Canadian Journal Of Public Health 1910 Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Canadian Journal of Public Health, 1910 The term isolation is here used in its broadest sense, meaning the cutting of communication between the sick and the well. Probably every one will admit that the results of the attempts at isolation during the past thirty or forty years have, to say the least, been disappointing. It is true that phenomenal success in the control of certain contagious diseases has been attained, where artificial immunization is possible, or when massive infection by water, or food, is preventable, or when insect carriers can be largely eliminated, but the prevention of those diseases which are spread chiefly by fairly direct contact of person with person has not been very successful. During the eighties of the last century our English friends expected to exterminate scarlet fever by hospitalization, but the incidence of this disease has not decreased in English cities, even when from ninety to ninety-five per cent, of notified cases are so isolated. London is, even now, passing through a very extensive outbreak. There has been little, if any, change in the incidence of scarlet fever and diphtheria in the United States, though the mortality has greatly decreased. We admit 60,000 cases of smallpox in our country last year, and perhaps there were half as many more, though this ought to be one of the easiest diseases to control by isolation and quarantine, and we also have an invaluable aid in vaccination. During 1917 and 1918 there were in the army of the United States 86,000 admissions of measles, and 188,000 of mumps. No one claims that, as yet, demonstrable impression has been made on measles and whooping cough in our cities. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.