The prevention of epidemics : and the construction and management of isolation hospitals / by Roger McNeill, M.D. Edin.
- McNeill, Roger.
- Date:
- 1894
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The prevention of epidemics : and the construction and management of isolation hospitals / by Roger McNeill, M.D. Edin. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![tion between different persons so frequent and intimate, the seeds of infection so tenacious of life, and so liable to stick to all manner of things, that unless the utmost care is taken infectious disease will spread from a small centre and do infinite mischief.1 The misery- following epidemics of infectious diseases among the poorer classes of the population cannot well be calcu- lated. The rate of mortality from infectious disease is not equally distributed among all classes of the popula- tion. The poor, living in unhealthy dwellings, and badly nourished, suffer most severely. In many cases where a wage-earning member of a family dies, the survivors are brought to the verge of starvation, and thus become dependent, perhaps for many years, for subsistence on parochial relief. Only those who make a special study of this ques- tion can be fully impressed with its importance. In towns, people know only their immediate neighbours. In rural districts the population is often sparse, and the means of communication slow. The sufferings of a family in one locality are heeded but for a brief space of time, and by their immediate neighbours 1 The following cases, recorded by Dr. Birdwood, medical superintendent to the hospital ships, Long Reach, Kent, illustrate this. A dock labourer was the first of a group of ten patients admitted into the smallpox hospital ships, London. He did not know the source of his infection. His brother, a little girl, and a man living in the same house, were infected. A man not employed by any sanitary authority came to disinfect the house, and a woman from Camberwell came to visit her dying daughter at the same house ; they were both admitted suffering from smallpox. The potman at the public house frequented by the [dock labourer] was the earliest one to recognise the nature of the disorder with which he was afflicted. The potman, his wife, a fellow-lodger, and a lad who daily called for beer, followed. See Report of Statistical Committee of Metro- politan Asylums Board, 1891, p. 10. Numerous other instances might be given.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21013792_0022.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
