Disinfectant

a substance or an agent relied upon to kill or render powerless the microbes and germs which produce diseases. The reader may consult the articles on BACTERIUM and DISEASE for some notion of the relation the former bear to the latter. A disinfectant is sometimes called a germicide. The best disinfectants or germ killers of all are sunlight and air. Most germs wither and die in bright light and pure air. Heat is a germ killer. Sufficient heat in any form-dry, boiling, steaming, or burning-kills microbes. Freezing kills many germs, but the typhoid bacillus lives for months in solid ice. Among chemical germ killers the best general agent is chloride of lime. It is not expensive. Three pounds of chloride to eight gallons of water makes a solution that kills all common germs. Common whitewash is excellent. Corrosive sublimate highly diluted in say 1,000 parts of water is a certain but unpleasant and even dangerous disinfectant. Carbolic acid, in the proportion of a fourth of a pound to a gallon of water, is efficient in most cases. Fumes of burning sulphur are exceedingly disagreeable. They spoil the appearance of furniture and are not regarded as efficient. Formaldehyde gas is the disinfecting agency used by health officers in fumigating rooms and houses to cleanse them from germs of contagious disease. See Drugs; Disease; Bacterium