Summary of the claims of medical officers of the army and navy to military rewards and distinctions.

Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Summary of the claims of medical officers of the army and navy to military rewards and distinctions. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    1. Tlie entire disuse of water into which sewers flow, or which is navigated by persons living in boats, or which ia in any other way contaminated by the contents of drains or cesspools. 2. An extended use of hand-basins and towels among the poor, together with sufficient water always in readiness. 3. Strict cleanliness in every one about the patient, or the dead body; and especial care in all such persons to wash their hands before touching food. 4. The separation of the healthy from the sick, and their removal to another abode, when they have no place but the sick room in which to prepare and take their meals. 5. The immersion of all soiled linen in water, until it can be scalded and washed; for if it should become dry, the faeces might be wafted about in the form of dust, and so be swallowed by any one who should come near the linen. In the way just indicated, it is probable that cholera may be occasionally comnumicated for a short distance througli the air; and when small-pox and other diseases are com- mimicated through the air, it is most likely by organised particles, which are wafted like the seeds of plants and the ova of some animals, and not by anything in the form of gas or vapour. Indeed, thei-e are neither facts nor analogy to show that any kind of epidemic disease whatever can be caused by the air, or even influenced by it, otherwise than indirectly. Epidemics have been attributed to the state of the atmosphere since the time of Hippocrates, and the anti- quity of the belief causes it to be received as an indisputable axiom, although our better knowledge of the nature of the air, and of gaseous bodies in general, is capable of entirely disproving it. But the facts which disprove the atmospheric theory of diseases are often pressed into its service, and so handled as to lend it apparent support. It is a curious circumstance, that the medical men who are most active in advocating the sanitary measures which, as a general rule, would prevent the communication of cholera, for the most part disbelieve in its communicability, probably because the question had never suggested itself to them, except in the form of infection by means of effluvia, or of contagion by contact. What is still more remarkable is, that these gentlemen generally look on the presence of all those c;rrn:nstai!c?s which aid in the communication of