We cannot be too emphatic in refusing to send consumptives to the country. If a sanatorium or day camp is not available, they would better remain in the city. If the patient has money, he cannot of course be prevented from going. If he has no money, no appeal should be made for funds to send him away. To ask for money for such use is a wrong the public health nurse should have no hand in. Her business is to prevent scattering infection, not to aid in it. CHAPTER XIII Disinfection of Houses—Value of Fumigation—Formaldehyde—House-Cleaning—Burning and Sterilizing—Boiling—Carpets, Rugs, and Mattings—Painting, Papering, and Whitewashing—Temporary Removals—Vacant Houses—Compulsory Cleaning. =Disinfection of Houses.= One of the most important of the nurse’s duties is her arrangement for the fumigation and cleaning of premises that have been vacated by a consumptive. This takes place after death, or upon the patient’s removal to an institution, to another house, or to another room in the same house. Since tubercle bacilli are not confined to the sputum, but are discharged in great numbers during coughing attacks, and to a less extent during sneezing, speaking, and so forth, a patient not confined to one room, but who wanders freely about the house, scatters bacilli everywhere. No matter how careful he may be about the sputum, the nature of the disease makes it practically impossible to be equally careful about the expired air. Moreover, these organisms do not die of themselves, at the end of a few weeks. They are singularly tenacious and persist for months, virulent and active. A case is recorded in which they were found in a room six months after the patient’s removal, alive and virulent enough to cause tuberculosis in guinea-pigs inoculated with them. For this reason it takes drastic measures to rid a house of these tenacious germs. In indicating the rooms to be fumigated, it is necessary to include all those that have been occupied by the patient within the past six months. If he dies in his bedroom, it is not enough to do merely that one room. It is equally necessary to fumigate the kitchen, in which he sat until two months ago; the parlour, where he spent a few hours a day, and the second bedroom, to which he was now and then removed. All are infected, and all need the utmost care to free them from germs. The family must be taught why these rooms are dangerous, and made to understand the necessity for full and complete disinfection. It is better to err on the side of too much, rather than of too little care.