Word: bacillus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...public-health workers met in Atlantic City, NJ. half a century ago to found the National Tuberculosis Association, the "white plague" was the No. 1 cause of death in the U.S. Each year it killed 188 out of every 100,000 people. Though Robert Koch had isolated the bacillus, little was known about how it infected mankind, or why the disease pursued such various courses. There was no vaccination against it and no drug treatment; X rays for diagnosis were still primitive, and medical thinking was full of superstitions about "hereditary taint." The cure consisted of raw eggs, milk...
...founders) gathered in Atlantic City for the soth anniversary meeting of the N.T.A., the TB picture seemed radically different. The disease has slid from first to ninth place among causes of U.S. deaths, and the rate has dropped to 16 per 100,000. There is a vaccine, BCG (Bacillus of Calmette and Guérin), which is fairly effective under some conditions. There are at least three wonder drugs-isoniazid, streptomycin & PAS-which can arrest a majority of TB infections, if not cure them. And with the aid of these drugs, daring surgery can save many patients...
...mind, it is of utmost importance to learn more about the fundamentals; how tuberculosis gets its start, and the factors which determine whether the victim will have a mild infection or "galloping consumption." Too little is still known, he complains, of the life processes of the bacillus or the mechanics of its virulence. And, amid its obvious ravages, no man can say why so many people enjoy a high degree of natural immunity to its invasion...
Tricky Water. Cincinnati has been a center for U.S. public-health studies since 1913, when health engineers settled in an old downtown mansion to study Ohio River pollution. Water-borne typhoid fever, raging in the Ohio Valley in those days, was their chief concern. Nowadays, the typhoid bacillus is "literally no longer a problem" to Dr. Leslie A. Chambers, research director of the center. His staff must now tackle the far more complex problems of contamination of both water and food by viruses and fungi, synthetic chemicals and radioactivity...
...blot on society, the symbol of all that was rotten in the industrial world. Against it, in a great crusade . . . turned the champions of a happier, more smiling life." The change in attitude came at the same time as a great advance in knowledge. Robert Koch isolated the tubercle bacillus and proved what Italians and Spaniards had contended for centuries-that TB is contagious. Many of the greatest authorities on the disease scoffed, and kept on insisting that the taint was hereditary or connected with climate...