Abstract
WHILE agreeing with the proposition that the nurse should have a clear and definite knowledge of the principles of the germ theory of infective diseases, we doubt if this book will really aid her to attain this end. It is too1 much an elementary text-book of bacteriology, and does not contain sufficient of the practical application of bacteriological principles in the every-day routine of the nurse's work. The greater part of the book is occupied by descriptions of the causative organisms of the various infective diseases, but far too little is said about the why and the wherefore of surgical cleanliness and the means of attaining it, and the methods of preventing the spread of infection in the ward and household. Thus the section on sterilisation and the use of disinfectants occupies a bare nine pages, and the principles of antiseptic and aseptic surgery are almost omitted, yet these subjects constitute almost the beginning and the end of the surgical nurse's work. In the section on malaria, while the importance of protection from mosquitoes as a preventive is fully recognised and the “screening” of houses recommended, not one word is said of the mosquito net, which may often be the onlv means available for carrying out any form of “screening.”
Bacteriology for Nurses.
By Isabel McIsaac. Pp. xii + 179. (New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1909.) Price 5s. net.
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H., R. Bacteriology for Nurses . Nature 84, 493 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/084493b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/084493b0