Disinfection and individual prophylaxis against infectious diseases / George M. Sternberg.

  • Sternberg, George Miller, 1838-1915.
Date:
1900, ©1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Disinfection and individual prophylaxis against infectious diseases / George M. Sternberg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    experience of sanitarians, derived from practical efforts to restrict the extension of infectious diseases, is of the greatest value, and that this experience is to a great extent in accord with the results of exact experiments made in the laboratory. (b) Inoculation experiments upon susceptible aniamls, made di- rectly with infectious material which has been subjected to the action of a disinfectant, have been made by numerous observers. The proof of disinfection in this case is failure to produce the characteristic symptoms which result from inoculation with similar material not disinfected. Thus, Davaine found that the blood of an animal just dead from the disease known by English writers as anthrax or splenic fever (Fr. Charbon), inoculated into a healthy rabbit or guinea-pig, in the smallest quantity, infallibly produces death within two or three days; and the blood of these animals will again infect and cause the death of others, and so on indefinitely. This anthrax blood therefore was infectious material, which could be utilized for experiments re- lating to the comparative value of disinfectants. Davaine made many such experiments, not only with the blood of anthrax, but also with that of a fatal form of septicaemia in rabbits, which is known by his name. Other investigators have followed up these experiments upon infectious material of the same kind, and also upon material from other sources—e. g., the infectious material of glanders, of tuber- culosis, of symptomatic anthrax, of fowl cholera, of swine plague, etc. It has been proved that the infectious agent in all of the diseases mentioned is a living germ, and that disinfection consists in destroy- ing the vitality of this germ. But in experiments made with blood or other material obtained directly from diseased animals, the results would be just as definite and satisfactory if we were still ignorant as to the exact nature of the infecting agent. The test shows the de- struction of infecting power without any reference to the cause of the special virulence, which is demonstrated to be neutralized by certain chemical agents in a given amount. All of the experiments made with the above mentioned kinds of virus have been made upon the lower animals; but there is one kind of material which it is justifiable to use upon man hims If, and with which numerous experiments of a very satisfactory character have been made. This material is vaccine virus. Fresh vaccine, when inoculated into the arm of an unvacci- nated person, gives rise to a very characteristic result,—the vaccine vesicle. The inference seems justified that any agent which will neutralize the specific infecting power of this material will also neu- tralize the smallpox virus. Thus far it has not been definitely proved that the infective agent in vaccine virus is a living germ; but the numerous experiments made have shown that the chemical