Sick list

“ Every house has its favorite, and some of these are regarded as especially clever in curing sickness. It being a very unhealthful, low-lying district where my school was, I contracted malarial fever, and went to bed very sick. ”

“ In 1910 these seriously sick persons numbered more than 3,000,000. Even more significant, perhaps, is the fact that at least half of our national sickness could be prevented if knowledge and resources that we now possess were fully utilized. ”

“ One half of the sickness in our land is catching sickness. That is, it is sickness which passes from one person to another and is caused by tiny germs or microbes. A catching sickness is called a contagious disease. Some of the common catching diseases are sore throat, colds, diphtheria, pneumonia, typhoid fever, measles, grippe, and whooping cough.
How we get a Catching Sickness.—We get a catching sickness by taking into our bodies the germs from some other person. The germs of the sick do not pass off in the breath, but in the spit or anything else which comes from their bodies. ”

“ Now, if you please, there is such mortal fear of infection that we are to leave the sick to suffer, just as if we were savages. You know those new hospital trains that were started to take patients from the hospitals down to the health resorts. ”

“ It is distressing to go into a lodge of some ten or twenty fires, and count twenty or twenty-five, some in the midst of the measles, others in the last stages of dysentery, in the midst of every kind of filth, of itself sufficient to cause sickness, with no means of alleviating their inconceivable sufferings, with perhaps one well person to look after the wants of two sick ones. ”

“ The best guarantee against such loss, the best protection of health, and the most essential element of vital statistics is prompt, complete record of cases of sickness. Statistics of sickness are confined to sickness from transmissible diseases, because we have not yet arrived at the point where we recognize the state's right to require information, except when the sick person is a menace to the health of other persons. ”

“ Occupation.—During one epidemic, water-carriers, or those who used much water, or who dealt in oil and fats were found comparatively free; but this observation cannot be relied upon. Those whose business requires them to come much in contact with the sick, and also those who are engaged in cleaning are naturally more exposed to infection. 16 It has been said that one attack generally protects from a second, which, if it occurs, usually runs a mild course.
Sanitation and Personal Hygiene.—Plague, germs thrive in filth. ”

“ Keeping it cheerful and healthy becomes burdensome, and a task that he neglects. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick;" men's minds become morbid; the body sympathises with the mind, and in its turn becomes predisposed to disease and Cholera, Dysentery or Fever becoming epidemic, may, in a few weeks, decimate the force. ”

“ Slight causes, therefore, which would produce little or no effect upon the mind of one in firm health, may affect strongly the mind of a sick man. A single example will suffice. The patient was sick with typhus fever. ”

“ V. Let me advise you, in your visits to the sick, never to appear in a hurry, nor to talk of indifferent matters before you have made the necessary inquiries into the symptoms of your patient's disease.
VI. Avoid making light of any case. “Respice finem” should be the motto of every indisposition. There is scarcely a disease so trifling, that has not, directly or indirectly, proved an outlet to human life. This consideration should make you anxious and punctual in your attendance upon every acute disease, and keep you from risking your reputation by an improper or hasty prognosis. ”

“ Doctor Johnson said the sick man is a rascal ❦ Not only is the remark true, but Doctor Johnson might have gone further and stated that a long period of rascality is required to produce most cases of sickness. Hate, prejudice, revenge, jealousy, wrath, are all disturbers of the circulation, and producers of toxins. These toxins poison the entire system, and continued, may produce rheumatism, dyspepsia, Bright’s disease, or various other pleasant things for which we look to the doctor for relief. ¶ Most people go through life on a short allowance of ozone, and a surfeit of food. ”

“ Every one knows the tendency of disease to produce irritation,—sometimes imperceptibly to the sufferer, sometimes unavoidably, and with a painful consciousness. In no duty or sympathy for the sick is there more need of kind allowance ”

