A manual of hygiene and sanitation / By Seneca Egbert.

  • Egbert, Seneca, 1863-1939.
Date:
[1907], [©1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of hygiene and sanitation / By Seneca Egbert. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    47/500 (page 51)
    contagious or infectious disease is some specific parasitic organism, and that these diseases are each communicated only by the transference to and development of its par- ticular parasite or germ within or upon the tissues of the infected individual. CConsequently suchcHseases aretrails^ mitted from one person to another, or in some cases from animals to men or vice versa, by means of these micro- organisms, and the transferrence is by air, water, food, or other fomites, or by direct contact. It is evident that if acquired knowledge establishes the truth of this theory, the prevention of infectious diseases is greatly simpli- fied and becomes merely a matter of combining effective sanitation, of which we have spoken, with the destruction of the specific exciting causes—i. e., disinfection. Nor is it essential that we any longer make a distinction between the terms contagious, infectious, zymotic, and specific, that formerly obtained, since they may practically be used synonymously. I'he first of these terms used to be ap- plied to those diseases which were believed to be trans- mitted most frequently by direct contact, and infectious to those of which the transmission was usually by fomites. But we know that germs of the former class may be trans- mitted by air, water, food, etc., and those of the latter by personal contact, though the reverse is what usually hap- ])ens in the respective cases. Occasionally disease occurs also by inoculation, the exciting organisms being intro- duced into the body either accidentally or intentionally through some wound in the pr(itecting skin or mucous membrane. The term zymotic was formerly applied to those diseases occurring in ejjidemics, and which were supposed to be due to fermentative processes; if used at all, it should be given to any disease due to a living germ. The term specific should only be given to those