334 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE 



COMBATING DISEASE-PEODUCING GERMS. 



BY CHARLES E. MARSHALL,. 



Bulletin 172. — Bacteriology and Farm Hygiene Department. 



Modern methods on the farm demand that the old-time house cleaning should 

 not stop short of barns and buildings in which domestic animals are sheltered^ 

 This custom, however, antiquated it may seem, of scouring, cleaning, painting 

 and whitewashing, has doubtless been the means of saving thousands of human 

 lives by excluding various dreaded forms of disease. People are now in a position 

 to recognize the advantages accruing from such a custom and can appreciate the 

 importance of its extension to the dwellings of domestic animals, because its object 

 is known and its success apparent. By an occasional cleaning out of all the 

 accumulated dirt and filth, by a thorough washing, whitewashing and disinfecting, 

 they believe that not only is the tone and appearance of these buildings improved, 

 but that the possibility of epidemics of contagious diseases is greatly lessened and 

 the vigor of the animals increased many fold. It is not practicable to point out the 

 exact value in dollars and cents of these methods, yet every candid person realizes 

 the true measure of their worth. An estimate can be made only by comparing 

 what is done in eradicating and shutting out contagious diseases of human beings- 

 with \that may be done in eradicating and shutting out contagious diseases of 

 animals. In the historj- of contagious diseases affecting the human family, con- 

 tagion has always been more or less intimatelv and materially associated with dirt 

 and filth. 



When London suffered so severly from the plague in the sixteenth century, every- 

 thing was ready for its reception and propagation. The city was badly situated ^ 

 an old town ditch acted as a receptacle for all kinds of filth; the streets became the 

 dumping ground for slops and of excren,ient from animals and human beings. 

 Poor ventilation and filth were dominant in all houses of the poorer sections of the 

 city. The sanitary condition of this part of the city, to which the plague was 

 almost entirely confined, was of the worst possible type, such as only squalor, 

 poverty, filth and ignorance of the laws of health can originate. London lost 

 thousands and thousands of people from this scourge. At that early day, London- 

 was not able to keep it out; now it can be stopped even though it appear right at 

 her door. 



When this same plague became epidemic in Hong-Kong in 1894, it was largely 

 confined to the poorest and most ignorant classes. Its victims numbered about 

 ten thousand, but when it appeared at Canton previously, it did not leave before 

 one hundred thousand had perished. Now it is sojourning in India, and its progress^ 

 is hard to stay on account of the unsanitary surroundings. Its cui'e is mostly 

 prevention by personal clealiness, sanitary dwellings, city drainage and an absence 

 of overcrowding. Typhoid fever is auotiier disease which finds its home in filth. The 

 prevalence of this disease in army camps indicates an accumulation of filth and un- 

 sanitary surroundings occasioned by improper drainage, defective disposal of gar- 

 bage and the containination of water and food supplies incident upon the necessarily 

 hasty and incomplete sanitary arrangement of camps. Smallpox has been practically 

 eliminated and shut out of Michigan, owing to the untiring efforts of our State 

 Board of Health and efficient local boards. Diptheria does not spread o^^ er large 

 tracts of country as it once did. Scarlet fever is now controlled with little difficulty. 

 Unless it be consumption, contagious diseases of the human family are not looked! 



