Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era / A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress

by James P. Boyd

The biologist has rendered sanitary science great service not only in discovering the causes of certain diseases, but also by aiding to determine the nature of the disease in any outbreak. It makes a vast difference if a given case is one of true diphtheria or not, or of Asiatic cholera or not, and often the symptoms alone are not conclusive. Here the biologist comes to our aid, as is seen so often in cases of supposed diphtheria. A portion of the throat secretion is sent him under such precautions that no bacteria from the outside can possibly contaminate. With this secretion he stabs or inoculates a jelly composition which he has placed in a test-tube, stuffs a wad of absorbent cotton in the mouth of his tube and puts it in a warm chamber or incubator. If there are any microbes present, they will begin to grow, and the expert biologist can tell the bacteria from its manner of growth as readily as the gardener can distinguish between his radishes and lettuce when they sprout in the spring, and in this way is able to report the nature of the germs. If he is in doubt, he carries his cultivation further and employs other tests to prove his observation.

LABORATORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

The biologist has also rendered great aid to sanitary science in discovering many other species of bacteria that are helpful to man. Our polluted waters could not be purified, our air could not be cleared from foul odors, nor the proper decomposition of organic matters go on, without the aid of bacteria. These little vegetable growths, while working much harm upon humanity, contribute far more to their comfort, well-being, and happiness than they do to their ill. Possibly no better illustrations can be given of the value of bacteriology to sanitary science, and the great progress it has brought about, than to contrast a cholera outbreak of a few years ago with one occurring more recently; or to point to the efficacy of purifying water by the assistance of bacteria. Another disease, pulmonary consumption, may also be noticed, but the triumph here is not so marked as yet.

The first outbreak of cholera in the United States occurred in 1832. In one special hospital in New York city, 2030 patients were received in the nine weeks from July 1 to September 1, and of these 850 died. An eye-witness, who was personally known to the writer, one not given to exaggeration, said that the state of dread and alarm had been increasing until, when the disease first made its appearance in New York, fully one half of the population had left the city, many of the physicians fleeing with the rest. There was no efficient health department, and no organized system for the protection of the public health. This gentleman was a city missionary, and, in the performance of his duties, visited many of the houses. He mentioned visiting one of these on a morning when the fifteenth body had been carried out. It was the time of the rumble of the dead cart and the indiscriminate burial in public trenches. Contrast the horrors of this scene with the last attempt of cholera to invade the United States, in 1893, when, notwithstanding its presence at the quarantine station in New York harbor, and the actual presence of a few well-authenticated cases in the city itself, not one of these cases proved a focus for the spread of the disease.

The opinion that water in some way acts as a conveyer of disease can be generalized after a very little observation. To explain how it does this is a problem that was attempted to be solved by the chemist. He added vastly to our knowledge, but it was not until the biologist showed the presence of the disease-producing bacteria in water that a full explanation was possible. But the biologist has done more: it has been found, and notably in the very complete series of experiments carried on by the Massachusetts Board of Health, that even an effluent of a sewer, if filtered through a bed of sand, is purified to such an extent that the filtrate is a perfectly safe water to drink. The dangerous organic matter disappears, and ninety-eight per cent of the bacteria is removed. And it is pleasing to note, when one has so much to say of the dangers of bacteria, that the purification is entirely brought about by the action of bacteria working for the good of man. A sand filter bed does not purify water properly until it has been in operation for a few days, when the top of the bed is covered with a slime in which the bacteria act upon the organic matter in the water and purify it. The fact of the purification was known before the manner in which it was done was understood; and in those cities where the authorities have acted upon this knowledge and have purified their water supply, the influence upon the death-rate of typhoid fever is almost as marked as those already quoted for typhus fever, while the scourge of cholera has been almost entirely removed from their borders, as many an instance during the late outbreak in Europe could illustrate. It does not contribute to our self-esteem to know that most of the water supplies so filtered are to be found abroad. There is not enough of “practical politics” in filter beds to charm the traditional alderman of our cities.

It is now clearly proven that a species of bacteria is uniformly present in pulmonary consumption. This bacillus is to be found in the material coughed up by those who are ill with that disease. It has considerable tenacity of life; the expectorated material can be dried, pulverized into dust, and carried about on the wind; should the bacteria so dried and carried find a proper soil, they can grow and reproduce the disease. Fortunately, a combination of circumstances is required for the contraction of this disease, or it would be far more prevalent than it is. Notwithstanding, it already claims more victims than any other single disease. What has sanitary science done for its repression? It is attempting, in a tentative way, to obtain a registration of those who are consumptives, in order to teach them to avoid being possible sources of infection; to disinfect the discharges carrying the bacteria, and at times the rooms occupied by the consumptives. In Rome, for example, the services of the public disinfectors are asked for as eagerly for the room occupied by a consumptive as for one that had been used by a person suffering from diphtheria. In New York city, where the department of health has been exercising an oversight and care over the consumptives, there has been a constantly diminishing death-rate from all tubercular diseases from 1886, when the rate was 4.42, to 1897, when it was 2.85, with the single exception of 1894, which was lower than 1895. It is too soon to predict the result, but the proper care of consumptives promises much to check the ravages of the disease.

SAND FILTER BED.

One of the charms connected with the great results indicated is the simplicity of the methods employed to bring them about. While complex schemes and elaborate machinery may be necessary whenever the amount of service to be rendered requires organization and division of labor to properly accomplish the desired results, the principles are such that they can be executed in the smallest hamlet, and with the very crudest paraphernalia. The two great weapons of the sanitarian in fighting disease are isolation and disinfection. Dr. Henry M. Baker, the efficient secretary of the State Board of Health of Michigan, has for years collected and tabulated the results of the observing and non-observing of these precautions in his State. He has a happy faculty for graphically presenting the results. One of his diagrams is presented here and needs no explanation. In very few of these outbreaks could there have been any municipal disinfecting plant or isolating hospital.