Little Masterpieces of Science: Health and Healing
History
Little Masterpieces of Science: Health and Healing
Medicine -- History
Probably the most serious source of infection which one is liable to
encounter in the usual ways of life is the occupancy at hotels of
bed-rooms vacated by consumptives without subsequent efficient
cleansing, and travel in sleeping cars. I need not enter here into the
harrowing details of desperate uncleanness which the ordinary railway
travel brings to light. It is to be hoped that popular demand for reform
in the routine of hotel-keepers and railroad managers in the matter of
ordinary sweeping and dusting, and in the precautions against the spread
of tuberculosis, may soon usher in among them a day of reasonable
sanitary intelligence.
A belief in the communicability of tuberculosis is becoming widely
diffused, and it would seem to be desirable, on the ground of policy
alone, for the managers of summer, and especially of winter resorts
frequented by consumptives, to let it be known in no uncertain way that
their precautions against the spread of infectious diseases are
effectually in line with the demands of modern sanitary science.
The members of families bearing a hereditary susceptibility to the
acquirement of this disease should strive to foster those conditions
which favour a healthy, vigorous life in occupation, food, exercise and
amusement and remember that for them more than for others it is
important to avoid such occupations and places as favour the
distribution, in the air or otherwise, of the tubercle bacillus.
But when the individual has done what he can in making his surroundings
clean, and in thus limiting the spread of the tubercle bacillus, there
still remains work for municipal and State and national authorities in
diffusing the necessary knowledge of the disease and its modes of
prevention; in directly caring for those unable to care for themselves;
in securing for all such freedom from contact with sources of the
disease as the dictates of science and humanity may require.
To health boards, either national or local, must be largely entrusted
the primary protection of the people against the danger from tuberculous
cattle.
A national bureau of health might be of incalculable service in
stimulating and harmonizing measures for the suppression of tuberculosis
in various parts of the land, and in fostering research in lines which
promise large practical return in the saving of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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