Infection

“ This enormous mass of disease furnishes ample material for infection on every side. A most infinitesimal germ, invisible, impalpable, would suffice to infect a single human body, and that body might suffice to infect very many others. ”

“ The agents carrying the germs of infection from one person to the other may be the infected persons themselves, or anything which has come in contact with their bodies and its secretions and excretions; thus, the air, room, furniture, vessels, clothing, food and drink, also insects and vermin, may all be carriers of infection. ”

“ The sources from which the infection is derived he believed to be—1st, from the dead body, regardless of age, sex, or disease, no matter whether the latter is of puerperal or non-puerperal origin, the virulence depending upon the stage of decomposition; 2d, diseased persons, whose malady is associated with decomposition of animal tissue, no matter whether the affected person suffers from childbed fever or not, the decomposing matter alone furnishing the product from which infection is derived ”

“ Also some sorts of Air may be full of infection, and infect many Men, Beasts, Birds, Vegetables, and the like; for Infections are variously produced, Internally as well as Externally, amongst several particular Creatures; for as the Plague may be made internally, or within the body of a particular Creature, without any exterior infection entring from without into the body, so an external Infection again may enter many several ways into the body. ”

“ The degree of infection is in proportion to the volume of air surrounding the patient; the air being what absorbs, dissipates and communicates the contagious principle. Infected substances communicate the disease for many years, in proportion to the ventilation they have undergone, or of which they are susceptible.——Jew physician: The degree of infection in the air about the sick depends upon the greater or less malignity of the disease, and other circumstances. ”

“ There is evidence that a mixed infection—that is, the introduction of more than one species of organism, for example, the tubercle bacillus and a pyogenic staphylococcus—increases the severity of the resulting disease. If one of the varieties gain the ascendancy, the poisons produced by the others so devitalise the tissue cells, and diminish their power of resistance, that the virulence of the most active organisms is increased. ”

“ In the laboratory the virulent infectious agent is brought into the animal by injection, under the skin, into the serous cavities or into the circulation, which are avenues through which in the natural disease infection rarely if ever takes place. ”

“ Hygienists assert that germs are transmitted either by direct or indirect means. The vehicles of transmission may be man himself, animals, or anything that will carry the germs from one person to another. Price says, “The most frequent and demonstrated mode of infection is by direct contact of dis-ease with the healthy, of the persons surrounding the infected one, such as physicians, nurses, etc.” ”

“ We shall content ourselves by saying that when an infection becomes established, as of scarlet fever, for example, the poisons that are produced are poured out by the organisms into the body fluids of the part where they happen to be located, and are taken up from there by the blood and distributed all over the body. ”

“ Which should be endeavour'd, as well by purifying the Air we breathe, as also by fortifying our selves against taking the Infection at our Nostrils, Mouth, or Pores of the Body, which are the chiefest, if not the only parts the Poison creeps in at. ”

“ Lately I have heard repeatedly of persons in this country who subjected themselves in similar manner to infection, inoculation and contagion with the most virulent kinds of bacteria and disease taints without developing the corresponding diseases. ”

“ Infection is a general term that includes contagion; and contagious diseases are infective diseases that may be transmitted directly or indirectly from patient to patient.
The pathological micro-organisms with which we shall deal in this article are (1) the Schizomycetes or Fission-Fungi, which are microscopical organisms that multiply by fission, and are commonly known as Bacteria; and (2) a few Protozoa, which are animal micro-organisms. ”

“ The most important congenital infections are syphilis, gonorrhœa, tuberculosis, variola, typhoid, pyogenic infection, tetanus, measles, scarlatina, influenza, meningitis, malaria, recurrent fever, pneumococcus, colon bacillus and others, mostly very rare. ”

“ General bodily health must be closely watched. The cause of infections must be met on surgical principles, as in any other infection, and the emunctories must be carefully looked after in this class, and, in those of chemical origin, its particular cause must be run down and met, whether in liver, intestine or kidney. ”

“ Infection is believed to be conveyed by the husks of cereals, especially barley; and the organism has been found adhering to particles of grain embedded in the tissues of animals suffering from the disease. In the human subject there is often a history of exposure to infection from such sources, and the disease is said to be most common during the harvesting months. ”

“ The defences of the organism being centred in the activity of the living tissue, any condition which depresses cell activity may have an effect in increasing susceptibility to infection. Animals which ordinarily are not susceptible to infection with a certain organism may be made so by prolonged hunger, or fatigue, by the influence of narcotics, by reduction of the body temperature, by loss of blood. ”

“ Infection disease are caught by touching such as charcoal, chloride of lime, etc. Measles, feaver are called disinfectionous because they are catching.—Fainted. If a person as fainted, take her out in the open air lay her down with her head. ”

“ The Progress of an Epidemic That it is at least as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical one; that such a disease will spread with the malignity and rapidity of the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health, and become developed in the most unlikely constitutions: is a fact as firmly established by experience as that we human creatures breathe an atmosphere. ”

“ Cold and moisture may also be enumerated among the causes that invite the attack of infectious diseases. They are of themselves simply productive of catarrhs, rheumatisms, and the like disorders; but if an infection should be accidentally present when the body is exposed to them, then instead of these complaints, the disease peculiar to that infection will be produced62. ”

“ The word infection is applied to the vehicle by which a malady is transmitted from one person to another by the air, and with or without actual contact. The type of infectious disease is small-pox, and this is also, as is well-known, a highly contagious complaint. Scarlet-fever, measles, whooping-cough, mumps, etc., are likewise both contagious and infectious, and make up the class of disorders popularly known as diseases which are "catching." ”

