Yellow fever facts, as to its nature, prevention and treatment / by John B.C. Gazzo.

  • Gazzo, John B. C.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Yellow fever facts, as to its nature, prevention and treatment / by John B.C. Gazzo. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    their virulence, for the pabulum of all infectious. Complaints is found to exist in the mephitic air of low, moist, closed aud narrow streets and shut up retreats, where these are crowding, bad ventilation and the invariable accompaniments of poverty and drunkeness ; add to these, impure water, and there is all that is requisite to breed sickuess and to invite and arrest yellow fever in its prevalence. Ships should be inspected on approaching ports, because they may have unsanitary conditions intensified in them, OD a scale sufficiently to be important. This should be a part of sanitary police, nor should include auy restriction of persons, at the most, longer than enough for cleansing of the body and of the clothing, and purification of merchandise by fresh air and possibly by some disinfecting process in certain cases. A careful sanitary police, hence the absolute necessity for systematic sanitary visitation of the dwellings of the poor, and the yards, courts and alleys wich they inhabit; such as of late exist in certain cities, as in Canada and Great Britain, and which can be effectually carried out only in the appointment of Inspectors of Nuisances, by able and intelligent men, which includes the protection of available measures for the preven- tion, and obviating the development aud extension of the disease in any place. On this ground the sanitary precautions are not many, nor always difficult of observance, but they are imperative and commonly very effectual aud to be relied upon with confidence, and are familiar. Thorough and frequent cleansing of all streets, alleys, yards, wharves and vessels, private and public buildings and empty lots, the abatemeut of all nuisance, daily removal of offal, efficient sewerage, etc. The emanations from privies are always offensive and injurious to health, particularly in close, pent-up yards ; even the best constructed water closets are not at all free from objectiou. The cleansing, ventilation and disinfection of cess-pools and water closets among all signs of danger of the location of yellow fever, none is more signifi- cant than the privy odor. Let it be everywhere annihilated. Lime, charcoal, dry earth, chloride of lime, liquid coal tar. chloride of zinc, sulphate of iron aud carbolic acid, are about the most available of disinfectants. The next point of import- ance that may be used to correct foul smells, yet it must not be forgotten that they do not entirely destroy the noxious effects of the effluvia, the shoot, which ii an excellent deodorizer of every house, should be collected, to be strewn occasionally into the privies and water closets. The floors of the dwellings should be well scrubbed with lie or chloride of soda at least once a week, and thorough ventila- tion, every tenement should be supplied with abundance of good water. That from wells in ordinary yards is always more or less impure and is frequently most injurious, being saturated with all the fifth that soaks through the earth from the privies.