A handbook on antiseptics / by Henry Drysdale Dakin ... and Edward Kellogg Dunham.

  • Henry Drysdale Dakin
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A handbook on antiseptics / by Henry Drysdale Dakin ... and Edward Kellogg Dunham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CLASSIFICATION OF ANTISEPTICS. — For various reasons it is quite impossible to formulate a perfectly logical classifica- tion of antiseptics. In the first place, almost every soluble substance, provided it can be obtained in sufficient concen- tration, is capable of exerting some antiseptic action, so that theoretically it would be necessary to classify most known organic and inorganic substances, and such an un- dertaking is obviously useless and unnecessary. For prac- tical considerations it is sufficient to limit ourselves to those substances which have found fairly extended use as antiseptics. In classifying these we may endeavor to di- vide them according to the nature of the substances them- selves or according to their mode of action. The latter method has much to commend it, but unfortunately we know but little of the intimate details of the act of disinfec- tion as carried out with even the simplest substances, such as phenol or hydrogen peroxide. Chemical antiseptics naturally fall into two main classes of compounds — inorganic substances as exemplified by bodies such as hydrogen peroxide, chlorine, and metallic salts, such as those of mercury and silver, on the one hand, and on the other organic, or carbon, compounds such as phenols, aromatic acids, dye-stuffs, such as malachite green, etc., etc. But in these two main groups of inorganic and organic antiseptics are found substances of widely different properties and above all showing enormous variations in sta- bility. This instability of some of the most widely used anti- septics is a point of fundamental importance, for upon a clear recognition of this fact will depend, to a considerable extent, success or failure in their practical use. This chemical insta- bility is of various kinds, as a few examples will serve to show. Hydrogen peroxide is a good example of an unstable in- organic disinfectant. The exact way in which it destroys microdrganisms is not clear but is undoubtedly connected with its oxidizing action. Now when hydrogen peroxide is
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