Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Preventive medicine. 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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![From what we now know concerning the introduction of bacillary diseases in man and animals, it certainly, however, behoves medical men to be extremely careful in the selection of their lymph for vacci- nation ; and in a country where leprosy is rife, it seems to me that it will be advisable to exercise particular caution, and, if possible, avoid, as is now being done in Hawaiia, an indiscriminate arm-to-arm vaccination among the natives. I am glad to say that the question of the possibility of transmitting leprosy bacilli by vaccine is receiving attention on the ])art of the Indian Leprosy Commission, and that a paper on the subject by Drs. Beaven Rake, and Buckmaster will appear in the next number of the Leprosy Journal.* On the Importance of more actively enforcing the Ventilation of Public and other Buildings, suggesting a Standard of Impurity of Air as a Basis of Prosecutions. BY J. P. Williams-Freeman, M.D., Andover. In one way I consider myself very fortunate in being one of the last members of the Congress to read a paper in this Section, namely, that I have been able to hear and read a good deal of the work that has been done in this and other Sections, and it has all tended to confirm me in my belief that an improvement in the quality of the air supplied to public and other buildings, but especially to factories and workshops, is one of the most important, perhaps the most important, sanitary reform that we can hope to bring about. Ventilation is such an elementary common-place subject, and holds such an important general place in preventive medicine, that it seems almost unnecessary, not to say invidious, to select any particular disease as an illustration of its importance. Well in the front rank, however, of diseases fostered by impure air, stand phthisis and diseases of the respiratory system, taken either separately or together. The causation of phthisis we have heard discussed in this Section ; that of tuberculosis in the Section of Bacteriology. What, from a practical point of view, does all we have heard amount to ? This : that on the one hand the virus, the bacillus, is communicable to us chiefly by ingestion with food, and by inspiration with air, where it is very * “Journal of the Leprosy Investigation Committee,” No. 4, Dec. 1891, p. 33. The authors vaccinated 87 cases of leprosy at Almora, and 40 of these developed vesicles, 31 being normal ; “ in no case were leprosy bacilli undoubtedly found.” The whole question is discussed, and the authors conclude that “ it is evident that ■“ the risk of transmission of leprosy by vaccination is so small, that for all practical “ purposes it may be disregarded.”](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28045439_0397.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
