Contagious Diseases

Those which are communicated by one person to another by a morbific principle (contagium), formerly regarded as impalpable, but now demonstrated, with few exceptions, to be a micro-organism, each disease having its own particular species. They are transmitted by the entrance into the body, either with the food, or air breathed in, or by intentional or accidental inoculation of the micro-organisms or their spores. Small-pox, scarlet, typhus, puerperal and typhoid fevers, whooping cough, cow-pox, mumps, measles, diphtheria, cholera, yellow fever, hydrophobia, venereal diseases, plague, glanders and tuberculosis are the most common members of this cla . Although the micro-organisms of all of the above have not been demonstrated there is every reason to be confident that they exist. To prevent spreading of these diseases the afflicted must be isolated until the infective stage has pa ed, all the excreta and objects in contact with them disinfected, as also the apartments in which they have been. Neglect of these precautions is in nearly all communities severely punished by law.