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Enquiries were instituted in respect to each of these cases, and
number of them were visited by me. Three cases were notified as
Chicken-pox which, on examination, I found to be Small-pox.
They would not have been detected quite so soon if there had not
been notification of Chicken-pox. One of them apparently set up
no further infection. The second, on the other hand, was the
origin of a group of ten cases (sixth group), some of which, at least,
would have been undetected if we had not received this
"Chicken-pox " notification. The third " Chicken-pox " case gave
rise to only one other. The facts respecting these three cases of
notified Chicken-pox, which were in fact Small-pox, do not by any
means exhaust our experience of the relation between the two
diseases. Our first group of Small-pox cases, numbering in all more
than 30 cases, arose from a single case of Small-pox mistaken for
Chicken-pox, namely, E. S., the child who went down to the hopgardens.
The second group, consisting of more than 15 cases, also
arose from a case of a child with Small-pox, which had been
mistaken for Chicken-pox. Once more, the fifth group of eight
cases also arose from a precisely similar case. There were,
therefore, upwards of 50 cases traceable to mistaken diagnosis
between Chicken-pox and Small-pox. In addition to this there were
several cases to which I was called, which, although not yet notified,
were supposed to be Chicken-pox, and which I found to be
Small-pox.
Our experience in Finsbury would. therefore, point to the value
of the notification of Chicken-pox in times of Small-pox prevalence.
Its value seems to me to be, in the main, two fold : (a) By it, cases
of Small-pox may be detected which would otherwise be missed.
(b) By it, a more careful and thorough watchfulness for suspicious
rashes of all kinds is created.
The Table of age incidence of the cases of Chicken-pox is instructive
when compared with that of Small-pox. In the pre-vaccination days,
both diseases were diseases of childhood. Now, Small-pox has
become mostly a disease of adults unprotected by vaccination or
re-vaccination, and chicken-pox (for which disease there is no
vaccination) remains a disease of childhood.