History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

Contagious Diseases 243until well after igoo. In the meantime, in Illinois as elsewhere, manypatent medicines—often at one dollar a bottle—were offered ascures forthis disease, and the United States Pure Food and Drug Bureau had notyet come into existence to curb such quackery.In some areas of Illinois, typhoid fever and malaria ran rampant. Thehigh incidence of typhoid fever was due largely to inadequate sanitarymeasures. Out-houses and contaminated water supplies accounted for mostcases. Unpasteurized milk and carriers often contributed to the spread ofthe disease in cities, although the water supply was often at fault. An exampleof the havoc wrought by typhoid fever generally in those times is prominentin the records of the Spanish-American War (1898) when therewere 20,000 cases among our troops in contrast to 350 battle casualties.Antityphoid vaccine was not developed by Wright until 1896, but it wasnot applied in the above mentioned war.All forms of meningitis were almost invariably fatal during this period.Regardless of the causative agent, the disease was usually referred to ascerebrospinal fever, for Weichselbaum did not discover the meningococcusuntil 1887. Moreover, there was no specific treatment until after Kolle andWassermann (1905) and Joachim (1906) developed their antibacterialsera, which Flexner improved in 1907.It has been estimated that in the larger communities, about 44 per centof children have whooping cough before they reach the age of five years.While this fact establishes the infection as one of importance, there areother reasons. Whooping cough differs from most of the common contagiousdiseases in that the infant may be attacked at any time after birth.Because of the insignificance formerly attached to whooping cough, comparativelyfew cases were reported and, if pneumonia developed as acomplication and death ensued, it was likely that no record of pertussiswas disclosed. Therefore, the statistics in regard to the prevalence andmortality of this disease are incomplete and unreliable.The etiology of whooping cough was a matter of dispute for many years.Some believed that it was a neurologic disorder or possibly of viral origin;others thought that an ulcer beneath the tongue was responsible for theparoxysms. In 1905 Bordet-Gengou discovered the Hemophilus pertussisas the specific etiologic agent.A multitude of remedies was used for treatment of the condition, andeven continued to be prescribed after the true nature of this disease wasscientifically determined. Although a prodigious variety of cough mixtureswas considered beneficial, quinine seems to have led the field in the choiceof drugs prior to 1900, and some physicians seemed to look upon thisremedy as specific. In spite of all claims, actually little of value was doneeither to prevent or treat pertussis during the 19th century.