A treatise on plague: the conditions for its causation, prevalence, incidence, immunity, prevention and treatment / by Major George S. Thomson.

Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A treatise on plague: the conditions for its causation, prevalence, incidence, immunity, prevention and treatment / by Major George S. Thomson. 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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    attendants .were ordered not to approach within twelve yards of the infected persons!!! Even by such arbitrary quarantine the disease could not be kept from spreading, and under such depressing mental surroundings the death- rate was very high. In marked contrast, how much more sensible was the action of a Roman cardinal, to quote only one historical example, in Rome, in the year 1657:— “ He issued an order prohibiting any infected persons, or even any person whose health was suspected, to remain in the house in which they had been taken sick. All such were promptly carried to an hospital situated on an island in the midst of the Tiber. Other persons who had been living in the same house with the sick were then removed beyond the city walls, and comfortably provided for. All of the fur- niture was then taken out of the house, aired, and all doors and window's left open to free access of the wind. By these means the plague, in a few weeks, was completely eradicated, although it had been epidemic in the city for two years.” It may then be asked, But is the disease contagious! Professor Koch asked the author this very question, in the post-mortem room of Parel Hospital, the very first day he was introduced to him. One could only answer, Yes, but only under certain conditions. The disease is not at all infectious or contagious in sanitary plague hospitals, yet it must be a contagious disease, else how does it spread? Its contagiousness is determined by whatever deteriorates the air, robs it of its vital property, or diminishes its life-giving oxygen and ozone, whether by deficient supply of pure air, overcrowding, or filth. In 1841 Dr. Robertson, the general medical officer of the troops in Syria, officially reported:— “In reference to the contagiousness (transmissibility) or non-contagiousness of this, at times, frightful disease, I beg to state that the result of all my experience leads me to believe that the disease originates in local causes, and that it is not highly contagious. My firm conviction is that the plague cannot be communicated from one person to another in a pure atmosphere, even by contact; but I am not pre- pared to assert that, if plague patients are crowded together