Notes on hospitals / by Florence Nightingale.

  • Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on hospitals / by Florence Nightingale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    people, and when men had ceased to consider that nature had any laws for her guidance. Beginning with the poets and historians, the word finally made its way into medical nomen- clature,* where it has remained ever since, affording to certain classes of minds, chiefly in the southern and less educated parts of Europe, a satisfactory reason for pestilence, and an adequate excuse for non-exertion to prevent its recurrence. And now, what does 'contagion' mean? It implies the communication of disease from person to person by contact. It pre-supposes the existence of certain germs like the sporules of fungi, which can be bottled up and conveyed any distance attached to clothing, to merchandize, especially to woollen stuffs, for which it is supposed to have a particular affection, and to feathers, which of all articles it especially loves—so much so, that, according to quarantine laws, a live goose may be safely introduced from a plague country; but if it happen to be eaten on the voyage, its feathers cannot be admitted without danger to the entire community. There is no end to the absurdities connected with this doctrine. Suffice it to say, that in the ordinary sense of the word, there is no proof, such as would be admitted in any scientific inquiry, that there is any such thing as * contagion.' There are two or three diseases in which there is a specific virus, which can be seen, tasted, smelt, and analysed, and which in certain constitutions propagates the original disease by inoculation—such as small-pox, cow-pox, &c. But these are not' contagions' in the sense supposed.f * See Note B, at the end of this section. t Curiously enough, these directly communicable diseases were excluded from the operation of general quarantine law by the International Quarantine Con- ference of Paris, 1851, which restricted the objects of quarantine to plague, yellow fever, and cholera, while it gave a logical coup de grace to the ' contagion' hypothesis by abolishing the ' suspected bill of health.'