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39
The improved results in the cases treated may be thus summarised:—(1)
A great reduction in the mortality of those cases brought
under treatment on the first and second day of illness. (2) The
lowering of the combined general mortality to a point below that of
any former year. (3) The still more remarkable reduction in the
mortality of the laryngeal cases. (4) The uniform improvement in
the results of tracheotomy at each separate Hospital. (5) The beneficial
effect produced on the clinical course of the disease.
SCARLET FEVER.
The 108 cases of Scarlet Fever occurred in 86 different houses,
in 7 of which there were grave insanitary conditions ; in 6 the insanitary
conditions were slight, and in the remaining 73 there was an
absence of such conditions.
School attendance was ascribed as the origin of the infection in
15 cases; infection in a preceding case (apart from school) in 4;
and in three cases there were the strongest possible reasons for believing
that the infection was communicated by a patient recently
dismissed from a Fever Hospital.
One milk shop was closed for many weeks on account of this
disease.
It will be noted that the cases of Scarlet Fever notified during
1897 numbered only about one half of those notified during the preceding
year; the actual figures being 108 and 220, respectively.
HOW DISEASE IS SPREAD.
One frequently finds on visiting a house in which an infectious
disease has occurred, that upon learning the nature of the complaint,
the parents have sent the other children to the home of a relative,
without first waiting to satisfy themselves that these other children
are not incubating the infection. By this way the disease is not
infrequently introduced into other families.