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49
are innumerable. The law as it now stands is undoubtedly most
defective as regards the isolation of persons suffering from infectious
diseases. In the first place it should be a legal requirement
of every one having charge, either professionally, or
otherwise, of any sick person suffering from any infectious
disease, that he should within a given time report the same to
the Sanitary authorities. In the second place, the Sanitary authorities
should be endowed with legal power to remove every
case so as to ensure complete isolation. This would be really
no new idea, for we read that in the Sanitary law of Moses,
every person suffering from any unclean disease was immediately
isolated without the camp. Nothing short of going back to
that old Sanitary law can have any effect to absolutely prevent
the spread of infectious disease. There can be no earthly doubt to
any reasonable mind that vaccination is an absolute preventive
to the poison of small-pox, and if vaccination was only sufficiently
carried out, small-pox would no longer exist; but on
the other hand, there can be no doubt that a great many people
are not sufficiently protected by vaccination, and as a consequence
they will take small-pox when exposed to its influence.
In a small per centage of cases there can be no doubt that the
constitutions of children are destroyed through impure vaccine.
The great question to my mind is whether vaccination would be
necessary if persons suffering from small-pox were properly
and immediately isolated. I am rather of opinion that it
would not. It appears to me that it would be less an inter,
ference with individual right to isolate a person against his
wish, when suffering from an infectious disease, than it is to introduce
a poison into his blood when he is in a state of health.
The question of disinfectants is one that requires some few
words. There can be no doubt that the theory upon which thev
are used, is a very sound one; but the manner of using them is
quite absurd. The public, as a rule, look upon a disinfectant
in a mysterious sort of way, believing that it possesses some
wonderful power of protection against disease. One is met
with the reply that there is no danger because a small quantity
of some so-called disinfectant is sprinkled on the floor. All
fear is often removed thereby, and as a consquence the best
disinfectants, an abundant supply of fresh air and complete
isolation, are neglected. All that the science of hygiene can
accomplish comes far short of what was done by that ancient
law, which if adopted in the present day would no doubt be the
means of preventing this large sacrifice of human life, to say
nothing of the enormous expense incurred by the palliative
means now adopted.