“ Some indeed paid for their audacious Boldness with the Price of their Lives; an infinite Number fell sick, and the Physicians had more Work than ever, only with this Difference, that more of their Patients recovered; that is to say, they generally recovered, but certainly there were more People infected, and fell sick now, when there did not die above a Thousand, or Twelve Hundred in a Week, than there was when there died Five or Six Thousand a Week; so entirely negligent were the People at that Time, in the great and dangerous Case of Health and Infection ”

“ In cases of long-continued confinement from sickness, it is very desirable to have a good variety of articles for the sick, as the invalid is wearied with the same round,212 and perhaps may be suffering for some ingredient of food, which is not found in the articles provided. ”

“ The master of every house, as soon as any one in his house complaineth either of botch, or purple, or swelling in any part of his body, or falleth otherwise dangerously sick without apparent cause of some other disease, shall give notice thereof to the examiner of health, within two hours after the said sign shall appear. ”

“ We had an average of 900 men sick every day. For the year, this would give us 328,500 days of sickness, and for the ten years 3,285,000 days of sickness. If our rate had been 300 per 1,000, a very moderate figure compared with what it was under the French, we should have had 11,700 sick every day. ”

“ Diseases which are communicated from person to person are caused by some material which passes from the sick to 15the healthy, and which has the property of increasing and multiplying in the systems of the persons it attacks. In syphilis, small-pox, and vaccinia, we have physical proof of the increase of the morbid material, and in other communicable diseases the evidence of this increase, derived from the fact of their extension, is equally conclusive. ”

“ There is a growing tendency to discriminate between sickness and illness, limiting the words sick and sickness to some slight disturbance of the physical system, as nausea, and applying the words ill and illness to protracted disease and disordered health. ”

“ And great disorders have been and are caused with such sick when they leave the said hospital with little health and strength—some returning to their own houses, and some to those of others, where because of the little or no comfort, and the poor and injurious food, with wine, tobacco, buyo, and other similar things, and the continual temptations to associate with women of evil life, they relapse, so that their sickness has no cure. ”

“ But the Physicians being sent to inspect the Bodies, they assur’d the People that it was neither more or less than the Plague with all its terrifying Particulars, and that it threatned an universal Infection, so many People having already convers’d with the Sick or Distemper’d, and having, as might be suppos’d, received Infection from them, that it would be impossible to put a stop to it. ”

“ If a sick Man makes his Address to a vulgar Physician, he demands his Complaint; t’other replies, he is troubled either with a Vomiting, Looseness, want of Stomach, Cough, bad Digesture, difficulty of Breathing, a Phtisick, Faintness, Jaundice, Green-Sickness, Dropsy, Gout, Convulsion-Fits, Palsy, Diziness, or Swimming in the Brain, Spitting of Blood, an Ague, a continual great Heat or Fever, &c. These are all evident Diseases the Party himself expresses he is troubled with ”

“ Where is the logic of the sick trying to heal the sick? This question will be more frequently asked in that time to come when the drug-store annex to the sick-room will be much smaller than is now thought necessary. ”

“ The distressing situation of the sick here is not to be described; without clothing, without bedding, or a shelter sufficient to screen them from the weather, I am sure your known humanity will be affected when I tell you we have at present upwards of one thousand sick, crowded into sheds, and laboring under the various and cruel disorders of Dysentery, Bilious, Putrid Fevers, and the effects of a Confluent Small Pox. ”

“ During the years when an epidemic scourges a city, its business becomes for the time paralyzed, and a serious check is put upon its growth and prosperity.
But, more than these, sickness throughout the United States supports in comparative affluence, at least, 75,000 persons with their families. ”

“ The more dangerous and apparently nearer death the sick person is, the more rigorous should be the observance of this suggestion. Nor should the sick-room be opened to privileged classes; for the excitement caused by a visit from relations and the virtuous, will do as much injury to the sick, as that produced by strangers and the vicious. ”

