Military hygiene : a manual of sanitation for soldiers / by R.H. Firth.

  • Firth, R. H. (Robert Hammill), Sir, 1858-1931.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Military hygiene : a manual of sanitation for soldiers / by R.H. Firth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    amount of alcohol has been formed, fermentation ceases, owing to the excess of alcohol. This is very much the same as occurs in the human body when certain of the disease-producing germs gain access to it; they go on growing and fermenting, as it were, in the blood and juices of the body until the body has manufactured a sufficiency of the antidote to stop their action. It is this curious resemblance between the two ])rocesses that has suggested the name of “fermentation-like” for many of these diseases, simply because their germs or causes behave in the human body like a ferment. Typical examples of diseases of this nature are small- pox, chicken-pox, measles, scarlet fever, enteric fever, plague, cholera, typhus, diphtheria, and many others. In all of them there is the introduction of a living germ or germs ; then a period of “ incubation ” or hatching, in which nothing can be observed ; then follows the active disturbance ; and in the diseases, as well as in the fermentation of the sugary liquid, the process is stopped when the microbes have multiplied to a certain extent, a temporary or permanent protection being the result. Another name for diseases of this kind is “ infective.” A disease like small-pox or measles, which can be passed from person to person without immediate contact between the two, is termed infectious. In these cases the infection is conveyed by mucus expectorated or by dust blown about, or carried in clothing, &c., from the first patient. Such diseases may also, of course, be communicated by direct contact. If direct contact between the sick and well is indispensable for the con- veyance of a disease it is called “ contagious.” In nature there is no such hard line drawn between
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