Medical essays : compiled from reports to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery / by medical officers of the U.S. Navy.

  • United States. Navy Department. Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical essays : compiled from reports to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery / by medical officers of the U.S. Navy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    the results of a laborious inquiry into the health of letter-press printers, and of others following in-door occupations, that out of thirty-six thousand deaths a year in England and Wales, which I * attributed to true pulmonary consumption, five thousand might be saved by increased space and improved ventilation in shops, work-shops, and factories■ that among men doing the same work under the same roof, the liability to consumption was determined by the space; and that this might be narrowed to a point at which men would die as fast as by some contagious malady, so that here, as in Italy, consumption might seem to pass from one person to another. According to Dr. Parkes, the extraordinary amount of consumption which prevails among the men of the royal and merchant navies, and which in some men-of-war has amounted to a veritable epidemic, is in all probability attributable to faulty ventilation. I have remarked the same excess of tubercular dis- ease of the lungs in our own naval service, and injustice has undoubtedly been done in many cases of phthisis pulmonalis which were certified not to have occurred in the line of duty, but assumed to have had a remote inherited origin, when the disease was in fact directly attributable to the unwholesome and humid air they*were compelled to respire, for the researches of Bowditch and Buchanan show that, independently of mere impurity of the atmosphere, there is a decided relation of raiuse and effect between dampness and consumption. The nosological heading phthisis, on the quarterly report of sick, often repre- sents only advanced cases of the disease, and not all of these, many being carelessly recorded as bronchitis chronica, while a very large proportion of incipient pulmonary tubercle is simply classed as bronchitis acuta or catarrhus. Constitutional predis- • position assuredly existed in some of these, but the majority might have escaped the development of the disease had they lived under proper hygienic conditions, especially with regard to a sufficient supply of pure air. Notwithstanding the importance of this matter of ventilation, few officers trouble themselves about it further than to order