Normal salt solution is made by using one teaspoonful of salt to a pint of water.

Care and disinfection of an infected room.—­Carpets, upholstered furniture, hangings, bric-a-brac, or any personal clothing, the color of which may be destroyed by disinfection, should have been removed from the room at the beginning of the disease.

Daily care of the room by the nurse.—­The furniture should be wiped off with a damp cloth and the floor swept with a broom covered with a damp cloth wrung out of a 1-20 (five per cent) carbolic acid solution; besides this the floor must be rubbed thoroughly with a damp cloth every second or third day.  If the disease is contagious a damp sheet kept moist should be hung in the line of the air currents.  Cloths that are used daily should be washed in hot soap suds and when not in use left to soak in carbolic acid solution 1-20 (five per cent).

After the patient has recovered from an infectious disease he should receive a hot soap and water tub or sponge bath, thorough washing of the hair and irrigation of the ears included, followed by a thorough sponging with a one per cent carbolic acid or corrosive sublimate (1-10,000) solution.  The finger-nails and toe-nails should be cut close and cleaned underneath.

A nasal douche is given, and the mouth should be washed with listerine or a saturated (five per cent) solution of boric acid.  The patient is then wrapped in clean sheets or clothes and taken in another room.  Then the bedding and clothing are made ready for sterilization.

Disinfection of the room.—­Brush off the mattress, wrap it in a damp sheet wrung out of a twenty per cent solution of carbolic acid, and send to the sterilizer.  The clothes are steamed and sent to the wash room.  When there is no sterilizer the bed must be soaked in a 1-20 (five per cent) carbolic solution, afterwards boiled and the mattress ripped apart and boiled or burned.

[Nursing department 627]

Disinfecting the room.—­Arrange all articles that are left in the room so as to expose them the best to the fumigating substance.  To disinfect with formalin, close the room tightly, seal all cracks and openings with paste and paper.  Place an alcohol lamp in a metal dish in the center of the room.  Put in a receptacle over the lamp three fluid ounces of a forty per cent solution of formaldehyde; have a dish of water in the room for some time; moisten the air of the room, light the lamp and then close the room up tight for twenty-four hours, until the dust has settled; then enter gently so as not to disturb the dust and wipe off everything in the room with a cloth wrung out of a corrosive sublimate (1-1000) solution.  Floors, woodwork, furniture, bedstead must be so washed or wiped, and use for crevices pure carbolic acid, applying it with a brush.  The walls should be washed down with the 1-1000 corrosive sublimate solution.  Then leave the windows wide open.  Sulphur fumigation is not considered so certain in its results.