Dangerous communicable diseases, how spread, how restricted and prevented : data and statements supplied to School Superintendents and Teachers by the Michigan State Board of Health, in compliance with Act No. 146, Laws of 1895.

  • Michigan. State Board of Health.
Date:
190.3
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Dangerous communicable diseases, how spread, how restricted and prevented : data and statements supplied to School Superintendents and Teachers by the Michigan State Board of Health, in compliance with Act No. 146, Laws of 1895. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    nasal discharges are the most frequent cause of each case of consumption, pneumonia, influenza, tonsillitis and diphtheria, and indirectly of many other diseases. Could these dangerous sputa and discharges all be destroyed as soon as ejected, a great portion of these diseases would soon disappear. Believing this to be true, we are confronted with the practical problem of how this may be done either wholly or in some large de- gree. Probably these diseases are not usually caught or contracted except through some break in the skin or in the mucous membrane lining some cavity. Such breaks or ulcerations occur not infrequently in the throat at those seasons of the year when the atmosphere is what is known as ‘^raw,” that is, when it contains the throat irritant ozone, and when it is irritating by reason of its drying effect in cold, windy weather. The nose is so constructed, and so guarded by minute hairs, kept moist by the exhaled breath and by secretions, that very little dust among which disease producing organ- isms may be present is permitted to pass beyond it, so long as that organ is in its normal condition. Knowl- edge of the dangers which may lurk in sputa and in the discharges from the nose should go far towards the solution of the problem of how people may be induced • to refrain from contaminating air with these dis- charges. In the solution of this problem the influence of the teachers in our schools should be most potent. They may and should impress upon the mind of the youth who are under their charge that spitting upon