On disinfection by heat : with a description of a new disinfecting chamber / by James Adams, M.D.

  • James Maxwell Adams
Date:
1883
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On disinfection by heat : with a description of a new disinfecting chamber / by James Adams, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    [Excer]^)t from Vol. Y. of the Transactions of the Sanitary. Institute of Great Britain.] On '■^'Disinfection hy Heat, with Description of a New Disin^ feeling Chamber,'^ by James Adams, M.D., L.E.C.S.E., F.F.P.S.G. Paper read September 2Sth, 1883, at t/ie Con- gress of the Institute, held at Glasgow. To Dr. VV. Henry of Manchester is due the merit of con- ceiving and demonstrating by actual trials the fact that heat destroys or neutralises the morbific matter of certain communi- cable diseases. In 1832 (Phil. Mag., vols, x-xi) he published the results of experiments, showing that cow-pock matter be- comes totally inert after an exposui'e of some hours to a tempe- rature of 140° F., and that clothing designedly infected with scarlatina and typhus contagium was afterwards worn with no -bad results by individuals likely to be susceptible, such clothing having previously been confined for some hours in a temperature of 200° to 206° F. Since the time of Dr. Henry, various methods have been employed for practically utilising his richly suggestive concep- tion, but in some instances without observance of his precau- tions, of which more hereafter. Meanwhile, a short reference to the nature and properties of the matter that transmits con- tagious disease will aid my description of a new iJisinfectino- Chamber professing to have some important distinctive features! Of the constitution of morbid poisons we are as ignorant as of that of prussic acid or of strychnine, nor is it probable that the knowledge, if we possessed it, would throw any light on their mode of action, so far as relates to the essential morbific prin- ciple. We are well acquainted with their chemical composition without m any way understanding how they act so powerfully on the animal system ; but we know they are capable of being decomposed by weak chemical agents, and rendered inert by temperatures of about i?00° F., and therefore that their consti- tution IS not stable, and that they are held together by very feeble affinities. J J That contagion is connected with the diffusion of oganisms possessmg vitality may now be assumed as an estabhshed axiom. Ihis doctrine,known as the Germ Theory, is usually ascribed