Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1888-01-13
PNEUMONIA A GERM DISEASE.
Said to BE Infectious but Not Contagious.
Fresh Air and Exercise.

monia, too, is to be classed as a germ dis
ease. The authority for this opinion is
DIR. a. G. Siebert, a German American
physician of New York. one of the most
competent authorities on the subject in
America. and an interchangeable investiga-
tor on modern scientific methods of the
causes of pneumonia, and especially the
degree to which the weather furthers this
disease
1T is my belief, certainly" said DR..
Siebert, THAT pneumonia is an infec-
tious, though not contagious, disease.
| People do not take it from each other,
but they may take it from the same
place. In my practice, as a very COM
mon thing, in the same family, two OF
more would have it. In a Bavarian
prison, out of 500 inmates, sixty-two died
of pneumonia in one year in one ward.
Not another ward was touched. DIR.
Emmerech was the physician attendant.
He ordered the floor of this ward to be
torn up. Beneath it there was found a
filling of refuse, impregnated with moist
ure in the proportion of 81 per cent. to
the whole mass, from the washings which
had dripped through the boards. The
rubbish was analvzed under powerful
IL
miasms which few years ago DR..
Friedlander had pointed out as being
found constantly in the lungs of people
who had died of pneumonia. This is one
| indication.
The infectious diseases begin with a
sudden chill. So does pneumonia. Pneu-
MOI lasts generally from seven to nine
days, disappearing with a crisis and a
profound sweat, and when the crisis is
past, the patient, though weak and ex-
hausted, is otherwise perfectly well.
This is the character of fever and the in
fectious diseases. Again. among people
exposed even to the severest conditions of
winter weather in the open air pneumo-
mia is a thing almost unknown. The
Arctic explorers in the extremes of ice
and snow and in pure air had no pneu-
monia. They had many other diseases,
though, incident to cold and hardships
Pneumonia occurs in summer as well as
in winter, proving that cold is not an in
dispensable cause. All physicians of
much practice have found cases of pneu-
monia originating in the same house at
different times of the year, and it is fire.
quently the case that those who have it
once have it again. The latter fact is
well known. An explanation of this,
which is at least allowable, is that the
locality is the cause of the disease rather
than special susceptibility in the people
attacked by it,
pneumonia is house disease. as is
the case, according to my belief, with
infammatory rheumatism and diphtheria.
In the warm air of the house the system
L., 81 l,,,e al 1
is only the producing cause. 1t prepared
the coddled lungs for the pneumonia poi
son which had its real origin in damp and
dirty rooms or cellars.
What is the cure? Well, the steps to
the cure have unhappily advanced but
little. But the relief and the prevention
are-no medicine and plenty of fresh air.
If you have consumption, a dangerous
cold or the fear of pneumonia. | should
say. if you cannot fresh air anywhere
else go to the Arctics for it; but get that,
at all events. if you want to live. a con-
sumptive who followed my advice lived
two years longer than = expectations
had been held that he could live. What
was the advice? No medicine and voy-
age in September down the Atlantic
coast. with directions to keep on deck as
long as was up, rain or shine, and to
sleep with the portfolio open, except when
it rained. His friends prophesied that he,
being seemingly in the last stages of con-
sumption, would come back in three
weeks a corpse. In three months he
came back with an added weight of fif-
teen pounds. He lived two years longer,
pursuing the fresh air regimen. On his
deathbed he told me that the open air
had given him those two years. His was
a genuine case of tuberculosis, too"
''What. then, is the connection between
the weather and the cause of pneumonia,
if. as you believe, pneumonia is germ
disease!'
NO poison can enter the blood except
through a raw surface; and it is only
where the respiratory tract has been irri-
tated that the poison germ can enter the
lungs"
"What weather. then, prepares the
lungs for the reception of the poison
seed?'
Whenever you find three things
humidity, cold and a wind of over fifteen
miles an hour-look out for pneumonia.
February is pneumonia's carnival month,
and by actual statistics. / have compared
the weather constituents for each day for
space of three years. with 900 cases of
pneumonia occurring during that time.
In this comparison the facts are that regu-
larry on the days of humidity. cold and
high wind the pneumonia statistics reach
their top mark. This is not theory; there
is the record. The worst pneumonia ac-
count is not necessarily on the coolest
DAYS, for with extreme cold there is very
probably no extreme humidity. 1t is the
two together that ravage. Dry cold
makes no such score. Consumptives who
thrive well in the high and dry cold of
Davoes. Switzerland, in winter. suffer
most in May. Chicago Times.