  I. Houses and compounds, stables, kitchen and outhouses should be thoroughly cleaned, and they should be whitewashed with lime. Air-tight dustbins should be kept in the house. II. Rooms, specially bed-rooms, should be well ventilated, attention should be paid to the condition III. House drains should be cleaned and well flushed with a disinfectant solution. IV. Nowhere in the house or compound should any kind of organic refuse be allowed to accumulate. Better not use any organic manure in the kitchen garden or house garden during an epidemic. V. Articles of food should not be allowed to remain uncovered on the table or elsewhere, for there is chance of their infection by flies, mice, or rats. VI. Clothes received from the dhoby’s house should be again boiled in water, dried, and then used. VII. Bed-clothes and wearing apparel should be aired and exposed to the sun daily. As frequently as possible floors and passages should be well washed with a disinfectant solution and then well dried. VIII. There should not be any over-crowding in bed-rooms. IX. Drinking water should be boiled before use. Raw vegetables, such as salad, cucumber, &c., should only be used after thoroughly washing them, and then with vinegar. X. Personal cleanliness should be strictly observed. Daily bath, cleaning the teeth with carbolic tooth powder, and carefully washing hands and mouth before and after meals are essential. XI. Those who have to attend on plague cases should be very careful. Hands should be thoroughly washed with a disinfectant solution, and a nail brush used soon after the patient or anything in contact with him is touched. A bath to which some antiseptic is added should be taken immediately after coming in contact with plague patients. Workers in plague hospitals should be warned about scratches or wounds on their bodies. Use of respirators with an antiseptic sprinkled over the entrance valves is recommended. Only very healthy people should approach plague cases. On the appearance of slightest headache, languor, or fever an attendant should be relieved from duty. XII. As a prophylactic 5 grains of quinine sulphate may be taken twice daily, or a small bottle containing eucalyptus or some other volatile disinfectant, may be carried in the pocket, and a few drops may be occasionally poured on the handkerchief. Smoking good tobacco may have a prophylactic value. XIII. If plague occurs in the house, the following steps should be taken:— (a) The patient should at once be put in bed and kept in a temporary room, which may be put up on the roof of a house. No healthy inmate of the house should go in that room or have any connection with the sick, except those who have to nurse the patient. (b) All discharges, fÆces, urine, sputum, vomited matter, &c., should be taken in vessels with disinfectant solution in it, and some quicklime should immediately be sprinkled over them. On no (c) Floor and bedsteads should be washed with a disinfectant solution, clothes and other articles that touch the patient should be carefully disinfected. Crockery and glass should be scalded. If great care and cleanliness are not observed with regard to the bed and body linen of the patient, the infection may be diffused through the air immediately around the patient. (d) A medical man should be at once sent for. Delay is fatal. |
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