George Alexander Thomas)
Date:
[1905]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Modern buildings : their planning, construction and equipment / by G.A.T. Middleton ... assisted by a specially selected staff of contributors. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    51/230 (page 37)
    Disinfecting Stations to the Wandsworth Borough Council at Tooting, shown in Fig. 20, and designed by Mr. H. J. Marten, A.M.Inst.C.E., is an example of the sort of thing, although the washhouse is not here so complete in its detail as it would be in the case of a hospital. A borough installation of this sort is primarily intended for disinfection, and washing is comparatively rarely necessary. Into such a building are taken all the clothes, bed hangings, and everything else of a portable nature, other than actual furniture, from the rooms in which a case of infectious disease has occurred. The goods are brought in closed vans, entering what is here known as the infected van-shed, containing an office for record. The van is here emptied, and the goods are passed into the infected chamber, whence they are transferred either to the steam disinfectors or to the formalin chamber according to their nature, all goods which will not be damaged by steam being steam treated. After remaining in these chambers for a sufficient period of time, the farther door is opened and the goods are taken out into the disinfected chamber. 37 and, as a rule, passed direct to the van in which they are taken home, though in some cases they have to go first through the washhouse and the steam-drying or airing chamber. Only rough washing is attempted, as there is no obligation upon the borough council to properly get up linen, etc., and as a result there are no ironing or sorting rooms. It will be seen that the attendants on the two sides do not come into contact with one another, and that those who manage the infected clothing have to pass through a bathroom and to change their clothes on their way in and out. This bathroom arrangement is also found in infec- tious diseases hospitals at the patients’ exit, which generally contains waiting-rooms for the patients’ friends on the outer side. Each patient is taken in turn to a dressing-room, undressed, then given a medicated bath to secure thorough disinfection, and afterwards carried, as a rule wrapped in blankets, across an open passage to another dressing-room, where the ordinary clothes brought by the friends are put on. .j