In a boarding-school or family when a diphtheria patient is found, select a room set off as far as possible from the rooms commonly used, and before putting the patient into this room remove all curtains, upholstered furniture and carpets from it that are not so cheap or so worn that they may be destroyed after the patient's convalescence, or which are of such texture that they will not be destroyed by water or disinfection by heat. In any case the less there is in the room the easier the disinfection will be.
Use the mattress upon which the patient had slept before you discovered the nature of the disease. Books should be removed, because an infected book can not be disinfected except upon the outside. The room is not to be swept while the patient is in it,--dust may be wiped up with a damp cloth. The cloth is to be disinfected before it is sent out of the room.
The popular notions regarding sulphur as a disinfectant after diphtheria are erroneous. Sulphur fumes in certain definite quantities will disinfect after smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, and some other diseases; these fumes will also kill the diphtheria bacillus, if the bacillus is wet and exposed directly; but if it is buried in sputum or in clothing the fumes will have no effect whatever upon it. The disinfectants to use are acid bichloride of mercury and heat. Formaldehyde does not penetrate well enough to be reliable in diphtheria.
When the patient is taken to the room prepared, let a mixture of one ounce of bichloride of mercury in the powdered form, in two ounces of common hydrochloric acid (not the dilute hydrochloric acid used in medicine), be obtained. This is a violent poison, and it must be kept out of the reach of children and careless persons. Two teaspoonfuls of this solution in an ordinary wooden bucket filled with water to within two inches of the rim makes the disinfecting mixture. A wooden washtub nearly filled with this disinfectant, mixed in the bucket as directed, should be kept near the door of the room, and all towels, sheets, and soiled linen must be soaked in this tub for twenty-four hours. After that any one may handle these articles with perfect safety. The articles that have been soaked for twenty-four hours should be rinsed in ordinary water to remove the acid, and they may then be washed. The nurse should not touch the outside of the tub with infected articles while putting these in the disinfectant. Do not make the disinfectant stronger than directed here, or it will destroy the articles soaked in it, and for the same reason do not leave them in it longer than twenty-four hours.