A Handbook of Health by Woods Hutchinson (learn to read books .txt) 📖
- Author: Woods Hutchinson
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It occurred to Dr. Jenner that if this inoculation with cowpox would protect these milkmaids, it would be an infinitely safer thing to use to protect children than even the mildest known form of inoculation. So he tried it upon two or three of his child patients, after explaining the situation to their parents, and was perfectly delighted when, a few months afterward, these children happened to be exposed to a severe case of smallpox and entirely escaped catching the disease. This was the beginning of what we now call vaccination.
The germ of cowpox, which is believed to be either the cow or horse variety of human smallpox, is cultivated upon healthy calves. The matter formed upon their skin is collected with the greatest care; and this is rubbed, or scraped, into the arm of the child. It is a perfectly safe and harmless cure; and although it has been done millions of times, never has there been more than one death from it in 10,000 cases. In a little over a hundred years it has reduced smallpox from the commonest and most fatal of all diseases to one of the rarest. But in every country in the world into which vaccination has not been introduced, smallpox rages as commonly and as fatally as ever. For instance, between 1893 and 1898 in Russia, where a large share of the people are unvaccinated, 275,000 deaths occurred from smallpox; in Spain, where the same condition exists, 24,000. In Germany, on the other hand, where vaccination is practically universal, there were in the same period only 287 deaths—1/1000 as many as in Russia; and in England, only a slightly greater number.
Another illustration, which comes closer home, is that of the Philippine Islands. Before they were annexed by the United States, vaccination was rare, and thousands of deaths from smallpox occurred every year. In 1897, after the people had been thoroughly vaccinated, there was not a single death from this cause in the whole of the Islands.
No outgoing ship may "clear the port" without a Bill of Health, signed by the Collector of Customs and the naval officer of the Port.
This discovery of Jenner's was most fortunate; for vaccination remains until this day absolutely the only remedy of any value whatever that we possess against smallpox.
Quarantine, inoculation, improvement of living and sanitary conditions, the use of drugs and medicines of all sorts other than vaccination, have no effect whatever upon either the spread or the fatality of the disease. The author, when State Health Officer of Oregon, saw the disease break out in a highly-civilized, well-fed, well-housed community, and kill eleven out of thirty-three people attacked, just as it would have done in the "Dark Ages." Not one of the cases that died had been vaccinated; and, with but one exception (and in this the proof of vaccination was imperfect), every vaccinated case recovered. Vaccination will usually protect for from five to ten years; then it is advisable to be re-vaccinated, and in six to eight years more, another vaccination should be attempted. This third vaccination will usually not "take," for the reason that two successful vaccinations will usually protect for life.
Unexpected as it may seem, vaccination is not only a preventive of smallpox, but a cure for it. The reason being that vaccinia, the disease resulting from successful vaccination, being far milder than smallpox, runs its course more quickly,—taking only two days to develop,—while smallpox requires anywhere from seven to twenty days to develop after the patient has been infected, or exposed. So, if anyone who has been exposed to smallpox is vaccinated any time within a week after exposure, the vaccine will take hold first, and the patient will have either simple vaccinia, with its trifling headache and fever, or else a very mild form of smallpox.
Some persons object to having children deliberately infected with even the mildest sort of disease; but this is infinitely better than to allow, as was the case before vaccination, from one-fourth to one-fifth of them to be killed, twenty-five per cent of them to be pock-marked, and ten per cent of them to be blinded by this terrible disease. So far as any after-effects of vaccination are concerned, careful investigation of hundreds of thousands of cases has clearly shown that it is not so dangerous as a common cold in the head.
Infantile Paralysis. Another disease that has been unpleasantly famous of late is also caused and spread by a germ. This is a form of laming or crippling of certain muscles in childhood known as infantile paralysis. It is not a common disease, though during the last two years there has been an epidemic of it in the United States, especially in New York and Massachusetts. The only things of importance for you to know about it are that it begins, like the other infections, with headache, fever, and usually with "snuffles" or slight sore throat, or an attack of indigestion; and that its germ is probably spread by being sneezed or coughed into the air from the noses and throats of the children who have it, and breathed in by well children. The best known preventive of serious results from this disease is the same as in the rest of infectious diseases, namely, rest in bed, away from all other children, which at the same time stops the spread of it. It furnishes one more reason why all children having the "snuffles" and sore throat with fever and headache should be kept away from school and promptly put to bed and kept there until they are better.
