The sanitary protection of New Orleans, municipal and maritime / by Joseph Holt.

  • Holt, Joseph, 1839-1922.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sanitary protection of New Orleans, municipal and maritime / by Joseph Holt. 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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    Unincumbered with objections which belong to other disin- fectants, through the efficiency of this agent we are enabled to transfer the war against pestilence to a higher plane of decisive action, and to wage a fight, whether on ship-board or in town, in every respect parallel with that of fighting fire. The surest preventive of a conflagration is to quench the first spark ; the surest preventive of an epidemic is to act upon the mere possibility of the existence of infection. Not proclaiming itself by such outward evidences as light and heat and smoke, but incognizable to the senses, we must wage fight upon the suspicion of a pestilential manifestation. In maritime sanitation we subject to treatment every ship coming from cholera or yellow-fever regions, regardless of bills of health, however clean ; while in municipal sanitation we attack, in loco, the slightest signs of these diseases. To cite an instance : Small-pox declared itself in nine dis- tinct foci during the past winter in the most crowded parts of this city. Being treated with these agents of destruction, applied with the extremest exaction of scientific requirement, the disease did not spread beyond the room of the primary cases. If the schedule of symptoms in a single case is such as would indicate and be diagnosed cholera or yellow-fever dur- ing an epidemic of one or the other of these diseases, we act promptly in the enforcement of isolation and precautionary measures of disinfection, as though assured of the worst. While willing to call the case suspicious, we are deter- mined to have no second case to confirm the nature of the first. Ceasing to be sticklers, for an exact diagnosis, we are content to resist even the appearance of evil. Intangible, imponderable, unrecognizable by the unaided senses, and even with the best of aid only to the trained master in microscopy, the subtile nature of the essential agent of pestilence compels in practice the retention of the term suspicious, as applied to first cases of which we cannot be positive ; the term must be retained, however much it may provoke harsh criticism and angry censure of those engaged in trade. These demand that there shall be no report until every doubt is removed, and the nature of the disease confirmed,
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