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new Sanatoria for consumptives having been built both during the war and after.
One marked feature was the extent to which artificial light was used for the
treatment of tuberculosis of the glands, bones, joints, etc. We were shown over
a hospital in Vienna entirely devoted to light treatment of skin and other diseases.
An important measure used for the prevention of venereal disease was the compulsory
detention of diseased women found on police raids of hotels, etc. We
had the pleasure of meeting among others Dr. Von Pirquet, the well-known
children's specialist, and Dr. Schick with whose procedure with regard to the
prevention of diphtheria we are endeavouring to take our share in familiarising
the parents of English children. A noteworthy institution visited was an Infants'
Hospital in a suburb of Vienna, where the training of Health Visitors was carried
out; while it was probably not better than any of ours it was certainly very
complete, and the more attractive arrangements probably facilitated teaching. The
same is true of the newer hospitals we saw in Vienna and Graz.
No serious adverse criticism could be made on the general sanitation of
Vienna; the condition of the streets, the disposal of excreta, the water supply
were all satisfactory; the results of a laboratory investigation which a friend
happened to see indicated that the quality of the water was possibly not so good
as the majority of the Viennese think.
In Graz we saw a hospital chiefly for the treatment of industrial surgical
injuries to which Accident Insurance Companies made considerable contributions.
Professor W. Prausnitz, one of the authors of a text book of hygiene well-known
on the Continent, demonstated the water-works which were of a remarkably
simple character, the underground water streaming down from the adjoining
mountain, the Schachtel, being tapped by shallow bore wells on its way to the
river Mur which flowed past the water-works. A regulated overflow from the
river was also admitted at times after natural filtration through the subsoil.
A criticism might be made of the absence of legislative protection from faecal
pollution, etc. of the surface in the neighbourhood of these wells.
On a later occasion Professor Prausnitz was so good as to show me the Tonnen
Fassen conservancy system for the disposal of excreta, a system which possibly
shares with the lack of water laid on to some of the poorer houses the obloquy
of the relatively large amount of typhoid fever in Graz.
Visits were paid to various Baths, including Baden, Ischl, and Bad
Gastein. In Baden near Vienna the State utilise the baths for treatment of
rheumatism and deformities due to rheumatism, much use being made of a certain
topical mud for local applications to joints, etc. Here was a spring in which
soldiers disabled in the Napoleonic Wars bathed. In Salzburg I saw a School
Hygiene Institute where Dr. Richard Heller was examining school children;
routine medical inspection of school children is evidently in its infancy in Austria
although studies in school hygiene of exceptional value have been published in
that country over a long period of years. Earlier we had encountered on the
border of the Traunsee a large party of school girls from Linz, some 40 miles
or so away, who were on a school journey accompanied by their teachers and
a priest.
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