Volume 2

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    pagated by drinking water which has become contaminated by the evacuations of cholera patients; further, although the disease is not directly contagious in the sense that scarlet fever and small-pox are, it is admitted that the evacuations from the bowel contain the cholera poison, just as the evacuations from a case of typhoid fever contain the typhoid poison; washer- women, for instance, who handle the bedding and linen which have been soiled by the cholera evacuations, have been known over and over again to have been attacked by the disease. Some of our army surgeons seem to think that in India, which is the birthplace of the disease, the poison may be conveyed from place to place through the atmosphere, but that this ever takes place in this country seems, to say the least of it, very doubtful. Further, the cholera poison—as indeed the poison of almost all of the specific contagious diseases which I have previously spoken of—delights in filth; this is undoubtedly one cause of the terrible way with which some of the Continental towns have been decimated by the disease. Now if you have thoroughly grasped these fundamental facts with regard to cholera, you are in a position to understand the more important precautions which it is necessary to take to ward off and prevent the disease. It is impossible at this late hour to go into full details, but the following are the most important points. (1.) Isolation of infected persons and suspicious cases.—Persons coming from an infected district should be inspected, and if they present any suspicious symptoms they should be isolated in hospital, and placed under medical observation and treatment. Ships, for example, coming from an infected port, are regularly inspected ; if any actual cases of the disease have occurred, or if there have been any cases of suspicious illness during the voyage, they are placed for a time under observation in quarantine, and the sailors and passengers are not allowed to land until proper measures of disinfection have been adopted, and until the medical officer — representing the port sanitary authority — is satisfied that they may be allowed to land and mix with the population without risk or danger. In many of our sea-ports