This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ... Some of the most difficult problems that medicine has to face are connected with the variation and adaptation of pathogenic bacteria. The phenomena of immunity, certainly among the most complicated and important that human ingenuity has ever set itself to unravel, still await their full description and interpretation. ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ... Some of the most difficult problems that medicine has to face are connected with the variation and adaptation of pathogenic bacteria. The phenomena of immunity, certainly among the most complicated and important that human ingenuity has ever set itself to unravel, still await their full description and interpretation. The study of the ultramicroscopic, or perhaps more correctly the filterable viruses, is being prosecuted with great energy and in a sanguine spirit. The extension of bacteriologic method into the field of protozoon pathology has been already referred to, and constitutes one of the latest and most hopeful developments in the study of the infectious diseases. Medicine, perhaps more than any other department of human knowledge, is most indebted to and maintains the most intimate relations with the science of bacteriology. At the present time the relations of bacteriology to public hygiene and preventive medicine seem to me of particular importance, and it is upon this theme that I wish chiefly to dwell. Personal hygiene is not necessarily pertinent to this topic, but falls rather into the same province with the healing art. Matters of diet, of clothing, of exercise, of mental attitude, affect the individual, and contribute more or less largely to his welfare. But except in so far as the individual is always of moment to the community, they do not affect the larger problems of public hygiene. The pathologic changes that take place in the tissues of the diseased organism and the methods that must be employed to combat the inroads of disease in the body of the individual patient must for a long time to come remain questions of supreme importance to the human race. But over and above the treatment and cure of the diseased individual, and the investi...
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