The public health movement.

  • American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The public health movement. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    which has but just come from other people's mouths and kings or from close contact with their bodies and soiled clothing. Experiments of Buchner, Flugge and others have shown that tubercle bacilli and other organisms are sprayed through a room from the mouth, for a distance of many feet and over wide areas, when men talk or cough. In case of influenza, conditions in rail- way and other cars, churches and living rooms, all may be infected who are not immune. The public is just beginning to learn of the wonderful results obtained in hospital work with the introduction of outdoor work and wards, but does not yet recognize that the nearer indoor conditions in hospitals are made to approach outdoor conditions by means of the most ample ventilation the better will be the results. When one considers that there are 3,000,000 persons sick in the United States, and that the percentage of cures is increased, and the average length of illness is decreased by ventilation, the public importance of pure air becomes evident. The benefit of plenty of fresh air is strikingly seen in open- air treament of tuberculosis. Patients well advanced in the disease, who for months or even years have spent their time bundled up indoors, sitting over stoves or registers, afraid of a breath of cool air, and who under this regime cough continually, sleep poorly and have no appetite, after being required to stay in the open air for twenty-four hours each day, and to sleep in tents or open shacks, in a week's time cease the constant cough, sleep and eat well, put on flesh and look like dif¥erent creatures. Outdoor treatment of pneu- monia, anaemia, nervous and other diseases is equally beneficial. Probably no place in which people gather is the need of ven- tilation as a protection to the public greater than in the factory, store and mercantile establishment, nevertheless the vast majority of these are utterly devoid of ventilation of any kind; indeed, as examples of badly ventilated habitations, they are supreme. Persons in charge of factories know they would be blamed were employees to complain that they had taken cold from open windows, while they are not held responsible for sickness due to vitiated air and overheating. The ample protection of health and life in the indus- tries is a matter of humanitarian obligation on the part of the employer and the public, as well as a question of self-interest on the part of the employee. Ventilation cannot properly be regarded