Health on the Farm: A Manual of Rural Sanitation and HygieneHarris, H. F. (Henry Fauntleroy)
Science
Health on the Farm: A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene
Harris, H. F. (Henry Fauntleroy)
Rural health; Sanitation, Household
Anaphylaxis is thus seen to bear an important relationship to what
is commonly called the "immunizing treatment" to prevent
diphtheria, which consists in giving a moderate dose of antitoxin
to a person immediately after exposure to the disease. Under such
circumstances a degree of immunity is undoubtedly secured, but this
passes off in the course of a few weeks, and the patient then
becomes just as susceptible as he was before. Should he now
contract diphtheria, we would be confronted with the possibility
that the treatment by means of antitoxin might possibly produce
serious and even fatal results.
Occasionally rashes occur several days after the inoculation, but
such disturbances are insignificant except for the immediate
discomfort experienced. Antitoxin concentrated by the Gibson method
has reduced to a considerable extent the number of cases in which
rashes occur.
Treatment other than by antitoxin is symptomatic. Where the disease
occurs in the wind-pipe, it may be necessary to pass a tube into its
upper opening to allow the patient to breathe, and in other instances the
wind-pipe is itself opened from the outside in order to permit a
sufficient amount of air to enter the lungs to maintain life.
It is of the utmost importance that patients be kept in bed until all
danger of complications has passed. Death from heart-failure several
weeks after the diphtheria in the throat is well, is not an uncommon
result of the disease, and is especially prone to follow even the
slightest exertion. Patients under such circumstances have been known to
die from raising themselves up in the bed.
CEREBROSPINAL MENINGITIS.
Meningitis, or spotted fever, is one of the most terrible and fatal of
all diseases, every case proving fatal in some local epidemics.
Although the cause of the disease has been known for a number of years,
the exact method by which the germ that produces it spreads from man to
man was until quite recently entirely unrecognized, and even now it
cannot be said that the whole matter has been demonstrated.
_Character and Course of the Disease._--Cerebrospinal meningitis is
produced by a minute vegetable (bacterium), the _Micrococcus
intracellularis_. This germ does not appear to occur normally in any of
the lower animals, nor has it been found in the outer world, and is
therefore to be regarded as distinctly a human parasite. It is very
fortunately a germ of low vitality, as it develops only at about blood
heat, and when expelled from its normal dwelling-place in the human body
it dies very quickly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account