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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![so far as the spreading of infectious disease is con- cerned, act and react on each other. Innumerable centres scattered over a wide area in rural districts and villages converge upon the large towns and infect them. On the other hand, from the towns, thousands of infected cases radiate over the country, infecting individuals and creating new centres from which the disease may again spread and return to them. In the towns couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing joy and sorrow in pouches of leather ; there, top-laden, with four swift horses, rolls in the country baron and his household ; here, on timber legs, the lamed soldier hops painfully along begging alms. A thousand carriages and wains and cars come tumbling in with food, with young rusticity, and other raw produce, animate or inanimate, and go tumbling out again with produce manufactured ; and thus infectious diseases as well as other commodities are exchanged. Dr. Russell,1 Medical Officer of Health for the City of Glasgow, states :— In my experience epidemics never cover the whole area of the community at their incidence. They begin in one district, and if not checked, they eat their way through the mass, while, if they are vigorously attacked, they may be stamped out in that district. If they begin within the municipal limits [of Glasgow], the whole repressive force of the municipality is directed to the spot. If they begin 1 Transactions of the Epidemiological Society of London, 1881-82, pp. 84 and 85.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21013792_0025.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
