Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1899-01-12
HYGIENIC TOPICS.
Various Matters of General Interest to
the Whole Public.

The overdry air of houses in winter
is subject of interesting discussion
in a recent number of the Youth S
Companion. The air from furnaces
and steam pipes, if unduly dry, alb
serbs moisture from whatever it
touches. BY virtue of its absorbency
the surface of the body, and in greater
degree the membrane lining the nose,
throat and bronchial tubes, suffer from
the rapid evaporation of moisture, and
lose heat in the process. Experiments
by different observers have demon
strated marked difference between
the actual and the sensible tempera-
lures of rooms heated by furnaces and
steam pipes without the addition of
moisture artificially introduced. Ere
quently difference or at least 20 de-
greeS has been noticed. A hygro-
meter, moistened to the same degree
as the average human skin, has re-
peatedly shown a temperature many
degrees below the actual air temper
ature, both in public buildings and in
private houses. In winter the warmth
of the kitchen is often more grateful
than that of other rooms in which the
temperature is as high, but in which
there is no steaming teakettle 10
moisten the air. There is no question
regarding the baneful influence of hot,
dry air in the production of catarrhal
conditions of the nose, throat and
bronchial tubes. 1t has been suggest
ed that diphtheria owes in part its
common occurrence to the present i'm
perfect methods of heating school
houses. The dryness of the air pro-
duces a condition of the throat upOn
which the disease S easily engrafted.
An easy method of furnishing moist
ure consists of the conduction of a
thin stream of steam into the heated
air. This may be done by exposing
wide vessels filled with water in the
air-boXes of furnaces, or by more elab-
orately planned sprays, made effective
by the introduction into the hot air
pipes OF evaporative surfaces COM
posed of cotton fiber.
The use of soaps containing dis
infectant of some kind has become SO
general, says the Medical Press, that
observations on the practical value of
such combinations cannot fail to be
of interest. DR.. Reithoffer has recent
ly publisched the results of some ex-
peNments carried out by him with var
ious kinds of soap, having for object
to determine their v2sue as micro
bicideS. He used the ordinary mot
tied soap, white almond soap perfumed
with nitrobenziQe, and hard potasn
soap. He found that these soaps were
very inimical to the cholera microbe,
l per cent. solution killing them in
short space of time, while a per
cent. solution of the potash soap killed
them in five minutes. We are, there
fore, at liberty to infer that, as n
washing the hands the strength of the
soap solution is never less than 5 and
may go as high as As per cent, this
method of disinfecting the hands, as
well as the clothes, ETC., is fairly trust
worthy. Much stronger solutions are
required, however, to destroy the
| bacilli of typhoid, the coli-bacillus,
ETC., not less than 10 per cent being
I sufficient. None of the soaps expert
mented with appeared to have any eff
feet on the pyogenic microbe. The
practical results of these investiga-
tions is that it is always preferable 10
use soap and water first of all, rinsing
the hands in the disinfectant solution
afterward. This is an important
point, which merits to be generally
made known.