Hygiene and public health / by Louis C. Parkes.

  • Parkes, Louis Coltman, 1857-1942.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hygiene and public health / by Louis C. Parkes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    508/578 (page 484)
    suffering from a variety of diseases, or recovering from surgical operations, in one common building, is a ne- cessity of modern life, but is now recognised as being attended with risks and dangers from which the patient treated in his own home is to a large extent exempt. In former times, this crowding together of the sick in hospitals led to outbreaks of erysipelas, pyaemia, and hospital gangrene in the surgical wards, the contagion appearing to be conveyed from one patient to another through the air, or by means of the surgeon's hands or instruments when engaged in dressing wounds. The antiseptic treatment of wounds and injuries, and the greater care bestowed on the construction and manage- ment of hospitals, have nearly eradicated these terrible diseases from modern hospital practice ; but when from any cause the surgical wards of hospitals are over- crowded, and the cleanliness and frequent dressings of wounds cannot be attended to, these septic diseases are almost sure to make their appearance and cause fright- ful havoc. Those who witnessed the horrible sufferings and mortality occasioned by dirt and overcrowding in the hospitals for sick and wounded during the Russo- Turkish war can bear evidence to the truth of this state- ment. It has often been noticed that cases of open wounds from injury or operation recover far more rapidly when treated in the open air, or in huts and tents practically open to the air, than when confined in close buildings; and the same is true of cases of acute infectious disease. For such cases the breathing of pure air is a prophy- lactic worth more than all the drugs in the Pharmaco- poeia. For the cases of organic disease of important viscera, which are treated in medical wards, the bene- ficial effects of pure air, though not equally striking, are