MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
137 
ISOLATION AS A PREVENTIVE MEASURE. 
GUY L. KIEFER. 
The three principal general methods in vogue at present for the re¬ 
striction of communicable diseases are immunization, isolation and dis¬ 
infection. Under the head of immunization may be classed vaccination 
for the prevention of smallpox and antitoxin as a prophylactic measure 
against diphtheria. Isolation and disinfection are applicable to a great 
number of diseases. Even before preventive medicine became a definite 
science and before the establishment of boards of health for the pur¬ 
pose of executing the laws of hygiene, it was customary to some extent 
to separate those suffering with a contagious disease from those not 
infected. Even before the days of Jenner people avoided smallpox 
patients whenever they knew of the existence of the disease. But it is 
only of recent years that isolation—the separation of the sick from the 
well and the well from the sick—has become a police regulation. In 
order that boards of health might be enabled to enforce isolation, laws 
have been enacted by various states requiring physicians, parents and 
householders to report the existence of cases of communicable diseases 
to the local health authorities. These laws are similar in different 
states, but differ as to the diseases that are required to be reported and 
which, for the sake of convenience, I will designate as “notifiable dis¬ 
eases.” In Michigan the law reads as follows: 
Sec. 43. “Whenever any householder, hotelkeeper, keeper of a board¬ 
ing house, or tenant, shall know, or shall be informed by a physician, 
or shall have reason to believe that any person in his family, hotel, 
boarding house or premises, is taken sick with smallpox, cholera, diph¬ 
theria, scarlet fever, or any other disease dangerous to the public health, 
he shall immediately give notice, in writing, thereof to the health officer 
of the township, city or village in which he resides.” 
Sec. 44. “Whenever any physician shall know that any person whom 
he is called to visit, or who is brought to him for examination, is in¬ 
fected with smallpox, cholera, diphtheria, scarlet fever, or any other 
disease dangerous to the public health, he shall immediately give notice 
thereof to the health officer of the township, city or village, in which 
the sick person may be; and to the householder, hotelkeeper, keeper of 
boarding house, or tenant within whose house or rooms the sick per¬ 
son may be.” 
It will be noticed that the law specifies “smallpox, cholera, diphtheria 
and scarlet fever,” and then goes on to say “or any other disease dan¬ 
gerous to the public health.” It would be better if each disease that is 
dangerous to the public health were enumerated so that there could be 
no chance for an argument between physician and public health author¬ 
ity.. It is due to this lameness in the law that not nearly all diseases 
which are really communicable and dangerous to the public health are 
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