Essays in preventive medicine : infection and disinfection : the health of children, and the period of infection in epidemic diseases / by William Squire.

  • Squire, William
Date:
1887
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays in preventive medicine : infection and disinfection : the health of children, and the period of infection in epidemic diseases / by William Squire. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ESSAYS lY PREVElYTIYE MEDICINE. IXTIIODUCTION:-—These essays have aimed at setting forth some general hygienic and physiological truths ; such as may help us against much avoidable illness, and may usefully be kept in mind daring our efforts to prevent the more widely diffused infectious fevers. Our first stand against diseases is based on a full knowledge of the characters of health ; in this way only is that early recognition of departure from the healthy standard secured which is of chief importance in the avoidance of further mischief. It is not enough for the purposes ot defence to know the symptoms of special illnesses, the natural history of each, or the earliest signs of ingress; but the normal variation of the pulse, respiration, temperature, secretions, growth and weight of the individual at different ages, and under varying conditions, must be studied and known. Any gain in certainties of this kind, however slowly won, steadily advances the art of medicine. The titles or headings to the essays here brought together, sufficiently indicate their special objects; each must speak for itself as to how far it helps to the attainment of the general idea. The methods followed are those of my masters in medicine. Dr. Walter Havlb Walshe, and Sir Willia^t Jejsner; these have led me to separate rubella from both rubeola and roseola, and to set catarrhal croup apart from diphtheria. Therapeutic details are omitted because of the oppor- tunity afforded me by two of my oldest friends—Dr. Ktjssell Eeynoles and Dr. QuAiif—in the monumental works on medicine they have edited, to set forth in full in the “ System ” and “ Dictionary,” not only my views on the most prevalent and most fatal of the common infective fevers, but my ideas as to their treatment. In “ A System of Medicine ” an old and close intimacy with the editor, not only first set my observations among children into “ act and use,” but enabled me to show that, if active means were sometimes necessary against croup, the number of cases in which they were uncalled-for pre]Donderated and A\ as then enormously on the increase in London,—a warning much wanted at the time, but now less needed with our wider knowledge of septic influence in acute diseases. The analogies of erysipelas and diphfheria are dwelt upon in tlie “ System;” and the therapeutic idea of aiding the resistance of the body against the encroachments of “ germs,” rather than to the use of germicides, is accepted. Later experience shews how little influence antise])tics exert over the course of the infective fevers. The sulpho-carbolates are disused : the power of {Salicylic acid is defined, and Ihis prevails against acute rheumatism where no specific germ is found. A use for antiseptics occurs in the treatment of Diarrha'a by acids inimicable to the associated