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Seasonal Variation.—The annexed Tables of the number of cases of Infectious
Diseases notified, and of the number fatal, during each week in the past year,
show the seasonal variation in prevalence and virulence of those diseases.
SCARLET FEVER.
At the end of August an outbreak of scarlet fever commenced at the
Foundling Hospital. This Institution is peculiar in many respects. It is in
the position of a day school, a residential school, and a residential school
without dispersal for the holidays, in regard to infectious disease. A number
of persons enter the Institution daily, Including teachers, purveyors, visitors,
etc., and on Sunday many visitors and children, so that the risks of importation
of infection are as great as in a day school. It is a residential school, but
with this great disadvantage, that upon the outbreak of infectious disease the
school cannot be dispersed, and the non-infected children sent home out of the
danger zone. The Institution, so to speak, stews in its own juice until the
infectious disease burns itself out. The more care exercised and the greater
protection afforded the children, by the mere absence of scarlet fever for a
number of years, causes the accumulation of such a large number of susceptible
children who have not obtained immunity by a previous attack, that at
last the smallest, spark will set the whole Institution in the blaze of an outbreak.
Every precaution was taken from the very commencement of the outbreak,
in fact excessive precaution was taken by sending to hospital numbers of
children with slight rose rashes, roughness of the throat, sickness after a meal,
and other trifling, but in the circumstances, suspicious symptoms, in the hope
of removing every trace of infection from the Institution.