Disease and Its Causes by William Thomas Councilman
page 125 of 192 (65%)
page 125 of 192 (65%)
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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. It is in this way that the extreme prevalence of broncho-pneumonia in infants and young children is to be explained. No matter what the essential disease, an almost constant finding in young children after death is small areas of inflammation in the lungs in and around the terminations of the air tubes. The situation renders it evident that the organisms which caused the lesions entered the lung by the air tubes. The mouth of the child is unclean and harbors numbers of the same sort of organisms as those causing the lung inflammation; but in the absence of such a mode of infection as is given by spray formation it is difficult to see how the extension from the mouth to the lungs could take place. The weakened condition of the body in these cases favors the secondary infection. If the disease be located in the intestines, as in typhoid fever and dysentery, the organisms are contained in the fecal discharges, and by means of these the infection is extended. In typhoid fever, dysentery and cholera massive infections of the populace may take place from the contamination of a water supply and the disease be extended over an entire city. One of the most striking instances of this mode of extension was in the epidemic of cholera in Hamburg in 1892. There were two sources of water supply, one of which was infected, and the cases were distributed in the city in the track of the infected supply. Many such instances have been seen in typhoid fever. Certain articles of food, particularly milk, serve as sources of infection. This is more apt to happen when the organism causing the infection grows easily outside of the body. A few such organisms entering into the milk can multiply enormously in a few hours and increase the |
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