Little Masterpieces of Science: Health and Healing

by Unknown

Probably the most serious source of infection which one is liable to encounter in the usual ways of life is the occupancy at hotels of bed-rooms vacated by consumptives without subsequent efficient cleansing, and travel in sleeping cars. I need not enter here into the harrowing details of desperate uncleanness which the ordinary railway travel brings to light. It is to be hoped that popular demand for reform in the routine of hotel-keepers and railroad managers in the matter of ordinary sweeping and dusting, and in the precautions against the spread of tuberculosis, may soon usher in among them a day of reasonable sanitary intelligence.

A belief in the communicability of tuberculosis is becoming widely diffused, and it would seem to be desirable, on the ground of policy alone, for the managers of summer, and especially of winter resorts frequented by consumptives, to let it be known in no uncertain way that their precautions against the spread of infectious diseases are effectually in line with the demands of modern sanitary science.

The members of families bearing a hereditary susceptibility to the acquirement of this disease should strive to foster those conditions which favour a healthy, vigorous life in occupation, food, exercise and amusement and remember that for them more than for others it is important to avoid such occupations and places as favour the distribution, in the air or otherwise, of the tubercle bacillus.

But when the individual has done what he can in making his surroundings clean, and in thus limiting the spread of the tubercle bacillus, there still remains work for municipal and State and national authorities in diffusing the necessary knowledge of the disease and its modes of prevention; in directly caring for those unable to care for themselves; in securing for all such freedom from contact with sources of the disease as the dictates of science and humanity may require.

To health boards, either national or local, must be largely entrusted the primary protection of the people against the danger from tuberculous cattle.

A national bureau of health might be of incalculable service in stimulating and harmonizing measures for the suppression of tuberculosis in various parts of the land, and in fostering research in lines which promise large practical return in the saving of life.

Tuberculosis has in this country been officially almost entirely ignored in those practical measures which health boards universally recognize as efficient in the suppression of this class of maladies. Physicians are not now generally required to report it to the local health boards. Systematic official measures of disinfection are not widely practised. But such official measures have been found extremely useful in the limitation of other communicable diseases. While consumption must logically be classed with diphtheria and scarlatina and small-pox as a communicable germ disease, it is, in fact, in the light of our present knowledge, when intelligently cared for, so little liable to spread that it is properly exempt from some of those summary measures which health authorities are justified in adopting with the more readily and less avoidably communicable maladies. Moreover, consumption is apt to involve such prolonged illness, and so often permits affected persons for months and years to go about their usual avocations, that general isolation would be both impracticable and inhumane. Moreover, for reasons which it is hoped are evident to the reader, isolation among those capable of caring for themselves is at present entirely unnecessary.

But while extreme measures are not called for, local health boards must soon act in the prevention of tuberculosis. For the present the wisest and most humane course would seem to be to attempt to secure the desired ends rather by instruction and counsel and help than by direct and summary procedures. There is no more pitiable spectacle in this land to-day than that of hundreds of victims of advanced tuberculosis in every large town who cannot be comfortably or safely cared for in the dwellings of the poor, and yet who are always unwelcome applicants at most of our hospitals and at many are denied admission altogether. They are victims of ignorance and of vicious social and hygienic conditions for which they are not largely responsible, and States and municipalities, which are most to blame, owe them at least a shelter and a place to die. Unquestionably one of the urgent duties immediately before us in all parts of the land where tuberculosis prevails is the establishment of special hospitals in which this disease can be treated and its victims safely cared for.

And now at last remains to be spoken what word of cheer and hope our new outlooks may have given us for those who are already under the shadow of this sorrowful affliction. The dreams and aspirations and strenuous labours of the students of this disease have looked steadily toward the discovery of some definite and positive means of cure, but as yet full success lingers beyond their grasp. The methods for the early detection of tuberculosis which science has pointed out make it possible for affected persons to plan such modes of life and early seek such salubrious climates as promise a hope of recovery. We have studied closely the ways in which the cells of the body often successfully resist the incursions of the already seated germs, and learned how in many ways the natural forces of cure may be sustained and strengthened. We have learned much about certain complicating occurrences which often form the most serious features in the progress of tuberculosis of the lungs, and how they may be best avoided. And so to-day the outlook for those in the earlier stages of this disease is in a considerable proportion of cases extremely encouraging. It is no longer for us the hopeless malady which it was earlier believed to be. It is not necessarily a bitter losing fight upon which one enters who becomes aware that the finger of this disease is upon him. A long and happy and useful life may still be his if the conditions which favour his cure be early and intelligently fixed upon, and patiently and faithfully persisted in. The wise physician is here the best adviser in climate and regimen, as well as in the proper selection of remedial measures, and the earlier his counsel is sought and acted on, the brighter will usually be the outlook for recovery.

Research in tuberculosis and the ministration of the physician should, and generally do, go hand in hand, and no time should be lost in bringing to the aid of the stricken what light and promise the studies of the laboratory day by day may yield. The great and beneficent work which has been accomplished by Trudeau in the Adirondack woods, in at once widening the bounds of knowledge of tuberculosis and in carrying to a successful issue in so many the varied and delicate processes of cure, is a cheering example of what may be accomplished with persistent devotion, by the light of our new knowledge, in mastering a malady so long considered hopeless.