London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Deptford 1914

Annual report on the health of the Metropolitan Borough of Deptford

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66
(3) Erysipelas, no symptoms for three or five days, when inflammation
of the skin appears. Infection continues from the beginning of the
inflammation until desquamation is complete; quarantine period, one
week.—(4) Puerperal Fever, in which the first symptom usually appears
about three days after delivery in lying-in women. The midwife or
nurse should not attend other cases for a short period.—(5) Epidemic
Pneumonia, latent from two to five days, when rigors, pain and fever set
in, often followed by diarrhoea and vomiting. Infection continues from
the onset of the disease until expectoration ceases after the lung disease,
about three weeks; quarantine period, one week.—(6) Influenza, latent
three or four days, or occasionally less. The fever subsides after four
or five days. Infectious about ten days, and sometimes three or four
weeks. Quarantine period, six days.—(7) Whooping Cough, latent
four or five days; catarrh from three days to a week, or even a
fortnight; then the coughing or whooping stage. Infection continues
from the beginning of the catarrhal stage until mucus ceases to be
coughed up. Quarantine period, one week.—(8) Cholera, latent from
a few hours to a week. The bacilli is usually conveyed into the
system by means of the food or water swallowed.—(9) Epidemic
Diarrhoea, short latent period; attack lasts from three days to a week.
Three Weeks from Inception to Initial Symptoms.—
(l) Typhus Fever, latent probably about twelve or thirteen days,
but sometimes extending to twenty-one days; about one week elapses
between first symptom of illness and appearance of eruption; fever
subsides about seven days later; and ten days or a fortnight later
infection ceases. These periods are, however, liable to considerable
variation. Quarantine period is difficult to state definitely.—(2)
Typhoid Fever, incubation period uncertain, but probably twenty-one
days, followed by a similar period of fever. Infection, which commences
with the first symptom, is mainly active through the media
of discharges from the stomach and bowels affecting food, air or
drinking water. Quarantine period, three weeks.—(3) Relapsing
Fever, incubation varies from less than a day to three or four weeks.
Infectious from the onset until convalescence. Quarantine period,
three weeks.—(4) Mumps, incubation about three weeks; infection
from the first symptom till about three weeks after the commencement
of the glandular swelling.
Diseases Common to Man and Some Animals.—Among these,
lengthy and uncertain incubation periods occur in tubercular disease,
actinomycosis, tetanus and hydrophobia. Short periods of incubation
characterise anthrax and glanders.