Litchfield enquirer., 1870-09-01
PREvENTABLE DISEASES.

the end of the the last century, and all the efforts of medical science, were devoted to one aim,-The discovery of means of curing disease; to find something, which, when employed by one i'll of fever, or an inflammation, should stop that fever or in- fammation in it's full career, and rapidly restore the patient to his usual health and strength. They sometimes imagined that they had discovered the specific, whether in blood-letting, or some other mode of treatment; but they were always compelled, in the end, to acknowlege, after long trial, that their specific had failed to cure; they were unsuccessful, and as likely to be unsuccessful, as was the alchemist in his attempt to transniute the metals, or to discover the elixir of life. But great change has now passed over the aim and object of medical art; the cure of disease, once set above all others in importance, has sunk to secondary place, and the first aim of medicine is nowadays to prevent dis ease. This great revolution was as impor- tant to medical science as the observations of Priestly were to chemistry, or Bacon s philosophical reform to the laws of thought ] It was this that turned the whole stream of medical energy into the channel in which it now runs; till then, men had been con- tent to accept disease as an inevitable af- 1 fiction; they now begin to understand that 1 it was possible to prevent it, and from that time the energies of :all the busy workers in every university and school of medicine in Europe, have been devoted to one aim The extinction of disease.
 1 Let it, then, be reiterated that the first aim of medicine is to prevent disease. The public have not yet learnt this, they still imagine that the only business of the doctor was to cure them when they are i'll. In newspapers, the writers often blame the doctors for not having found out cure for such and such a complaint, just then prev alent; they demand 10 be told, for example, the use of an art which cannot cure either the cattle plague or the cholera. The an ] swer to this is, that no one nowadays ex- poets to find out cure for these diseases; from what we know of their natural history, it seems probable that there never will be found out cure. Further, much more could be done by what we even now know of the methods by which they can be sup pressed, than if we could find out method for curing one-half of the cases attacked. The popular ignorance on this subject was never brought out so completely as in the year of the cattle-plague in England, when the public for several months refused to listen to the only sientifc and rational plan for it's suppression, offered by MT. Gamgee, but adopted instead the widest and most absurd methods for it's cure, suggested by persons who had not the slightest preten- sions to knowledge on the subject. Had Mir. Gamgee's advice been acted upon in the early stage of the plague, England could be now many millions richer than it is. It is to be hoped that our readers will dO tnelr Oest to d1spe1 ti10 uno0iOuUif0 tions, prevalent amongst even well-educa' ted people,as to the aim of medicine, for it it is only by wide diffusion of knowl ege on this subject, that any attempt to check the progress of the immense amount disease entirely preventable, whether by state interference or individual action, can be successful.
 On referring to the English Registrar Generals reports for the last ten years, we find that in England and Wales about five hundred thousand people die every year; of which five hundred thousand. one hun dred thousand die of zymotic diseases; that is. twenty out of every hundred people who die, die, usually at an early age, o1 disease which can and ought to be prevent ed.
 No approach to any means of curing zymotic diseases has been discovered, but of all the complaints known they are the most easily preventable; in no other group of disease is there a something which car almost be handled, which is the source o1 the complaint, and without which the com plalnt would not exist. It is to the entire removal of this cause that our efforts in the suppression of these diseases are directed A knowledge of their natural history is necessary to comprehension of the means to be employed in preventing their occur ence.
 The diseases called zymotic-a name which Is bad, because based on false theo ry, but which has become sanctioned from long use-are, in systematic medicine known as the acute specific diseases; acute because always of short duration, tending spontaneously to cease at fixed date from the attack. and never extending ovel months and years, like chronic diseases specific, because they are accompanied bJ a process peculiar to each one of the group 8 process quite of it's own kind, and un known in the course of other acute com plaints. Amongst them stand measles scarlet fever, whooping- -congh, diphtheria humps, typhoid fever, typhus fever, and smallpox. Measles may be regarded as a type of this class of complaints. It has 3 greater tendency to spare the life of the individual than most of the others; it is very widely distributed. and few people reach adult age without having suffered from an attack. The history of the com plaint. and of those associated to it, is therefore, personally interesting to almost every one.
 Each disease, as general rule, and only as general rule, occurs but once during life. It not unfrequently happens, how. ever, that second attack of measles or smallpox occurs. Many years ago, the. ory was propounded, referring the whole oi the phenomena of these complaints to a species of fermentation. When the germs of the yeast plant are introduced into so- lution of sugar in water kept at suitable temperature, the yeast-plant converts the sugar into two new compounds quite differ ent from the original sugar, alcohol and carbonic acid. Nearly the same changes were believed to occur in the human body. Every child was supposed to be born with a variety of fermentable substances in his blood, in number equal, and corresponding, to every one of the zymotic diseases. These fermentable substances meeting with the germs of disease, were acted on by them exactly as the sugar is acted on by the yeast plant; such process going on in the body would naturally enough cause feel <P ;11naco. <ha &orro &o&; x,oc cr,-,-