View report page

51
proportion of the nurses employed are probationers without
previous experience, and it is essential that these should be well
trained and taught, as well as infused with a real enthusiam
for their calling. Miss Barling, the new matron, fully
sympathises with this ideal, and I trust that under her
guidance the Hospital will still further increase in efficiency.
RETURN CASES OF SCARLET FEVER.
During the year there have been 7 cases discharged from
the Hospital, to houses in which another case has been notified
within 21 days after the previous case returned home.
Curiously enough, there were 7 instances, too, where secondary
cases were notified in houses in which the first case was
nursed at home. That is, after an interval of more than 7
days; thus shewing that these 7 cases were not infeoted
directly by the first patient before it was isolated. This is an
exceedingly difficult question, and one that worries the mind
of those responsible for Isolation Hospitals as much as anything.
If a pa tient is discharged quite well, free from any discharge
or obvious signs of infection, on the way home or
shortly after, a "chill is caught," the child gets a running
from the nose, which appears to re-light up the infection and
another member of the family is infected in consequence.
This was the history of five of the above cases. No care on
the part of the Hospital management can obviate this, and
yet this question is one that severely militates against the
usefulness of Isolation Hospitals.
In 1899, Professor Simpson reported to the Metropolitan
Asylums Board on the subject of these "return rases" after
a special investigation his principal conclusions were:—