Smallpox Cost Over A Million

State Health Officials Want Laws Changed

An Important Meeting

Pneumonia, Consumption and Diarrhea Now the Deadly Diseases- They are Infections

The sixth general conference of health officials in Michigan was opened last week Thursday as the first meeting of importance held in the new medical building. A wider and broader message of thought among health officials in general seems to have been the thought most strongly impressed on the mind of an outsider.

"Smallpox is a disease which the state has expended over a million and half dollars to restrain," said Dr. George Gilbert, of Bay City. "We have spent $30,000 in Bay City alone during the past year and smallpox is a disease no more harmful than the measles or the seven-year itch."

These and like statements made by the regular speakers on the program u a discussion of the health laws of the state and the almost unanimous decision that they were positively inadequate for the present needs. Speakers said that they had been assured by members of the State Board of Health that if proper amendments were made to the present health laws of the state by this conference they would be passed upon by the legislature. After a long discussion in which many weak points of the present law were pointed out, it was decided to appoint a committee to recommend such amendments to the law as might seen advisable.

President Frank Wells, of the State Board of Health, in his introductory address, said that the most valuable official a community could have was a faithful, competent health officer. It falls within his province to guard against those diseases which cause half the deaths in the community.

Twenty-nine years ago the State Board of Health decided to regulate six diseases, smallpox, measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, diphtheria and typhoid fever. As a result there were in Michigan in 1902 only 678 deaths from all six of these diseases. In the last two years there have been in the state 7,084 deaths from the three diseases, pneumonia, consumption and diarrhea. One reason has been that the health boards have not regulated them yet. People have not come to understand that they are contagious diseases. It is time that immediate attention of health officials was turned to these three diseases.

Speaking of smallpox, President Wells said:

"The disease which has excited most interest in Michigan during the past year and still continues to do so is smallpox. It is a cold weather disease and during the summer it very nearly disappeared. It has been rapidly increasing during the past two months and today 120 places have one or more cases of smallpox. It continues to maintain its mild form, and were it not for its loathsomeness and the old time horror which it inspires, but little attention would be given to it. Very few cases have occurred among the vaccinated and if general vaccination and re-vaccination of all could be accomplished it would at once disappear.

"During the year of 1902 there were 702 outbreaks of smallpox, only 41 of which proved fatal.. This small proportion of deaths shows the mild type which the epidemic has assumed. It has been feared that the disease would assume its old time virulence. The opposite tendency has prevailed. Of 3,000 cases in 1901 there were but 27 deaths.

"Smallpox has demanded more attention from the office of the State Board of Health than any other disease of its class. Yet one disease alone, pneumonia, caused not 41 deaths in 1902, but 3,000. Both are communicable, therefore preventable. The mildness of one is due, perhaps, to the cumulative effect of a century of vaccinated ancestors."

Dr. Vaughan told of the work of the hygienic laboratory. He told how the work was retarded by improper manner in which specimens were sent the laboratory for examination. One doctor had sterilized germs sent the laboratory for examination. He described in detail how samples should be collected and sent.

Arthur R. Reynolds, chairman of the Chicago Health Commission, had a paper on pneumonia, which he claimed was infectious. He appealed to the health officer's of Michigan for a close observation of cases of pneumonia and a report to someone who was studying the disease so that they could learn to stop it.

Dr. Vaughan said pneumonia was infectious. Many experiments made on animals proved this, but perhaps the most satisfactory proof was an unwitting proof by an eminent surgeon friend of his, who had used an instrument on a patient with pneumonia, which he afterwards used on three other patients, all of whom soon had pneumonia. He found when too late that his instrument had not been cleaned as he supposed. The bacillus of pneumonia is very susceptible to several chemicals and can easily be killed. As a substitute for chemicals this sputum can be burned and this would result in a very material decrease of the disease.