The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-04-16
THE DREADED SPOTTED FEVER
RAvAGE MADE
  SPREAD $ A

1 fore this effort bears fruit cannot be l doubted when one remembers what l victories medicine has won in the past | few decades over other scourges. At a | dinner given last year on the occasion | of the twenty first birthday of the New York Post-Graduate Medical School. Dr. Keen. in urging the State endow- | ment of medical schools, said that in | 1796. the year of Edward Jenner's dis
 covery of vaccination. two million per | sons died of smallpox in Russia and | added that 1t was once as uncommon 1 to see a man in the streets of London | who was not pock-marked as 1t Is now to see one who is. And just as small pox has practically been driven from | the civilized quarters of the globe, so | the terrors of diphtheria have been re- | moved and the mortality has fallen from 40 per cent. to and eight-tenths | per cent. Ever yellow fever and l cholera have been curbed wherever it | is possible to insist on proper sanita- | tion, and there are comparatively few | left of the thousand-an lone plaques
 before which the physician was once powerless.
 Up to the present time, however, cerebro spinal meningitis has been | hard nut to crack The particular germ which Is the root of this evil has | been discovered by an examination un-
 
 of the patient. The task of extracting this fluid. by the point of a needle-a process known as spinal puncture-is ! a remarkable instance of the ease with ! which modern science can perform tn" most delicate operations In spite o | the sensitiveness of the spinal cord the
 fluid can now be extracted with no
 more inconvenience to the patient than would be afforded by an ordinary pin | nrirk dannnHQ
 tiOn," said one physician. speaking of | the effect of the germ. If the germ | settles on the brain it Is cerebrO spinal
 meningitis and if it could get down to the knee cap IL would cause trouble | there. But why on earth it should in
 sist' on going up to the brain these last | two years, we don't know"
 New Workers just now are inclined
 to attribute the evil to the condition
 of the streets after a winter of eX- ceptiOnal severity and heavy snowfalls
 which have greatly impeded the work
 of the street cleaning department. This | inference was strengthened by the re- cent death of two small children from cerebro spinal meningitis in Little Vest Twelfth Street-a thoroughfare which was at that time in a most unattract-
 i've condition but which has been clean
 ed up since the attention of the au- thorities was called to 1t by the out break of the disease there.
 Attributing the epidemic to unsan- | itary conditions explains nothing. how ever. Beyond the facts that persons whose vitality is depressed by un- healthy surroundings fall an easier prey to every form of illness and that germs of every kind are believed to thrive on dirt, there Is nothing to con- meet the present outbreak with the al- ways disputed question whether the city is clean or not Bacteriologists working in their laboratories have been able to find means of nourishing the cerebro spinal meningitis germs in test | tubes, but how they live when at llb- erty in the outside world and beyond the reach of microscopes no one has yet found any way of disco"ari' 2.
 Even if the manner in which the infection is spread is still a mystery 1t is quite certain that careful nurs- , ing and feeding are essential to re- covery. This explains why it is that. while in the whole of the city the percentage of mortality is 70 per cent and in the crowded quarters where the fever is most flourishing even higher. of the patients treated at the
 Post Graduate Hospital. for instance, the percentage of deaths has been a little more than 50. It is possible for the very poor to receive in their own homes the gratuitous attendance of the best physicians but no amount of charitable work can make a dirty,