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many more cases may have been caused, through un traced ramifications
of infection from these multiplied sources, it is impossible to
say. It may be remarked, however, that in addition to the cases
mentioned above (none of which, save the group of nine, occurred
in Lonsdale Road) numerous others subsequently occurred in
several houses on the south side of Lonsdale Road, where the
disease first appeared, and not one on the other side of the road.
There is good ground for the belief that the disease was spread
by infected clothing, bedding, &c., hung out in the back
yard ; anyhow, we were unable to trace the successive cases to any
intercommunication between the families in the several houses,
wherein the disease made its appearance.
The following cases deserve mention as demonstrating the
danger of infected body clothing:—
A case of small pox was sent to the hospital from the Brompton
Consumption Hospital. It is to be presumed that the sufferer contracted
the disease by contact with the infected clothing of a visitor, as
she had been in the hospital nearly two months. A similar case occurred
in connection with St. George's Hospital, the patient having fallen
ill at such a time after her discharge as to prove she must have received
the infection in the hospital from a visitor, for there were no cases of the
disease in the hospital at the time, though cases did occur subsequently.
A baby, aged six weeks, being ill, a woman living in another street
nursed the child, whs died in her lap. Out of this lap the woman herself
and her children ate shrimps for tea the same night, and in about thirteen
days her girl, aged twelve years, sickened with small-pox, and was
sent to the hospital.
Again. A woman who lived in the same house where the baby died,
went occasionally into the sick room, After the usual period of incubation,
this woman's husband and her daughter were taken ill and
removed to the hospital.
Now, as not one of these sufferers went near the sick baby, it is
clear they were infected by the clothing worn by the women (themselves
unaffected throughout) who assisted in nursing the child, and
who probably were ignorant of the danger to which they were exposing
their families. Take another case :—
A girl was very ill of small-pox. The mother was a laundress, and one
of her children had already had small-pox recently. The house was (as
usual) full of people, from whom she was anxious to conceal the nature of
the illness. The father, a carpenter, employed in a builder's workshop at
South Kensington, slept in the same room with the girl, acting as her
nurse, and each morning he went to his work in his infected clothes. We
got her removed to the hospital, and we do not know that she was the
cause of spreading the disease. At one period in the epidemic, however,
there were numerous cases among stonemasons and their families, the
men working in shops in an adjoining parish. We could not account for
the outbreak save on the supposition that the contagium had been conveyed
in the mens' clothing.
The practice of exposing infected clothing is a common and
dangerous one, and there can be no doubt that by it the disease is
frequently disseminated. It has, indeed, been a most instructive