The reason why the disease produces paralysis is that its germs specially attack the spinal cord, so as to destroy the roots of the nerves going to the muscles. Unless the harm done to the spinal cord is very severe, other muscles of the arm or the leg can very often be trained to take the place and to do the work of the paralyzed muscles, so that while the limb will not be so strong as before, it will still be quite useful.
Malaria. Practically the only disease due to animal germs, which is sufficiently common in temperate or even subtropical regions to be of interest to us, is malaria, better known perhaps as ague, or "chills-and-fever." This disease has always been associated with swamps and damp marshy places and the fogs and mists that rise from them; indeed its name, mal-aria, is simply the Italian words for "bad air." It is commonest in country districts as compared with towns, in the South as compared with the North, and on the frontier, and usually almost disappears when all the ponds and swamps in a district are drained and turned into cultivated land or meadows.
(Greatly magnified)
These germs are animal germs and are in the red blood corpuscles, feeding on them.
About four hundred years ago, the Spanish conquerors of America were fortunate enough to discover that the natives of Peru had a bitter, reddish bark, which, when powdered or made into a strong tea, would cure ague. This, known first as "Peruvian bark," was introduced into Europe by the intelligent and far-sighted Spanish Countess of Chincon; and, as she richly deserved, her name became attached to it—first softened to "cinchona" and later hardened to the now famous "quinine." But for this drug, the settlement of much of America would have been impossible. The climate of the whole of the Mississippi Valley and of the South would have been fatal to white men without its aid.
But although we knew that we could both break up and prevent malaria by doses of quinine large enough to make the head ring, we knew nothing about the cause—save that it was always associated with swamps and marshy places—until about forty years ago a French army surgeon, Laveran, discovered in the red corpuscles of the blood of malaria patients, a little animal germ, which has since borne his name. This, being an animal germ, naturally would not grow or live like a plant-germ and must have been carried into the human body by the bite of some other animal. The only animals that bite us often enough to transmit such a disease are insects of different sorts; and, as biting insects are commonly found flying around swamps, suspicion very quickly settled upon the mosquito.
Position on the wall.—After Berkeley.
By a brilliant series of investigations by French, Italian, English, and American scientists, the malaria germ was discovered in the body of the mosquito, and was transmitted by its bite to birds and animals. Then a score or more of eager students and doctors in different parts of the world offered themselves for experiment—allowed themselves to be bitten by infected mosquitoes, and within ten days developed malaria. At first sight, this discovery was not very encouraging; for to exterminate mosquitoes appeared to be as hopeful a task as to sweep back the Atlantic tides with a broom. But luckily it was soon found that the common piping, or singing, mosquito (called from his voice Culex pipiens) could not carry the disease, but only one rather rare kind of mosquito (the Anopheles), which is found only one-fiftieth as commonly as the ordinary mosquito. It was further found that these malaria-bearing mosquitoes could breed only in small puddles, or pools, that were either permanent or present six months out of the year, and that did not communicate with, or drain into, any stream through which fish could enter them. Fish are a deadly enemy of the mosquito and devour him in the stage between the egg and the growth of his wings, when he lives in water as a little whitish worm, such as you may have seen wriggling in a rain-barrel.
Position on the wall.—After Berkeley.
It was found that by hunting out a dozen or twenty little pools of this sort in the neighborhood of a town full of malaria, and filling them up, or draining them, or pouring kerosene over the surface of the water, the spread of the malaria in the town could be stopped and wiped out absolutely. This has been accomplished even in such frightfully malarial districts as the Panama Canal Zone, and the west coast of Africa, whose famous "jungle fever" has prevented white men from getting a foothold upon it for fifteen hundred years. Since the young mosquitoes, in the form of wrigglers, or larvæ, cannot grow except in still water, draining the pools kills them; and, as they must come to the surface of the water to breathe, pouring crude petroleum over the water—the oil floating on the surface and making a film—chokes them.
The common garden mosquito, while not dangerous, is decidedly
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