Sanitation for public health nurses (the fundamentals of public health) by Hill Hibbert Winslow 1871-1947

Author:Hill, Hibbert Winslow, 1871-1947
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sanitation, Nursing
Publisher: New York, The Macmillan company
Published: 1919-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IX

spmiaaoLOGT— theobt and practice

Efndemiokigy may be described as including tbe s and tbe art of dealing witb epidenics—hence, as we now j understand them, witb infectious diseases.

Eariy epidemiology varied according to the peojdes involved and tbe stage of development in science they had reached.

Tbe eariiest explanations of tbe great plagues and pestilences attributed tbem to tbe mabgnity of offended devila^ I or of offended gods—but later, natural pbentsnena on a great scale, such as unusual conjunctions of the planets; tmusual severity or unusual mildness of the weather; the Btirring up of soils; Soods; the stagnation of waters which OBually flowed; everything or anything out of the way, that happened to be coincident with the outbreak, earned tbe blame for it. Bad smells of all kinds have for ages been con-odered causes of disease—especially the smells of a deserted battlefield. So strong is this bebef even to-day that after the battle of tbe Mame the Pasteur Institute of Paris was compelled to issue a statement that a pestilence need not be feared despite the unburied bodies left on the ground! Everyone knows now that tbe healthiest body of men ever assembled lived in the fearful conditions of the trenches of the front line, unharmed by the stench, for months.

We now understand that epidemics arise merely by the transfer of the infectious agent, a germ of some kind, from one living body to another living body; and that outside

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