A treatise on Asiatic cholera / edited and prepared by Edmund Charles Wendt, in association with Drs. John C. Peters, Ely McClellan, John B. Hamilton, and Geo. M. Sternberg.
- Edmund Charles Wendt
- Date:
- 1885
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on Asiatic cholera / edited and prepared by Edmund Charles Wendt, in association with Drs. John C. Peters, Ely McClellan, John B. Hamilton, and Geo. M. Sternberg. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Gerstein Science Information Centre at the University of Toronto, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto.
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![has shown that a debauch predisposes to cholera whenever the disease is epidemic; and yet all drunkards in a cholera-infected community do not take the disease. Exceptions simply prove the rule. Water being the vehicle by which cholera is most actively distributed, should, before being taken for any domestic use, be boiled (and ebullition maintained for at least thirty minutes), and when cool passed through a filter. The surveillance exercised should be constant and far-reaching. A case of cholera occurring within the limits of any military command should lead to the adoption of immediate and active measures to stamp imt the disease. The patient should be at once placed in a comfortable but iso- lated position. Everything belonging to him and which he has had in use before coming into the hands of the medical officer, as well as every place at which he is known to have been present since the inception of the disease, should be disinfected. All his excreta (vomit and dejections) should be received in vessels properly prepared. . The surface of his body should be occasionally bathed in the disinfecting solution; and in a fluid of the same character, the hands of attendants and the various utensils em]iloyed about the case should be frequently washed. When access can be had to a perfected line of sewers Avhich empty into a rapidly flowing stream, the various fluids (largely mixed with disinfectant) may be thrown into the sewer; but where such sewer at any portion of its course has a cesspool as the recipient of its contents, then deep and narrow pits should be dug, and into them the fluids should be emptied. Everything belonging to and in use by a cholera patient should be thoroughly disinfected. If articles of clothing or bedding are to be destroyed by fire, tlicy must first he rendered inert by disinfection,^ then hurned. Should it be necessary to bury the ex- creta, the bottom of the pit before recommended should be covered with crystals of sulphate of iron and chloride of lime in bulk; and upon this mass the disinfected fluids should be thrown. Each time a bucket of the latter is emptied a sufficient quantity of fresh earth should be thrown upon it, and before final closing of the pit a solution of sulphuric acid in the proportion of four ounces to a quart of water should be placed upon the mass. Then the pit should be securely covered with earth closely packed and raised some inches above the surface of the surrounding ground. It is very important to remember that all the dejecta of a cholera case contain the seeds of the disease, and that the infectious principle is not confined to the rice-water passages alone. It is a matter worthy of careful consideration whether the passages before and after the stage of rice-water are not the most virulent. Theij should he treated as if they ivere. In these latter days long and exhausting marches of troops but seldom occur. In changing station the services of common carriers are most frequently called into requisition, and, of these, railroad lines have absorbed the traffic almost to the exclusion of water-transportation. In each cholera epidemic which has visited the United States, steamboats were the most active agents in distributing the disease to moving bodies of troops, and of introducing the disease into permanently garrisoned posts. Formerly bodies of troops destined for Texas, California, or the Northwest Terri- tories made the greater portion of their journeys by water transportation, and the long cholera epidemic from which the army suffered from 1848 to 1856 was undoubtedly due to their constant conveyance on the Missis- sippi, Ohio and Missouri river steamboats. ' See preceding section.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20996421_0389.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
