CHAPTER IX 

 THE TRANSMISSION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES 



No theory has been more generally accepted, both 

 by the medical profession and the public at large, than 

 the belief that infectious diseases are commonly trans- 

 mitted by clothing, baggage, money, rags, and innumer- 

 able other articles, which are supposed to convey patho- 

 genic organisms in their active state from one person 

 to another. These alleged agents are known as "fomites." 

 Since the discoveries of Pasteur and Koch, and particu- 

 larly during the past ten or fifteen years, practical 

 sanitarians have been slowly but surely accumulating 

 conclusive evidence of the fallacy of the fomites theory. 

 Not so long ago malaria was attributed to the presence 

 of ' 'miasma," or poisonous vapors emanating from 

 swamps; now we know that this disease is transmitted 

 from man to man through the bite of a* mosquito. Up 

 to within a few years, yellow fever was held to be trans- 

 mitted by "fomites," and the medical history of the 

 South is rich in statistics which presume to offer con- 

 clusive proof that the clothing of those who had been 

 exposed to yellow fever was responsible, at various times, 

 for outbreaks of this disease. Yet we now know that 

 yellow fever is transmitted only through the bite of a 

 particular species of mosquito. Satisfactory evidence 

 has been given us that plague, which was believed to be 

 caused by almost anything in the nature of "fomites," 



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