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:
- Machinery of Digestion
Machinery of Digestion.-From the number and differently formed structures which constitute the digestive organs, it will be observed that the function is a very highly complex process. If the food were thrown directly into the circulating fluid, it could not be used for the purpose of nutrition. It requires for its transformation into blood, bone and muscle, a series of complex machinery, each part of which is specially designed for the particular part it plays in this wonderful and complicated process.
Use of Mouth and Teeth.- the mechanical part, which, although not shown in this chart, may be carefully studied in the chart giving the different views of the head, is performed by the mouth and teeth, and pulverized food is subject to the action of the saliva. The lubricated morsel of food is now gathered into a ball and conveyed to the back of the mouth by the muscles of the cheek and tongue. On its arrival here, the soft palate lifts upward and closes the posterior nasal openings; the epiglottis shuts down over the trachea or windpipe, forming a bridge over which the food passes, thus preventing it from falling into the respiratory tract.
For this section I don’t really know to anything extraordinary, and I’m just going to move on to the next sections from here as we do have some interesting segments coming up shortly.
- Typhoid from Milk
Typhoid from Milk. — it is also been proven in late years the typhoid is transmitted from infected milk, cows have been allowed to drink from streams that have had the discharges from typhoid patients thrown into them here in the germs have been taken into the cows and finally into the milk. This note was distributed to families and in many cases caused typhoid.
If you think that is interesting check out this article from the New York times from 1913(pdf). The timing is extraordinary as this could be close to the date of publication of this book. I suspect that since the book does not mention this experiment and finding the author either did not give merit to the experiment or the experiment had not yet been published, ergo the book was published first. 100 years from now someone will probably be trying to compare the traces of Apidexin or other drugs like we are typhoid
That’s pretty amazing to find something that close in time frame.
Extract from the Article:
IMMUNIZED MILK KILLS TYPHOID AND TUBERCLE BACILLI; Dr. Julius Rosenberg’s Experiments Lead Him to Believe That the Milk of Immunized Animals Will Prevent These Infections and May Cure Them in Human Beings.
By Van Buren Thorne, M.D.
December 14, 1913, Sunday
Section: Magazine Section, Page SM7, 3654 words
DR. JULIUS ROSENBERG, a well-known physician of this city, is carrying on a series of experiments in the heart of the Catskill Mountains, the results of which are likely, in his opinion, to check the spread of typhoid fever and tuberculosis and reduce the mortality from these diseases.
- Another Case of Infection (Cholera Reference to teawater pump in London 1854)
Another Case of Infection.-Another famous illustration is found in the history of the "tea water pump" of broad Street, Near Golden square, London, which during the cholera visitation of 1854, killed nearly 500 persons in a single week, in one of the fashionable localities of the city. It has long been known that water containing five or six grains of lime and magnesium to the gallon is much to be preferred for making tea to water of any other quality. This is because the line precipitates the astringent matter of the leaf, yet does not interfere with the solution of the desirable constituents; and hence certain wells which have the proper proportion of mineral matter come to be valued very highly by persons of nice taste.
The images represent a tea water pump in New York(left) placed over a natural spring (right) that had existed in Manhattan long before Europeans came to the colonies and helped create situations where cholera could break out.
This reference to the 1854 Cholera outbreak would have been relatively recent in the minds of many. It would have only been about 60 years old at the time of this articles printing, however, when this book was first published, it may have been referenced when the epidemic was only 20 – 30 years old possibly. In terms of recency or relevancy, we today might have a similar perspective on the massacre at Jonestown or the Kennedy killing. It would have made a much bigger impression on people that heard the news than say a case of food poisoning resulting from a problem with popcorn machines or something in a bar or movie theater.
