The sources and modes of infection / by Charles V. Chapin.

  • Charles V. Chapin
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The sources and modes of infection / by Charles V. Chapin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    We are now better able than ever before to attribute to water and milk their proper share in the distribution of infection. The recent discovery of the transmission of disease by insects gives us entirely new and most effective means of combating disease It is time that sanitary measures directed against the infectious diseases should be modified to correspond with existing knowledge. Present-day theories and present-day practice are maintained largely by tradition, and to facilitate the adaptation of practice to the facts as we now know them, is the purpose of this book. Some modifications of sanitary practice are suggested, but no attempt is made to discuss details; rather are general principles presented, which it is believed ought to guide administrators m their work. While some of the following pages may seem rather radical to many, I believe that practically all laboratory workers will agree with the contents of the first chapter, and that a large number of bacteriologists and health officers are convinced of the great importance of carriers » and mild unrecognized cases The tendency among many, too, is to lay less emphasis on infection by fomites, though perhaps few are ready to rive up routine terminal disinfection for the common infec- tious diseases. So also there are very many careful <observe who are attributing more and more importance to what is trenerallv called contact infection. 8 The public health administrator is placed at great disad- vantage because he is obliged to base his acts on knowledge Thich is far from exact. The laboratory workers have accu- mulated a vast mass of quite exact data m regard to the cans Tu'e relation of bacteria and protozoa to disease, and no one fpp^Ses this more than the writer, but there are many nroblems which the laboratory men cannot solve and many which they have failed to solve, T*f£*^£j must study in the field the way in which disease s causeo. Tmust use the statistical method, and the appheafcon^ statistical methods to epidemiology is more difficult and leas attractive than laboratory experiment.