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64
in London from small-pox were more numerous than in any
other week in the year.
Mr. Power states that "periods resembling in their meteorology
(especially in the small movement of air and the absence
of ozone) may be found in front of each of the more notable
epidemic extensions of small-pox in the neighbourhood round
the hospital." I do not know to what particular periods
he refers—I cannot find them—but the meteorological tables
published with his report show that periods resembling
in their meteorology the period January 13-17 (especially
in the small movement of air and the absence of ozone)
occurred before and after those days, without producing any ill
effects on the district, e.g., January 2, 3, 4, and January 20,
21, 22, 23 and 24. On January 2, 3, 20, 22 and 24, the
weather moreover was foggy, and on January 20 and 21 the
mean daily value of the thermometer was below freezing
point.
Did time and space permit, I might extend these observations
to far greater length, but I have said enough perhaps, for
my purpose, which is to direct attention to the momentous
issue involved in Mr. Power's conclusions. If personal communication—not
from the hospitals merely, but in whatever way
brought about—be the true explanation of the spread of
small-pox around the hospitals, it should be possible by improved
management, and by rigid isolation, to diminish,
if not wholly to remove, the risks attendant on their
presence; but if the theory of aerial infection be the true
explanation of observed phenomena the attempt to stay
the plague is all but hopeless, and the very cautious
scheme of the Royal Commissioners, which contemplates
the retention of some 30 or 40 acute cases in each of the
town hospitals, will have to be abandoned. For consider how
small a number of acute cases had been admitted up to the last
of the infection days of the " outburst," which terminated