Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1893 — Paraffine Floors. [ARTICLE]

Paraffine Floors.

M. Burd, of Lyons, has stopped absolutely the sweeping of floors in hospital wards. He has the floors covered with a coat of a solution of parafine in petroleum, which makos them impermeable to anything and them a brown tint. A single application lasts two years. Thus prepared the floors stand very well wiping every day with a damp cloth, moistened with some antiseptic solution. The same process can be applied with advantage to barracks, school rooms and other places. In private dwellings, where the floors are covered with carpet, there should be substituted for the ordinary sweeping the use of mechanical brushes, which, instead of making the dust fly. eollect it in special'boxes, from which it can be thrown into the fire, the great destroyer and perifier of all germs. This mode of sweeping is especially requisite in the lower stories of houses, since microbean germs are found in greatest numbers in the lower layers of the atmosphere. They are ten times more numerous in the center of Paris in the vicinity of the Seine, than on higher ground. In every house, considered separately, the air of the upper stories is incontestably purer and freer from microbes than that of the lower stories. Reyne Scientifique.