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croup, and scarlet, enteric (or typhoid), and puerperal
fevers. In the case of erysipelas, such disinfection is
not deemed necessary, and the other diseases included
in the schedule of notification are so rare that they
may for present purposes be ignored. Disinfection
would naturally be carried out after the occurrence of
any of them. Disinfection is occasionally carried out
after other infectious diseases, such as measles,
whooping cough, phthisis, chicken pox, &c., but no
records exist of the results of such disinfection.
Practically, scarlet fever and diphtheria (iucluding
membranous croup) are the only diseases which can
be dealt with here. There were 45 cases of enteric
fever during the year, but in only one instance was
there more than a single case in a house, and in that
instance the two patients were taken ill on the same
day. The circumstances attending the spread of
scarlet fever differ so much from those attending the
spread of diphtheria that no comparison can be safely
made between the results of disinfection for the two
diseases.
Were it desired to discredit any method of house
disinfection, all secondary cases might be attributed to
failure of such process. This would manifestly be as
unfair as would be an assumption that such method
never broke down and that all secondary cases were
due to other sources of infection. The truth is
that such secondary cases may be due to one, or other
of the following conditions:—