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Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia Author:College of Physicians of Philadelphia Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A SMALL HOSPITAL EPIDEMIC OF PNEUMOCOCCUS INFECTIONS. With Remarks On The Transmission Of Pneumonia And The Methods By Which It Can Be PREVENTED.1 By DA... more »VID L. EDSALL, M.D., And ALBERT A. GHRISKEY, M.D. The extensive prevalence of pneumonia and the very high mortality of the disease Lave, within the last few years, been the subjects of frequent discussion; and there is general interest in determining the manner in which the disease is propagated and the methods by which it can be controlled. We know that pneumonia is an infectious disease, and we know many facts concerning the bacteria that usually produce it. We recognize also that infections do not arise from mysterious sources that are essentially beyond the human ken, but each day see more clearly the fact that those sick with infectious diseases constitute the supremely important sources of dissemination of those diseases. We are likewise growing into a clearer recognition of the equally important fact that bacterial diseases are not in part transmissible, in part intransmissible, but that they differ only in the readiness and directness with which they may be transmitted. Yet the attitude of the profession toward the control of pneumonia has been somewhat passive ; for in spite of this general knowledge there are certainly few physicians who adopt more active precautions to prevent the spread of the disease than to have the sputum from pneumonia patients destroyed, and perhaps to utter a gentle warning as to the possible danger in very close contact with those sick of the disease. i Read January 6,1904. It is quite true that direct transmission of pneumonia from case to case seems to be comparatively rare; that the disease does not generally appear in epidemic form, but develops sporadically; and that the...« less