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Page 24
[2] By transudation is meant the constant interchange between
the blood and the tissue fluid.
CHAPTER V
INFECTIOUS DISEASES.--THE HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE OF EPIDEMICS OF
DISEASE.--THE LOSSES IN BATTLE CONTRASTED WITH THE LOSSES IN ARMIES
PRODUCED BY--INFECTIOUS DISEASES.--THE DEVELOPMENT OF KNOWLEDGE OF
EPIDEMICS.--THE VIEWS OF HIPPOCRATES AND ARISTOTLE.--SPORADIC AND
EPIDEMIC DISEASES.--THE THEORY OF THE EPIDEMIC CONSTITUTION.--THEORY
THAT THE CONTAGIOUS MATERIAL IS LIVING.--THE DISCOVERY OF BACTERIA BY
LOEWENHOECK IN 1675.--THE RELATION OF CONTAGION TO THE THEORY OF
SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.--NEEDHAM AND SPALLANZANI.--THE DISCOVERY OF
THE COMPOUND MICROSCOPE IN 1605.--THE PROOF THAT A LIVING ORGANISM IS
THE CAUSE OF A DISEASE.--ANTHRAX.--THE DISCOVERY OF THE ANTHRAX
BACILLUS IN 1851.--THE CULTIVATION OF THE BACILLUS BY KOCH.--THE MODE
OF INFECTION.--THE WORK OF PASTEUR ON ANTHRAX.--THE IMPORTANCE OF THE
DISEASE.
These are diseases which are caused by living things which enter the
tissues of the body and, living at the expense of the body, produce
injury. Such diseases play an important part in the life of man; the
majority of deaths are caused directly or indirectly by infection. No
other diseases have been so much studied, and in no other department
of science has knowledge been capable of such direct application in
promoting the health, the efficiency and the happiness of man. This
knowledge has added years to the average length of life, it has
rendered possible such great engineering works as the Panama Canal,
and has contributed to the food supply by making habitation possible
over large and productive regions of the earth, formerly uninhabitable
owing to the prevalence of disease. It is not too much to say that our
modern civilization is dependent upon this knowledge. The massing of
the people in large cities, the factory life, the much greater social
life, which are all prominent features of modern civilization, would
be difficult or impossible without control of the infectious diseases.
The rapidity of communication and the increased general movement of
people, which have developed in equal ratio with the massing, would
serve to extend widely every local outbreak of infection. The
principles underlying fermentation and putrefaction which have been
applied with great economic advantage to the preservation of food were
many of them developed in the course of the study of the infectious
diseases. Whether the development of the present civilization is for
the ultimate advantage of man may perhaps be disputed, but medicine
has made it possible.
The infectious diseases appearing in the form of great epidemics have
been important factors in determining historical events, for they have
led to the defeat of armies, the fall of cities and of nations. War is
properly regarded as one of the greatest evils that can afflict a
nation, since it destroys men in the bloom of youth, at the age of
greatest service, and brings sorrow and care and poverty to many. But
the most potent factor in the losses of war is not the deaths in
battle but the deaths from disease. If we designate the lives lost in
battle, the killed and the wounded who die, as 1, the loss of the
German army from disease in 1870-71 was 1.5, that of the Russians in
1877-78 was 2.7, that of the French in Mexico was 2.8, that of the
French in the Crimea 3.7, that of the English in Egypt 4.2. The total
loss of the German army in 1870-71 from wounds and disease was 43,182
officers and men, and this seems a small number compared with the
129,128 deaths from smallpox in the same period in Prussia alone. In
the Spanish American war there were 20,178 cases of typhoid fever with
1,580 deaths. In the South African war there were in the British
troops 31,118 cases of typhoid with 5,877 deaths, and 5,149 deaths
from other diseases while the loss in battle was 7,582. The Athenian
plague which prevailed during the Peloponnesian war, 431-405 B.C., not
only caused the death of Pericles, but according to Thucydides a loss
of 4,800 Athenian soldiers, and brought about the downfall of the
Athenian hegemony in Greece. In the Crimean war between 1853-56,
16,000 English, 80,000 French and 800,000 Russians died of typhus
fever. The plague contributed as much as did the arms of the Turks to
the downfall of Constantinople and the Eastern Empire in 1453. It was
the plague which in 1348 overthrew Siena from her proud position as
one of the first of the Italian cities and the rival of Florence, and
broke the city forever, leaving it as a phantom of its former glory
and prosperity. The work on the great cathedral which had progressed
for ten years was suspended, and when it was resumed it was upon a
scale adjusted to the diminished wealth of the city, and the plan
restricted to the present dimensions. As a little relief to the
darkness the same plague saw the birth of the novel in the tales of
Boccaccio, which were related to a delighted audience of the women who
had fled from the plague in Florence to a rural retreat.
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