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When the rooms and furniture have been disinfected in this way,
it is generally advisable to open * the roof of the house to admit sunlight
and air. For this purpose holes, not less than six feet by four feet,
should be made in the roof, care being taken that no beam runs across
the opening. Sometimes it may be necessary to remove the whole
roof.
Next day the house should be whitewashed †. For this purpose fresh
lime—preferably stone lime and not kankar lime—must be used. The
fresh lime should be added gradually to water placed in convenient
vessels, until a hot, caustic wash is obtained, and this should be applied
at once over walls, ceiling, floor and doors.
12. The disinfection of a house is always attended by danger, but
this may be minimised by suitable precautions.
(a) Disinfecting gangs should be inspected daily, and no one who
has any cut or abrasion of the skin should be allowed to go out with the
gang.
(6) Shoes should always be worn inside infected houses.
(c) Workmen should, if possible, have special clothing to wear
while disinfecting, and this should be taken off at night and the body
cleansed with water.
(d) Each workman should be warned of the danger of inhaling
dust and enjoined to avoid raising it, to wrap a fold of his puggri
round his mouth when entering a house, and to lay the dust by means
of the perchloride spray as soon as possible.
(e) The hands of workmen should be protected from the effects of
the carbolic solution and lime wash by the plentiful application of oil.
(f) Whenever they stop working, the workmen should wash then-
hands thoroughly outside the infected locality.
(g) No food or drink should ever be taken within an infected
place, and hookah-smoking in such a place should be prevented.
13. B. Clothing, etc.—The disinfection of clothing should be carried
out by means of moist heat, either in an apparatus specially constructed
for the purpose or in a boiler as described in paragraph 5. When a
boiler is used, care must be taken that each article is exposed throughout
for at least ten minutes to water at a temperature of 212° F.
Leather and other articles which would be damaged by exposure to
moist heat, must be immersed in a disinfecting solution, or thoroughly
scrubbed with 5 per cent. carbolic acid solution and soft soap.
* Note.—For detailed instructions see Sanitary Commissioner's letter printed in
G.O., No. 1005-P., dated 29th June 1899.
† Note.—Attention is invited to the following remarks of the Sanitary Commissioner
for Madras:—
" It seems to me that the correct place for lime-washing of houses is not as a
method of disinfection, but of improving the general sanitary condition of houses before
the arrival of an epidemic. Lime-washing has an effect upon organic impurities on walls
that is of value in decreasing the chances of a favourable nidus for microbes, but the
act of white-washing includes a general clean-up and airing of a house which is of
greater moment. When such action is taken, not with reference to a solitary house
here and there, but to a whole town, or large section of it, there can be no doubt of its
being possible to look for important sanitary results. Whilst upon this subject, there-
fore, I would advise your reminding Collectors of the power given under section 186
of the Madras District Municipalities Act. Provided that no farce is enacted—it being
frequent for inhabitants to attempt to satisfy an order by splattering a little whitewash
on the outside of a house—I believe the enforcement of the order in municipal towns
suffering from, or threatened with, plague, would be a most judicious measure."