Manual of military hygiene for the military services of the United States / by Valery Havard ... illustrated with seven plates and two hundred and twenty-eight engravings.

  • Havard, Valery, 1846-1927.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Manual of military hygiene for the military services of the United States / by Valery Havard ... illustrated with seven plates and two hundred and twenty-eight engravings. 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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    INTRODUCTION Hygiene is the science of preserving and promoting health. It seeks out and determines the causes of disease and formulates rules for their prevention and removal. It may then also be defined the science of preventing disease. No science can be more important or beneficial to humanity so long as v^^e consider health the most precious of all our earthly blessings. Prevention is better than cure; therefore, to the world at large, hygiene is of more value than medicine. But the two sciences are so inextricably blended and mutually bene, ficial that it would be futile to attempt to differentiate them. Hygienists, to be successful, must possess a well-grounded knowledge of medicine- while physicians must avail themselves of the researches and discoveries of hygienists if they wish to do justice to their patients. Hygiene is usually described as individual and public. Under in- dividual or personal hygiene are grouped the subjects of body cleanliness, diet, exercise and habits, while public hygiene considers all those measures which, under the name of sanitation, are instituted for the welfare of communities, such as water-supply, disinfection, sewerage and disposal of wastes. Sanitation deals with the removal of all conditions favoring the growth and propagation of pathogenic, or disease-bearing, germs; to it may be ascribed the chief share in the beneficent effect of hygiene in saving human lives and extending longevity. All diseases may be classed under two heads: i, those arising within the body (autogenetic diseases), due to disturbances of nutrition, assimi- lation and elimination, the result of a want of harmony between waste and repair, such as rheumatism, gout, diabetes, arterio-sclerosis, tumors, nervous diseases, etc.; 2, those due to causes from without and depending upon the invasion and multiphcation of special germs in the body, such as the infectious or zymotic diseases. Hygiene is concerned in the prevention of both classes. By determining the relations which should exist between diet, work and exercise, it secures a sufficient assimilation of suitable food and a free eHmination of wastes, without overstrain of any of the organs; thus are the diseases of the first class guarded against. However, it is especially in preventing those of the second class, among which are the so-called camp diseases, that military hygiene is most efficacious.