Fever Germs in Ice.  -- in Connecticut, the Board of Health informs us that, in several instances, attention has been drawn to sewage contaminated ponds with ice houses upon their borders, and that several isolated cases of typhoid fever, and one death, from the free use of the ice blue by sewage, have been recorded in that state.  The curious natural experiment of the United States steamship limit, elsewhere detailed, shows conclusively that fever germs are not infallibly destroyed by a freezing, probably not by a zero temperature, and contributes its share of proof that impure eyes, especially when gathered from ponds polluted by sewage, they constitute a prolific cause of disease.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• Cause for Bright’s Disease
  
  

  Cause for Bright’s Disease. — it has long seemed probable that the increasing prevalence of that terribly fatal malady, "Bright’s disease," especially in cities and large towns, maybe due to the poisonous effects of exceeding minute quantities of lead, dissolved from the lead pipes so generally employed as service conduits, notwithstanding the protective coating, which usually forms so promptly upon them.

  In the year 2008, this paragraph would seem like something rather obvious. But it is remarkable to look back in time and see how people consider the potential for this problem to exist, before science had proven it out. We sometimes forget that our knowledge is built on many many different precursors and actions that were taken before we came to be. Humanity learns its lessons from the people that come before it and the actions that they take. Sometimes they learn those lessons quickly, and sometimes they learned those lessons very slowly, whether they are trying to understand lead poisoning or come up with better egg nog recipes. This is one of the reasons why history is so important for us to study, not only do we get to learn some of the items from the past to avoid making the same mistakes, we get to learn how people in the past recognize the problem and dealt with it so that we can recognize and deal with new problems today.

  Technorati tags: Bright’s Disease, Lead Poisoning History
• Cholera Infection
  
  

  Cholera Infection. — a few days after their return the same terrible disease rapidly attack other members of the household, so that, within a fortnight, and that one little circle, 11 person’s had been seized with cholera, including a mother, father, grandmother, two daughters, sons, doctor, serving lad, serving maid, labor and countrywoman, and of these 11 only three survived, namely, the Sun, a daughter and a serving lad. Later, in the countrywoman’s family, there was another fatal case. It cannot well be doubted, concluded Mr. Simon, but that the exciting cause of the succession of events was in some way or other the return of the parents from Weymouth-of the father with the remains of choleraic diarrhea upon him, of the mother with apparently the beginnings of the same complaint. But this is only part of the case, and the remainder teaches a most impressive lesson. All the drinking water used in the house came from a well beneath the floor of the scullery, and into that well there was habitual  soakage from the water closet.

  Now for some people reviewing 100 year old accounts of cholera epidemics might be about as exciting as reviewing marketing budgets and covering line items for promotional pens to insure that enough red pens versus blue pens have been ordered. That said this actually has some very interesting historical references in the next few sections so don’t miss them.

• View of the Eye
  
  

  The next section covers The View of the Eye on page 36.

  The next section goes into a short description of the image of the eye as provider from a profile of a human skull which includes some of the muscles and nerves associated with the eyeball. It does not include a detailed description were drawing of the actual eyeball other than its contractual dry within that cross-section including the rest of the head.

  View of the Eye — We can likewise view the human eye as it lays in position in its bony socket, and wonder at our creators munificence and benevolence in providing us with such a delicate instrument of vision with which to light our way about in the world, and view the magnificent beauties of nature that surround us on every hand. Here, too, we observe the teeth, those essential prerequisites to personal beauty, and.able adjuncts to the powers of articulation and speech, protruding through the gums, their roots being visible above and below the gums; and the lower set we see the dental nerve distributing its nervous supply to their individual and collective roots.

  There are a couple things that stand out in this one simple paragraph.

  1. This book is written essentially by a collection of editors, that seemed to have taken information from many other oaks and sources over the years. As the book was written initially in the 1860s and updated throughout the next 50 odd years it’s possible that copyrights and copying or even citing sources were not as necessary at the time. So it’s difficult to tell who the original source of any of this information might have been other than the collective thank you at the beginning of the book. With all that said, it strikes me as odd that the editors would stray from the stated topic of “the eye” and move into a short discussion of the teeth within the same paragraph.
  2. Often the book has already mentioned references to God, as the book was written at the turn of the century closing out the Victorian era, I assume that they are referring to the Christian God. I actually have few doubts about that. However it is illustrative of the fact that this particular book was written in a way that was not secular in nature. I suspect we will see many additional references throughout the book as time goes on and I’m withholding further views on the subject until I have a more complete picture of what the true views of the “editors” might be as they manifest in the edited writing.