“ Infection is a more comprehensive term than contagion, as it may be used in alluding to all germ diseases, while the use of the term contagion is rightly limited to such diseases as are produced principally through individual contact. ”

“ CAUSES.——This is evidently a contagious distemper, and is generally communicated by infection. Whole families, and even entire villages, 272often receive the infection from one person. This ought to put people upon their guard against going near such patients as labour under the disorder; as by that means they endanger not only their own lives, but likewise those of their friends and connexions. ”

“ As the evidence has been accumulating, surgeons have learned many important facts, foremost among which is a knowledge of the common sources from which the infection of wounds occurs. At first it was thought that the air was the great source of infection, but the air bacteria have been found to be usually harmless. ”

“ More cases of infection occur amongst young medical men attending fever cases, whether in private practice or hospital wards, in a single month, than have occurred in the whole of the laboratories in the world since they were established. ”

“ In the latter, the name of the man, date of admission, and nature of disease, is placed over the bed of each patient, which in any contagious disease gives timely warning to any one fearing infection. ”

“ Not so generally, however, do we hear emphasis made upon the equally important facts that there is extreme danger of infection while these physiological functions are in progress, and that they subject the entire organism to such a strain that there results a dangerously narrow margin between health and disease. ”

“ The living fountain of infection from the patient himself, constantly giving out the fresh material, cannot of course be so closed, but whether he lives or dies, if the above be observed, he will leave no infection behind him. ”

“ The principal vehicle of transmission is man himself. He is also the principal recipient of infection. Germs may be found in the various secretions such as those from the eye, ear, nose, throat, from wounds and in the pus from abscesses; they may be found also in sputum, urine and in the solid excretions. In [Pg 201] these ways they may be transmitted from one individual to another. They may also be carried by animals, insects, food, milk, water, air or any other mode or vehicle. The most common mode of transference, however, is from person to person. ”

“ These particles are so fine as to be invisible; they may be inspired, and their presence in the air forms an area of indeterminate extent around the infected person within which such infection is possible. Such spray formation is also an important means of the extension of infection in the sick individual, for it is continually formed and inspired. ”

“ Not a few, however, of their most mortal maladies are the production of contagion, infection, and other like causes, all exercising a general tendency to disease difficult to define and impossible to avoid. ”

“ As infective diseases cause the vast majority of cases of severe and crippling affections and of deaths in every community, the value of a knowledge of the nature of infection and how it affects the body, by the people of all How Infection
Works ranks, ages, and conditions, cannot be estimated in its influence on the future of the human race. ”

“ A disease may be infectious but not contagious. Malaria is an instance. Infection means an ability to enter the body from any source, wind, water, food or other persons and produce a characteristic disease. ”

“ Though in man infection through wounds is the readiest way of receiving the disease, the bacillus may also obtain access through the digestive organs, the lungs and mucous membranes of the eyes, nose and lips. ”

“ For the chief symptoms of onset see page 318.
Persons vary in susceptibility to attack by different infective diseases. The intensity of an attack depends on the condition of the patient, and on the number and the virulence of the particular microbes infecting the patient. In certain families attacks of particular diseases are more severe, and attacks are more liable to occur than in others.
It has been shown in certain diseases that the cells and the fluids of the body have a protective effect against infection. ”

“ The small quantity of diseased organic matter originally introduced into the system by absorption, acts as a ferment and reproduces itself in the mass of the blood, until this becomes unfitted for the performance of its functions and the animal is killed; the active principle being thus copiously present, is exuded from the skin and lungs and gives a contagious character to the disease, or it remains only in the blood, or is secreted in pustules, constituting infection, by which the disease may be communicated to some other person. ”

“ Modes of Conveying.—The nearer a person is to a patient the more likely one is to take or convey the disease. Clothing, bedding, etc., may retain the poison for months. Scales from the skin of a patient, dried secretions, the urine if inflammation of the kidneys (nephritis) exists, the discharges (feces) from the bowels, are all means of infection. The longer a person remains near the patient the more likely he is to convey the disease. Foods handled by those sick of the disease, or by those who may have been near patients may convey the disease. This is especially true of milk. ”

“ In the male the possibility of infection taking place is increased if the virus is retained under cover of a long and tight prepuce, and if there are abrasions on the surface with which it comes in contact. ”

“ Infection acts through the air. Poison the air breathed by individuals and we have infection. Shut up 150 healthy people in a Black Hole of Calcutta, and in twenty-four hours you have an infection produced, so powerful that it will in that time have destroyed nearly the whole of the inmates. Sick people are more susceptible than healthy people; and if you shut up sick people together, without a sufficient space and sufficient fresh air, you will have not only fever, but erysipelas, pyæmia, a [130] nd the usual tribe of Hospital-generated epidemic diseases produced. ”

“ Many infections begin acutely and later change to the chronic type. Syphilis in man is a good illustration.
The differences between acute and chronic infections are partly due to the nature of the organism, partly to the number of organisms introduced and the point of their introduction and partly to the resistance of the animal infected.
An infectious disease is said to be specific when one kind of organism is responsible for its manifestations—as diphtheria due to the Corynebacterium diphtheriæ, lockjaw due to Clostridium tetani, Texas fever due to the Piroplasma bigeminum, etc. ”

“ The only important point to be ascertained is, whether there be in nature any substance which, applied to the internal parts of the body, or to a wound, will instantly disorder the whole in such a manner as to bring on a violent disease which may prove mortal in a short time. If any such there is, that substance, whether solid or fluid, visible or invisible, may with propriety be called contagion; and if any such proceeds222 from the body of a diseased person to one in health, the vapour so proceeding is infection. ”