View report page

53
nowhere is it more than a few yards more distant from the
hospital. It contains a larger number of houses and an equally
large population, and yet there were but six cases. In the
majority of streets invaded, the cases were solitary, that is.
there was but one case in a street in the course of the year.*
In some streets equally near the hospital there was not a case,
and in streets in Fulham closest to the hospital—and on, or close
to, the ambulance route, the disease was conspicuous by its absence.
As respects Ifield Road, I may state that I was unable to
trace the origin of the first two or three cases—and if untraced
cases are to be set down to the account of dissemination, judgment
against the hospital must go by default. But I was able to account
for more than a moiety of the 42 cases; tracking the
disease from person to person, from house to house, and,
as I believe, in two instances, from hospital to house,
through the agency of patients prematurely discharged at
a time when the pressure on the very limited accommodation
was considerable.
The case against the hospital, qua aerial infection, appears
none the less strong in Mr. Power's mode of stating the facts,
viz., in percentages of houses invaded by disease (in a quartermile
circle, and in three outer, quarter-mile, rings constituting
the special area," a circle of a mile radius drawn around
the hospital) without reference to the actual number of homes,
or to the classes of persons resident in the several divisions.
Great importance is attached to the "graduated intensity" of infection
from centre to periphery. It is stated, for example, that
between March, 1877, when the hospital was opened, and the
end of March, 1881—a period covering the admission of
2,527 cases—small-pox invaded 6 37 per cent, of the houses
within the special area ; the percentage of houses invaded in
the quarter-mile circle being 17.35, whereas it was only 9.25
*Small-pox invaded 68 streets in Kensington within the "special area"
in 1881. In 34 streets there was one case only; in 19 streets 2 cases; in 9
streets 3; in one street 4; in three streets 5; and in two streets (one being
Cromwell Road) 6; while in more than 100 streets there was not a case. In
many instances the origin of illness was easily traced, and in some streets
the second and subsequent cases were clearly due to infection by primary case3.