An introduction to the history of medicine : with medical chronology, suggestions for study and bibliographic data / by Fielding H. Garrison.

  • Garrison, Fielding H. (Fielding Hudson), 1870-1935.
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An introduction to the history of medicine : with medical chronology, suggestions for study and bibliographic data / by Fielding H. Garrison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    779/918 (page 775)
    in 1817, 1819, and 1846. Typhoid, scarlatina, measles, and other infections appeared at intervals'. Bubonic plague was spread from Hong Kong all over the world from 1894 on, and without modern sanitation, the pandemic would probably have attained to medieval proportions. Politics came near wrecking the situation in San Francisco in 1907-8, and it was only through the Marine Hospital Service experts, who diagnosed the disease and destroyed the rodent carriers, that the city, perhaps the country, was saved. This was the first time that a city was made rat-proof. The epidemic character of poliomyelitis was first noted by Medin in Sweden (1887), and its incidence in the Scandinavian countries, Austria, and the United States (1907-10) has been severe. Its pathology was ably investigated by Simon Flexner, who isolated a germ in 1913. In 1762, a sanitary council was established in every Prussian province, but it was not until the second pandemic of cholera (1840-50) that France and England began to wake up to the task of organizing public health. In 1840, a national organization of Conseils d'hygiene for the cities with special committees for the provinces was formed in France, the essence of which still survives. Early English legislation, such as the Peel Act of 1802, to preserve the “ health and morals” of cotton-spinners and factory hands, was directed mainly toward the hygiene of occupations, particularly child labor (1836). In 1848, Parlia¬ ment passed the Public Health Act based upon the startling returns of the Health of Towns Commission (1844) and constituting a General Board of Health, with sanitary inspectors to report upon the health of cities. This was followed by a long line of progressive legislation, including the Common Lodging Houses Acts (1851, 1853), the Nuisances Removal Act (1855), the Burial Act (1855), the act of 1858 transferring the powers of the General Board of Health to the Privy Council, the organization of the Local Government Board (1871), the Public Health Act of 1875, the Infectious Diseases (Notifi¬ cation) Acts of 1889 and 1899, the Infectious Diseases (Prevention) Act (1890), the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act (1891), the Public Health (London) Act (1891), the Isolation Hospitals Act (1893), the Local Government Act of 1894, the Public Health (Ports) Act (1896), the Vaccination Acts of 1898 and 1907, the Rivers Pollution Prevention Act (1898), the Provision of Meals Act for school children’s lunches (1902), the Notification of Births Act (1907), and the Housing and Town-Planning Act (1909). The investigations and reforms instituted by Lord Ashley (1833) in regard to child labor, culminating in his famous reports on mines and collieries (1842-43), led to a succession of acts (1844-1912) which have raised the age limit of employment to twelve years. Children were forbidden to work in white lead in 1878, the factory acts of 1864, 1867, 1870 and 1878 were extended to workshops in 1891, a Coal Mines Regu¬ lation Act was passed in 1896, Workmen’s Compensation Acts in 1897 and 1906, and, in 1901, medical officers of health were required to keep registers of work¬ shops and report upon them annually. Child labor laws were enacted in Massa¬ chusetts (1836, 1842), Connecticut (1842), Maine (1847), Pennsylvania (1848), but there was no industrial dust legislation until the Massachusetts act of 1877 and no provisions for factory inspection prior to those of Massachusetts in 1888. The best pioneer work was done by the U. S. Department of Labor and much was accomplished through the labors of George M. Kober, W. Gil¬ man Thompson, John B. Andrews, Alice Hamilton, J. W. Schereschewsky, S. S. Goldwater, and others. Industrial museums of safety have been estab¬ lished at Berlin (1904), Vienna (1909), New York (1911), and twelve other cities. A traveling exhibit of this kind was set up in Washington in 1915-16. The first clinic for occupational diseases was opened at Milan on March 20, 1910. Another was established at New York by S. S. Goldwater in 1915. Research Institutes for industrial hygiene have been opened at Frankfort on the Main (1910), Pittsburgh, Pa. (1915), and other cities. The loi Roussel of December 23, 1874 (France), for the protection of friendless children, was a great advance in humanitarian legislation. In the reforms of prisons, insane asylums and dangerous trades, the effect of the writings of Charles Dickens and Charles Reade should not be forgotten. The speech delivered by Dickens at the anniversary festival of the Hospital for Sick Children, London, on Feb¬ ruary 9, 1858, is radiant with the genius of humanity, one of the strongest pleas ever made in behalf of social medicine by a man of genius. The ghastly