Tropical diseases and health in the United States / by John M. Swan.
- Swan, John M. (John Mumford), 1870-1949
- Date:
- [1911]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Tropical diseases and health in the United States / by John M. Swan. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
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![gerous provided his intestinal and other discharg^cs are properly sterilized before being consigned to the cesspool or sewer, burn- ing is the most efficacious method of disposing of infected human feces. Dysentery, except the amebic form, already referred to under the head of amebiasis, is due to Bacillus dysenteriae. The epidemics are of minor import, so far as they have occurred in our own land. Tn the tropics and in subtropical countries, where the climate is depressing and where the poorer classes are more constantly underfed and overworked than wnth us, the disease often assumes serious proportions. It is water-borne and requires the same ])re- ventive measures that apply to cholera. The fly problem is impor- tant in its relation to this infection. Malta fever is caused by the Micrococcus meltensis. Cases of the disease are found in the Mediterranean littoral in greatest numbers. Cases have been found in Cuba and Puerto Rico, Cen- tral and South America, and it is not beyond the range of possi- bility that cases occur along the United States shores of the Gulf of Mexico. In Malta, the disease is supposed to be transmitted by drinking the milk of infected goats; these animals supplying the milk for the inhabitants of the island. The disease is not very severe and the death rate is small, about three per cent. It is respon- sible, however, for a large amount of invalidism. The problems to be solved in case it should ever be found in our country are entirely hypothetical. The attitude of the public toward leprosy is a blot upon our civilization. The disease is caused by the Bacillus leprae. It is not, strictly speaking, a tropical disease, Norway and Iceland being countries in which it is indigenous. It is transmitted only by very intimate personal contact. The patient is not a danger to the community in which he dwells, unless it be proved that the sus- picion, now entertained, that the organism is transmitted by the bites of infected bedbugs is warranted. Even then cleanliness is the answer to the public health question involved. The segrega- tion of lepers in colonies is advisable on account of the repulsive nature of the deformities seen in the advanced cases: but not because there is any fear of an epidemic. Leprosy is endemic in many Central and South American States. There is a leper colonv in Louisiana. It is common in (408)](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2120617x_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
