The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1870-06-21
agricultural department.
CONDUCTED BY ALBERT CHAPMAN.


Mr.. Goodale, Secretary Of the Maine
State Board of Agriculture, in his report
for 1869, has chapter upon " Phenol, or
Carbolic Acid, which we have read with
unusual interest. He says no feature OF
the remarkable age in which we live is
more noticeable than the wonderful dis
coveries of science, and their appreciation
to useful ends. He quotes from lecture
delivered by DR.. +. G. Calvert, before
the "Society for the encouragement oil
National Industry" in France, in which
the doctor says carbolic acid exercises
a most powerful destructive action upon
the microscopic and primitive sources OF
life, and is, therefore, an antseptic and
dissinfectant much more active and much
more rational than those generally in
use"
Carbolic acid was used with marked
success in England, Belgium, and Hol-
land, during the prevalence Of cholera
and cattle plague. Mr.. w. Croaker
states that he has not met with a single
instance in which the plague has spread
on farm where the acid has been freely
used Dr. Ellis says, 81 have, in many
instances, allowed whole families to return
to cottages in which persons had died
from cholera, after having the cottages
we'll washed and cleaned with carboic
acid, and in no case were any persons at
tackled with the same disease
Prof. Chameleon stated, that out OF
1876 nurses employed upon choleral pa.
tients-where two thousand patients died
only one nurse died, but they were
washed over, and their clothes sprinkled
with carbolic acid.
1t has, also, wonderful efficacy in
most of the painful diseases to which
flesh is heir. But it is to its uses on the
farm that we intended to call the atten-
ton of the reader
Mr.. Goodale says it is safe to assert
that for lice, ticks, and other vermn ill.,
Testing domestic animals, and for their
cutaneous diseases, sores, ulcers, and the
like, its equal for safety and efficiency
has not before been found. Its applica-
lions and uses in sanitary point OF view
are more important and numerous than
those of any other known substance what
ever.
The purest carbolic acid requires about
twenty times its weight to dissolve it
When thus made a much further dil"tio'
will be needed for most purposes MIR
Goodale found weak solution effective
in Immediately arresting mildew on grape
vines and other plants; it also destroyed
plant lice.
1t is also adapted to many other pur
poses, one of which is soap, prepared al
follows Slice quantity of bar soap, SCI
it over the fire in suitable vessel, ate,
having added first water enough to liqul
fly it by stirring and warming to less thai
boiling heat, then take it off and nil
ughly for each pound of soap EN-
ployed, from quarter of an ounce to
whole ounce OF carbolic acid, according a
it is desired to have it mild or strong
When cool, this soap may be cut int
cakes and laid by for use.
This recipe we find in Mr.. Goodale
report, and along with it he handed u
several cakes Of soap, made up of differ
ent degrees of strength This soap ha
been in constant use for washing tn
hands for three months, and has clean
sing power that we have not found
any other soap.