“ In consequence of these diseases affecting a great number of people at one time, it has always been, and always will be impossible, for them all to have the benefit of medical aid, more especially as the proportion of physicians to the number of sick, is generally diminished upon these occasions, by desertion, sickness, and death.
2. The safety of committing to the people the cure of pestilential fevers, particularly the yellow fever and the plague, is established by the simplicity and uniformity of their causes, and of their remedies. ”

“ If, of one hundred persons exposed to the infection of the plague by a near aproach to the sick, ninety should fall sick, shall human inability to assign satisfactory reasons for the escape of the other ten be converted into a positive proof against the disease having been caught by contagion? ”

“ Asked what class of disease the people chiefly suffer from, the Medical Officer of Health replied:—
“Mostly from debility—zymotic diseases, and infectious diseases—such as whooping cough, typhus, typhoid fever, cholera, diarrhœa, measles, scarlet-fever, &c., &c., smallpox, and gin liver disease.... They are obliged to resort to gin on account of the close and depressing condition in which the people live in these Courts free from the public eye.
“The women have to stop at home; they do not get out, and therefore do not get any excitement. Then they take their drops. ”

“ Now if there was a law made to punish any person who should through any medical journal communicate to the people any new disease and its symptoms, it would put a stop to a great deal of sickness. Seven cases out of ten throughout the whole community of old chronic cases are the effects of false impressions produced by medical men, giving to the people the idea they have spinal disease, or heart or kidney or liver disease, or forty others that I could name, to say nothing of the number of nervous diseases. ”

“ By pointing out the real causes, warning will be given for their avoidance, and indications extended for the application of more certain remedies. Medical men who see only a few patients of the same occupation at distant intervals; who see them in their own dispensaries or in the hospitals, and who have no opportunities of observing such patients under the varied circumstances in which the disease may have been contracted, are left to mere guesses as to its cause. ”

“ Fresh air, moderate exercise, good food, and some mild nerve depressant is all that can be done. The disease is very contagious and is usually transmitted directly from the sick person to the well person. It may, however, be carried in clothing, particularly in handkerchiefs and towels. Like measles, if it gains a foothold in an uncivilized community, it attains the size of an epidemic or plague with very fatal results. It seems to have a great power over girls and children, particularly those whose vitality is below the normal. ”

“ A high death-rate from the diseases which it engenders or intensifies, always implies a large amount of sickness. It is estimated by competent Constant
Sickness authority that there are 28 cases of sickness for every death. On this basis of estimate what an enormous amount of unnecessary sickness exists in our midst! Nor is this a mere supposition. I have an accurate census of many groups of families of that portion of our population who live immured in filth, and here we find the constant sickness-rate excessive. It is no uncommon thing to find it 50, 60, and 70 per cent. ”

“ The causes of disease, in the mean time, have been less earnestly studied in the eagerness of the search for remedies. Speak softly! Women have been borne out from an old-world hospital, two in one coffin, that the horrors of their prison-house might not be known, while the very men who were discussing the treatment of the disease were stupidly conveying the infection from bed to bed, as rat-killers carry their poisons from one household to another. ”

“ NO HEALTHY recruit, having successfully passed the rigid physical examination, is any longer permitted immediately to join the organization to which he is allotted. Healthy recruits have a way of coming down with all sorts of diseases as soon as they change their environment, particularly with measles, mumps, diphtheria, whooping cough, and scarlet fever. ”

“ Our children were formerly afflicted, like yours, with diseases resembling whooping-cough, croup, measles, small-pox, and other maladies, forming an almost endless list, and although the child survived the attacks and the incidental suffering and waste, the evil consequences could never be effectually removed. ”

“ Thou wise physician, who would lose sight of the most important evidence of the disease, the discontent of the people, the artificial class distinction created by the sham aristocracy of America, the diagnosis of the disease, called discontent, as made by the press generally, is as faulty and erroneous as would be the opinion of the quack who would call measles, smallpox. ”