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Now, if this be so, can any one doubt that each case improperlyretained
at home is a danger to the public health? The danger would
be well-nigh illimitable but for the protection afforded by vaccination
and re-vaccination !
In many and varied ways we have seen, and shall see, the disease
may be spread, but the opponents of the hospital speak and write as if
it was almost the only— and certainly they regard it as the chief—
source of infection. Their contention, moreover, is practically that the
"concentrated poison," the "palpable small-pox particles," are diffused
by the wind Now, simply noticing, in passing, the obvious consideration
that the wind often blows in one direction for many days, and that
long continuance of the wind in one quarter has been co-incident with
a subsequent outbreak of small-pox around the hospital at all quarters
of the compass— for the intensity of the epidemic has risen and fallen
in contiguous parishes and in the Metropolis simultaneously— I pass on to
deal with the assertion that small pox particles may be carried, as they
would in this case Lave to be carried, hundreds of yards, and still
retain their infective power. Such an assertion is contrary to medical
experience, and it is not shared by any important section of the profession.
The allegation, however, can be most effectually met by a
counter statement of a fact which I quote from Dr. Collie's paper
before alluded to. He says :—
"The Infirmary of the City of London Union at Homerton stands
at a distance of ninety-nine feet from the west-most block of the
Homerton Fever Hospital, and in this block upon two occasions, for a
period of four months each, there were forty small-pox beds constantly
occupied. The windows directly face each other, and are almost always
open. Here then apparently are the conditions for the passage of
small-pox poison if it be true that it may be carried long distances
through the air. Amongst a number of persons, consisting of children,
new-born infants, and young women in confinement, there were likely
to have been some susceptible subjects. The poison was there, and not
only in the block referred to, but in certain winds it would be blown
from three similar blocks which are parallel to it. Thus air liable to
contamination by about 250 small-pox patients might on two different
occasions, for a period of about four months, have passed into rooms
inhabited by persons some of whom were probably susceptible to its
influence, and yet on neither of these occasions did a single case of