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which have been made in London and elsewhere have emphasized
the local and personal infectiveness of small-pox, and the
pedigrees of localised outbreaks have been definitely traced to
single importations.
Attention has been of late drawn to the part played by
tramps in the spread of small-pox. Mr. Scovell, of the
Metropolitan Asylums Board, pointed out the need for greater
supervision of "shelters," and for the enforcement of greater
cleanliness on the part of the vagrant population who use them.
"small-pox," he says, "is usually found to be rife among the
lower and more uncleanly portion of the population." Dr.
Birdwood, who speaks from the experience of some 12,000 cases of
small-pox, believes that attention to cleanliness and frequent ablutions
prevent the spread of small-pox and dimish the amount of
eruption ;he cites the successful precautions taken against the
infection of visitors to the small-pox ships, and the occurrence of
discrete small-pox in babies, who are frequently washed, as
evidence of the truth of his views.
In the last report of the Metropolitan Asylums Board we
read, in reference to the recrudescence of cases of small-pox in
June, 1895, that "the causes which produced this sudden spread
of the disease were not far to seek. Of the 35 patients admitted
during June, only six possessed a fixed home. Of the remaining
29, three were infected in a London infirmary where small-pox
had been introduced by some undiscovered means in May, and
seven were infected in another infirmary by the agency of a
vagrant who developed small-pox shortly after his admission
there. The remaining 19 were vagrants who possessed no
lodging or no fixed lodging, or other persons of the lowest class
of society, all of them sleeping, when they slept under a roof at
all, in common lodging-houses, Salvation Army shelters, or the
like."
Those who trust to vaccination say :—Vaccinate your child
before it is three months old, and so render it less liable to have