View report page

92
The Doctor as Missionary.
The multiplication of bacteria and profusion of polluting material accompanying any one case
of bacterial enteritis suggests at once that, in prevention, nothing succeeds like success. With multiplication
of cases (especially when some of these are mild) and multiplication of carriers, the conditions
for epidemic food poisoning may be soon established, the chances growing with successive cases. This
is easily seen in epidemic diarrhoea amongst children. The physician in the house has the best opportunity
of pointing the necessity of protection of the domestic food from flies, of rendering the excreta
safe, and inculcating those small matters of commonsense which should follow on a general recognition
of the infectious nature of the disease were they laid before the people. The full co-operation of the
branches of the medical profession, preventive and curative, would be an immense safeguard in this,
as in food poisonings in general.
The unconscious agencies in food protection, of which, I suppose, the sacro-sanctity of food previously
mentioned is the greatest, are entirely unable to cope with the narrowed meaning of dirt in
relation to intestinal disease in the present state of education of the public. Even the public health
authorities are only within recent years fully alive to the danger of the mild case of enteritis and dysentery,
and to the carrier as formidable in food poisonings. Nor has the preventive machinery which
can deal with these factors been yet fully invented. This machinery would need to include the complete
supervision of foodstuffs and of the whole personnel handling it, whether in production, manufacture or
distribution. With necessity will come the necessary invention. Meanwhile, one can look with
satisfaction on a rising tide of knowledge very generally distributed, which will create a demand for
the more obvious details of cleanliness in relation to food, and on the regulations which are the largest
specific driving power in education.