Essays In Pastoral MedicineWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Religion
Essays In Pastoral Medicine
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
First aid in illness and injury; Medicine
We do not know the cause of yellow fever despite the claims of
Sanarelli that he has isolated the specific micro-organism. Recently
American physicians discovered that it is transmitted from man to man
by mosquitoes that belong {186} to the genus Stegomyia, the Stegomyia
Fasciata especially. If a yellow fever patient is put into a room in
which the mosquitoes have been killed and the doors and windows are
screened, he is as harmless, as far as contagion is concerned, as a
man with a broken leg. The disease is not spread by fomites.
Malaria is caused by plasmodia, which are protozoa, not bacteria, and
it is carried from case to case by mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles.
So certain are we that this is the mode of infection that the
expression "no anopheles, no malaria" has almost become a medical
axiom. A bite from an anopheles mosquito does not cause malaria unless
the particular mosquito has previously bitten a malaria patient.
The stegomyia flies and bites in the early afternoon and again at
night, the anopheles flies and bites after sunset. In visiting a case
of pernicious malaria or one of yellow fever avoid the bites of
mosquitoes by gloves and a piece of netting, and there is no danger
whatever.
The stegomyia mosquitoes are tropical and subtropical, but they can
live as far north as Philadelphia and even farther. The anopheles is
especially a northern insect. The ordinary culex mosquito, when it
alights upon a wall, stands with its body parallel to the wall, as a
house-fly stands; the anopheles mosquito stands with its tail raised
from the wall at an angle. A mosquito lays its eggs in any pool of
still water, and the "wrigglers" seen in an open rain-barrel are the
larvae from these eggs. The larvae come to the surface of the water to
get air, and they may be smothered with petroleum; but the only
effective way to get rid of malaria and yellow fever is to drain or
fill pools of water and marshes. Mosquitoes will breed also in the
small still bights along the edges of running streams; in old tomato
cans that contain rain water; in any still water, fresh or salt.
AUSTIN ÓMALLEY.
{187}
XV
INFECTIOUS DISEASES IN SCHOOLS
Cases of diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, and even smallpox are not
seldom found in schoolrooms, and much anxiety can be averted and the
spread of infection can be wholly or in great part averted by a
knowledge of disinfection.
The laity will often follow the advice of a priest in matters of
hygiene when they are inclined to rebel against the regulations of
health departments and the suggestions of physicians, therefore a
preliminary explanation of methods for the prevention of infection in
the family will be advantageous; prevention in the family is also
intimately connected with prevention in the school. Methods useful in
the family are useful also in convents and boarding-schools.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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