222 PATHOGENIC BACTERIA.

ficient While not so radical as to suggest the unreason-
able isolation of patients and destruction of property once
practised in the kingdom of Naples, the author would
favor the registration of all tuberculous cases as a means
of collecting accurate data concerning their origin, would
insist upon domestic sterilization and disinfection, and
would have special hospitals for as many, especially of
the poorer classes, among whom hygienic measures are
almost always opposed, as could be persuaded to occupy
them.

It has already been declared the duty of the physician
to use every means in his power to prevent the spread
of infection in the households in his care, and no disease
is more deserving of attention than this neglected one.
Patients should cease to kiss the members of their fam-
ily and friends; their individual knives, forks, spoons,
cups, etc. should be carefully kept apart—secretly if the
patient be sensitive upon the subject—from those of the
family, and scalded after each meal; the napkins and
handkerchiefs, as well as whatever clothing or bed-cloth-
ing is soiled by the discharges, should be kept apart from
the common wash, and boiled; and of course the expec-
toration should be carefully attended to, received in a
suitable receptacle, sterilized or disinfected, and never
allowed to dry, for it has been shown that the tubercle
bacillus can remain vital in dried sputum for as long as
nine months. A very neat arrangement for collecting
and disposing of the expectoration is recommended by
some boards of health. It consists of a metal case into
which a pasteboard box is fitted. When the box is to be
emptied the whole of the pasteboard portion is removed,
and, together with the expectoration, 'burned. The metal
part is disinfected, provided with a new pasteboard box,
and is again ready for use. (See Fig. 20, page 120.) The
physician should also give directions for disinfecting the
bedroom occupied by a consumptive before it becomes
the chamber of a healthy person.

Boards of health are now becoming more and more in-