Report as to the practice of medicine and surgery by unqualified persons in the United Kingdom.
- Great Britain. Local Government Board
- Date:
- 1910
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Report as to the practice of medicine and surgery by unqualified persons in the United Kingdom. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
20/92 (page 18)
![(2) by rendering it almost inipos8il)le for the Medieal Offioor of Health to trace an epidemic to its source. Several Medical Officers of Health point out the danger to the public health which may thus be caused by infected persons mixing freely with healthy people. Where unqualified men do notify, much trouble is often caused. During the last seven or eight years, a quack in York has notified cases of infectious disease through the parent or householder, and before his cases could be accepted as bona fide cases, or accepted at the Isolation Hospital, the Medical Officer of Health has required to see the cases personally. As already stated, the certificates given by unqualified men are Avorded in a guarded and indefinite way, sometimes failing to give the information required. In many cases the unqualified person who has been treating the case, when he sees that it is likely to have a fatal termination, suggests medical advice. A few notes on specific instances, out of many collected, are appended. Smallpox. 1. Cure by ointment. Herbalist prosecuted some years ago for spreading the infection. 2. Confluent smallpox—treated by a chemist five or six days unrecognised. 3. Outbreak spread through diagnosis by a herbalist as chickenpox. 4. When smallpox prevailed a few years ago, not uncommonly contacts insistently refused vaccination on ground that some nostrum they were consuming was quite sufficient protection. 5. Herbalist treated a case as acne, leading to serious outbreak. 6. Treated by chemist with sarsaparilla and potass iodide. 7. In papular and vesicular stages treated by chemists and not recognised. It infected five persons, of whom one died of malignant form of disease. 8. Case treated by chemist with ointment as skin disease. At least one other person infected. A similar instance at another town was much more disastrous and resulted in at least one death. Diphtheria. 1. Outbreak largely kept up, in Medical Officer of Health's opinion, by unquaUfiod practice. Mild cases treated by chemists or herbalists for ulcerated throat, enlarged glands, or uuunps, and never isolated. Children return to school with fauces full of diphtheria infection, and thus disease is spread further. 2. Treatment by untrained medical enthusiast (a schoolmaster) resulted in death, 3. Cases of diphtheria or membranous crou]} notified by an unqualified practitioner have been found to be dead or dying when the official visit has been paid by the Medical Officer of Health,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b23984764_0020.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
