As stated in our first article, the operations of dusting, scrubbing, &c., though in strictness, Domestic Manipulations, hardly come within the limits of this series of papers; we pass on, therefore, to the more important operations of disinfecting. Various means have been proposed of lessening or utterly destroying the infectious emanations that proceed from persons in certain diseases, and which frequently have the power of attaching themselves with greater or less tenacity to such articles as wearing apparel, &c. Generally speaking, the presence of a good system of ventilation is sufficient to prevent taking any infection. When rooms are properly aired, a disease can seldom be caught more than a few feet from a patient; or even in the case of those most infectious disorders, scarlet fever and small-pox, it seldom spreads more than a few yards; but if the air of a room is confined, the infection is concentrated, and becomes much more certain in its action. Downy and fibrous materials readily receive infection; it may, in fact, in many instances, be folded up in them, and so retained almost any length of time; but if they are thoroughly exposed to a free current of air, it is dissipated in a short time. It should be mentioned, that infectious diseases are more readily received in certain states of the body; thus, fear, timidity, mental anxiety; and such states of mind, by lowering the general tone of the system, render it much more liable to contract infectious or contagious diseases; a state of exhaustion from bodily fatigue, or from hunger, has the same tendency. Infection is also more readily received through the lungs than through the skin; therefore, it is important never to receive the breath of a patient, and, as a sailor would say, always keep to the windward side of him. Amongst the domestic disinfectants, vinegar has a great reputation, but undeservedly so; its only action is to overpower, by its odour, the smell of a sick-room—as a destroyer of the peculiar influences that engender disease, it has no power. Burning substances act in the same manner. Burnt brown paper, fumigating pastiles, tobacco, only act by substituting one smell for another. The ridiculous practice of carrying about a piece of camphor is very common, and is perfectly inefficacious. If it has any action at all, it must be an injurious one; for camphor is a stimulant, and its constant inhalation must tend to lower the system, and so produce the very evil it is supposed to remedy.