e the offensive and deleterious
gases are neutralized by chemical action.

Fumigation in the usual way is only the substitution of one odour for
another. In using the above, or any other disinfectant, let it never
be forgotten that _fresh air_, and plenty of it, is cheaper and more
effective than any other material.

1772. Disinfecting Fumigation.

Common salt, three ounces; black manganese, oil of vitriol, of each
one ounce; water two ounces; carried in a cup through the apartments
of the sick; or the apartments intended to be fumigated, where
sickness has been, may be shut up for an hour or two, and then opened.

1773. Coffee a Disinfectant.

Numerous experiments with roasted coffee prove that it is the most
powerful means, not only of rendering animal and vegetable effluvia
innocuous, but of actually destroying them. A room in which meat in an
advanced degree of decomposition had been kept for some time, was
instantly deprived of all smell on an open coffee-roaster being
carried through it, containing a pound of coffee newly roasted. In
another room, exposed to the effluvium occasioned by the clearing out
of the dung-pit, so that sulphuretted hydrogen and ammonia in great
quantities could be chemically detected, the stench was completely
removed in half a minute, on the employment of three ounces of
fresh-roasted coffee, whilst the other parts of the house were
permanently cleared of the same smell by being simply traversed with
the coffee-roaster, although the cleansing of the dung-pit continued
for several hours after.

The best mode of using the coffee as a disinfectant is to dry the raw
bean, pound it in a mortar, and then roast the powder on a moderately
heated iron plate, until it assumes a dark brown tint, when it is fit
for use. Then sprinkle it in sinks or cess-pools, or lay it on a plate
in the room which you wish to have purified. Coffee acid or coffee oil
acts more readily in minute quantities.

1774. Charcoal as a Disinfectant.

The great efficacy of wood and animal charcoal in absorbing effluvia,
and the greater number of gases and vapours, has long been known.
Charcoal powder has also, during many centuries, been advantageously
employed as a filter for putrid water, the object in view being to
deprive the water of numerous organic impurities diffused through it,
which exert injurious effects on the animal economy. Char