Report on the sanitary police of cities : presented to the American Medical Association at its annual session, held at Detroit, May, 1856 / by James M. Newman.

  • Newman, James M.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the sanitary police of cities : presented to the American Medical Association at its annual session, held at Detroit, May, 1856 / by James M. Newman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    duction of six of the diseases belonging to the class under consider- ation. Of the etiology of croup, erysipelas, hooping-cough, influ- enza, measles, scarlatina, we are profoundly ignorant. All we know of them is, that while they perhaps are never absent entirely, they at times assume in the widely spread circle of their influence, and in the intensity of their action, every characteristic of the severest and most fatal epidemics. Four of them are undoubtedly contagious. Three of them secure the system against a repetition of attack. Four of them are pre-eminently diseases of early child- hood, and are among the most active agencies in the production of the terrible mortality of infantile life. The elements concerned in their development seem to be meteor- ological rather than terrene, depending upon some peculiar atmo- spheric conditions of which we are yet unable to take cognizance. City life seems to have but little influence in adding to their severity, and the sum total of their mortality is increased only by the greater number exposed. They extend to the remotest bounds of the country, and penetrate the most secluded hamlet with a severity as great, and a tendency as fatal as when developed in a crowded city. We only know that inasmuch as measles, scarlatina, and hooping- cough are propagated by contagion, that, as a sanitary measure, a removal beyond the sphere of infection would for the time being secure an exemption from attack; but the extreme susceptibility of childhood to the specific contagion of these diseases, renders such a measure of but little avail except in securing a short truce to the attack, since it seems to be almost a law of its nature that it should suffer once an attack of these diseases. Croup and influenza leave us to look to atmospheric changes too occult for us to demon- strate their character, or from whence they emanate. With the balance of the diseases in our class scientific investi- gation has grappled, and endeavored to pierce the mysteries which surround them. But even with them, our boastings should be tempered with the greatest humility, as we have too often occasion to discover that our strength is but weakness, and that we can as yet penetrate but a very short distance within the veil which con- ceals the mysteries of epidemics and endemics from our view. The first disease in the alphabetical arrangement of our class is cholera, a disease, as it were, of our own day, with whose birth progress, and fearful march over the face of our globe we are all per- sonally cognizant. Twice has it come up from the land of its birth