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SMALLPOX.
13
cases kept at home proves the services which the admirable
ambulance organisation of the Asylums Board confers on
the Metropolis, and shows clearly that if every case of
smallpox was early diagnosed and removed, no spread of
the disease would be possible.
The officers of the sanitary and disinfecting departments
worked well and for long hours, and they were
thanked by the Vestry for their services. The Guardians
also rendered most efficient help in giving facilities for
re-vaccination, and in appointing special officers to aid the
Public Vaccinator, Dr. Greenwood, whose personal assistance
was most valuable, and who for a time may be said to have
lived in the affected area.
Subsequent events have, however, shown clearly that
the outbreak was never stamped out completely. The
efforts of the Sanitary Authority, of the Guardians, and of
the Asylums Board, were similar in their effects to that of
a corps of firemen who, being suddenly called, rapidly allay
and extinguish a fire, but unseen sparks are wafted from
the scene of the first conflagration and alight in other places,
to smoulder there unheeded until, under favourable circumstances,
the flame bursts out, and at the present moment
these sparks are here and there causing trouble.
The writer is, however, in hopes, with approved
appliances, that efforts at stamping out may be in the future
more successful. A part of this incomplete success he
believes to be due to omission to disinfect certain articles of
clothing. For instance : a good many of those attacked,
and their friends, were very poor and had only one suit of
clothing. Friends or relatives of the patient were often in
close attendance on the sick for 24 to 48 hours, yet having no
change, it was impracticable to disinfect in every case the
clothing on their backs for want of a suitable shelter
supplied with bath accommodation, and with disinfecting
appliances; a scheme has, however, while these sheets are
passing through the press, been adopted by the Vestry to
meet this want, so that 1895 will inaugurate a new era
with regard to our disinfecting appliances.