ly
this last door pasted up on the outside. If the floor has settled away
from the base-board, the cracks thus made must be pasted up. In short,
the room must be made absolutely air-tight. The room should be left thus
closed for at least twenty-four hours, and since there is some danger
from fire, a proper provision should be made for the burning sulfur.
This can be done by placing an old milk pan (a most convenient object in
which to burn the sulfur) on a couple of bricks, which may be set inside
a wash tub with perhaps three or four inches of water in the tub. The
most convenient way of ignition is to moisten the sulfur with a little
alcohol which can be readily set on fire.

Since clothes of every sort are more effectually acted upon when moist,
they should be sprinkled with a hand atomizer just as the sulfur is
lighted, and this should always be done in the case of any stuffed
furniture or hangings. Anything that can be removed should be taken out
and sterilized by steam, since live steam is the only disinfecting agent
which will penetrate such things as mattresses, pillows, and rolled-up
bundles of every sort, and with these last even steam is not certain. It
is far safer to send a mattress to the cleaner to be steamed than to try
to sterilize such bulky objects at home. It requires about twenty-four
hours with the room tightly closed to generate enough gas so that the
bacteria which may have found their way onto the walls or floor or
ceiling or into the air of a room will be surely killed. After that time
the room can be opened and then the usual household cleansing processes
carried out as an additional safeguard. It is a wise measure in the case
of infectious diseases, even after a room has been fumigated with
sulfurous gas, to wipe off the woodwork and the walls, if their
construction allows it, with a solution of carbolic acid, since in this
way the germs which have accumulated on the woodwork will certainly be
killed.

_Formaldehyde disinfectant._

Formaldehyde is the other gas which is commonly used for disinfecting
the air of a room. It is most readily produced by buying solidified
formaldehyde and then decomposing it by the action of heat. Formaldehyde
candles, as they are called, may be purchased at almost any drug store,
and while special forms of generating stoves may be found in the open
market, an ordinary heating apparatus of almost any sort will answer the
purpose of decomposing the solid formald