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Both patients were removed to hospital. Three unvaccinated persons
in another family residing in this house were vaccinated next day,
but too late to prevent small pox, which developed a week afterwards.
All three were removed to hospital, as was another person
from an adjacent house. The particulars were reported to the
Public Health Committee, a prosecution was ordered, and the father
of the two first patients was summoned to Worship Street for failing
to notify as required by Sec. 55 of the Public Health (London)
Act, 1891. Unfortunately we failed to prove that the father was
aware of the nature of the illness from which his sons were suffering,
and the summons was dismissed by Mr. Cluer (the magistrate)
who inclined to the idea that had the father been aware that his
sons were suffering from such a serious affection as small pox he
would certainly have called in a doctor. This case illustrates the
difficulty there is in getting non-medical persons to grasp the fact
that a patient may be suffering from a modified though very
infectious form of small pox and yet feel well enough to walk about
and even follow his usual avocations.
At the end of the first week in July the epidemic appeared to be
subsiding. Three persons, aged respectively 5, 26, and 32, were
removed from 23, Hersee Place, on July 1st, 4th, and 6th respectively,
but no further case was reported until July 25th (an interval
of 19 days), when E. R., a female aged 22, was removed from 21,
Hersee Place, next door to the house whence the three persons
mentioned above were removed nearly three weeks previously. At
first sight this appeared to be a fresh outbreak, but upon further
enquiry it transpired that the little child of A. R., who was removed
from 23, Hersee Place on July 6th, had been taken charge of by
relations at 21. It was then supposed that this little child might in
some way have conveyed the infection. On August Ist three other
cases were removed from 21, and, on revisiting the premises, I
elicited with some difficulty the fact that S. V., an adopted child of
the occupier of 21, had been ill about four weeks previously with
what was stated to be chicken pox. This child was reluctantly
produced for my inspection, and I found her covered with small pox
marks and with many crusts still unfallen. Shortly after my visit