When the household of our grandmothers was threatened with infection,
the common practice was to sprinkle brimstone on a hot shovel or on hot
coals on a shovel, and carry the burning result through the house. But
now this simple method of disinfecting has gone out of fashion without
any good and sufficient reason. The principal reason is neither good
nor sufficient, viz., that nobody can patent it and sell it in shilling
and half-crown bottles.
On September 18th last, M. d’Abbadie read a paper at the Academy of
Sciences on “Marsh Fevers,” and stated that in the dangerous regions
of African river mouths immunity from such-fevers is often secured by
sulphur fumigations on the naked body. Also that the Sicilian workers
in low ground sulphur mines suffer much less than the rest of the
surrounding population from intermittent fevers. M. Fouqué has shown
that Zephyria (on the volcanic island of Milo or Melos, the most
westerly of the Cyclades), which had a population of 40,000 when it
was the centre of sulphur-mining operations, became nearly depopulated
by marsh fever when the sulphur-mining was moved farther east, and
the emanations prevented by a mountain from reaching the town. Other
similar cases were stated.
It is well understood by chemists that bleaching agents are usually
good disinfectants; that which can so disturb an organic compound as
to destroy its color, is capable of either arresting or completing
the decompositions that produce vile odors and nourish the organic
germs or ferments which usual accompany, or, as some affirm, cause
them. Sulphurous acid is, next to hypochlorous acid, one of the most
effective bleaching agents within easy reach.
I should add that sulphurous acid is the gas that is _directly_ formed
by burning sulphur. By taking up another dose of oxygen it becomes
sulphuric acid, which, combined with water, is oil of vitriol. The
bleaching and disinfecting action of the sulphurous acid is connected
with its activity in appropriating the oxygen which is loosely held
or being given off by organic matter. Chlorine and hypochlorous
acid (which is still more effective than chlorine itself) act in the
opposite way, so do the permanganates, such as Condy’s fluid, etc. They
supply oxygen in the presence of water. It is curious that opposite
actions should produce like results. A disquisition on this and its
suggestions would carry me beyond the limits of a note.