The State Board of Health and a quarter century of public-health work in Michigan / by Theo. R. MacClure.

  • MacClure (Theodore R.). 1869-
Date:
[1898]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The State Board of Health and a quarter century of public-health work in Michigan / by Theo. R. MacClure. 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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    State, but keeps up with the most recent advances in public-health work. The Board has determined which are the most dangerous diseases, and the order of their importance. When the State Board of Health has, after deliberate consid- eration, decided that a certain disease is dangerous to the public health, it has so declared it, and placed it on the “list” of “diseases dangerous to the public health” in accordance with the State laws. Diseases which have been placed on the “list” are: Measles, whooping-cough, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, small-pox and cholera, placed on the list in 1S73; diphtheria, in 1S75; puerperal fever and erysipelas, in 1878; typhus fever, in 1879; rotheln (mainly because scarlet fever is so liable to be mistaken for rotheln), in 1886; membraneous or inflammatory croup and typho-malarial fever (because for practical purposes it must be considered as typhoid fever), in 1889; consumption, in 1893; yellow fever, glanders, rabies, tetanus, pneumonia, influenza and cerebro- spinal meningitis, in 1895. The above-mentioned dates do not indicate the times that active effort com- menced fo-r the restriction and prevention of each disease; in some instances it commenced before and in other instances the effort commenced after the disease was formally declared to be a dangerous communicable disease. In the public-health laws, four expressions are used: “Sickness dangerous to the public health,” “disease dangerous to the public health,” “communicable disease dangerous to the public health,” and “dangerous communicable diseases.” Each of these expressions may represent a different classification of the diseases in accord- ance with the purposes of the various sections of State law. Michigan Plan for the Restriction of the Dangerous Diseases. Section 1675 and 1676 Howell’s Statutes require each householder, hotel keeper, keeper of a boarding house or tenant, and physician to immediately give notice thereof to the health officer of the township, city or village, of any case of small- pox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, or any other disease dangerous to the public health. Act 137, laws of 1883, requires the local health officers to keep the secretary of the State Board of Health constantly informed respecting every outbreak of a dangerous disease. The first report of an outbreak is sometimes made by letter, by postal card, etc., but more frequently upon a special outbreak blank [L] for reporting the first case. As soon as the first information reaches the office of the State Board, the account of the outbreak is immediately opened in a book for that special disease; a “blue letter” of instructions relating to that disease is immediately sent, together with blanks [M] for making weekly reports to the Board; and there are also sent several copies of the leaflet that relates especially to the restriction and prevention of the disease in question; the health officer is requested to dis- tribute these leaflets not only to the family but to the neighbors of the family in which the disease exists. Thus the record of the outbreak is opened, a book account with that disease started. ‘Every weekly report received from a health officer is