p. 557 | Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 9, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 35.

Health and Temperance.

How to Prevent the Spread of Diphtheria.

DIPHTHERIA is a terrible disease, and when it breaks out in a school or in a family where there are several children, unless the very best precautions are observed, it is likely to spread, for it is a disease that may be communicated from one person to another. It is contagious. Regarding the different measures employed to prevent the spread of this disease, we very greatly prefer the fumes of burning sulphur. We regard sulphur as the most effective disinfectant we can use for the purpose of preventing the spread of diphtheria in schools and in families where several children are exposed, and it has a salutary effect upon those already suffering from the disease. We have had the care of scores of diphtheria patients, and we can refer to quite a number of families of children where the disease was limited to one child, and we verily believe that the fumes of burning sulphur were instrumental in preventing the spread of the disease in these cases.

In all cases where diphtheria breaks out in a school no children should be permitted to go to the school from houses where the disease exists. After school hours, in the evening, the school-rooms should be thoroughly fumigated with sulphur. This should be done daily, but the house should be free from sulphur fumes during school hours, for the coughing and sneezing that might result from the sulphur fumes would create great annoyance and confusion. Where diphtheria prevails in a family the patient or patients, if there are two or three attacked at the same time, should be isolated, confined to one room, and all the children not affected should be kept in some remote part of the house, or removed from the house entirely if practicable. In either case, whether any of the children are removed from the house or not, every room, including the one occupied by the patient, should be fumigated with sulphur two or three times daily.

The most convenient method of fumigating is to drop a small pinch upon a hot stove, if there be one in the room; if there be no stove in the room, a few coals on a shovel or other convenient utensil may be carried into the room, and the sulphur may be dropped on the coals. A little experience will soon enable any one to determine how much sulphur to burn in each room. It is not necessary to fill the room so full of these sulphur fumes as to suffocate us; and if we happen to burn a little too much sulphur in any given case, and the fumes become offensive, the doors and windows can be opened a minute or two.

Other disinfectants may be employed, but these sulphur fumes will permeate every crevice in the house; they are breathed by us, our clothes are saturated by them, and, withal, we regard this as the most practical and effectual method of disinfection against the spread of diphtheria that can be adopted. And where diphtheria prevails in a neighborhood, and families fear its outbreak among their children, they should resort to sulphur fumigation daily, whether diphtheria has appeared in the house or not; this may prevent its outbreak in families that might otherwise suffer from it. At least this prevention does not cost much, and can do no harm. These sulphur fumes will do us no injury.—American Medical Journal.