Contributions from the Sanitary Research Laboratory and Sewage Experiment Station Volume 2-3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...preventive medicine, hygiene or sanitation occupied so high a place in the public esteem. Why is it, then, we may well ask, that medical schools pay so little attention to a subject so important and at the same time so closely connected historically and practically with medical science? The answer to this question will, I believe, establish the truth of my thesis that readjustment is required, and will also reveal some of the steps required to bring about such readjustment. In spite of its admitted importance, hygiene occupies only a very small place in our medical schools, partly, I believe, because sanitation has become so large a part of hygiene, and sanitation belongs in schools of engineering; and partly because for medical men there are, in our country, very few attractive positions in the applications of hygiene. Let us consider the first point more carefully. It is to-day absurd for the average well trained medical student to think of becoming an expert in such branches of hygiene as water supply, sewerage, heating and ventilation, street building, cleaning and watering, garbage collection and disposal, gas and other forms of light supply, ice supply, milk supply, the abatement of nuisances, etc. These belong rather to the sanitary engineer, sanitary chemist and sanitary biologist; to sanitation rather than hygiene. Closer to the physician's own work, and yet almost a science in themselves, are the problems of personal hygiene, muscular exercise, sleep, foods and feeding, bathing, clothing, mental work, and the like. Half way between personal and public hygiene, lie such subjects as school hygiene and school sanitation, epidemiology, quarantine, the control of foods and drugs. If the modern medical student can find time for a...