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In another family the first case infected two others; all three cases were removed
to hospital and recovered.
A gentleman fell ill and died in two or three days; his illness was supposed to
be "purpura hcemorrhagica, but evidently it was hemorrhagic small-pox, for not
long afterwards a man fell ill in the same house, with modified small-pox, and a
female neighbour who had visited the sick gentleman contracted confluent smallpox.
The gentleman died on December 17th; the other two cases were not recognized
to be small-pox until January 5th, when the man was in about the tenth, and the
woman about the eighth, day of illness. The woman was removed to hospital, and
died; the man recovered.
A man who had slept at a common lodging-house at Notting Hill being ill, was
seen on December 26th by a medical man, who ordered his removal to the workhouse
infirmary. On the 27 th the patient, thought .to be suffering from scarlet
fever, was removed to the Western Hospital, where he died next day of
hecmorrhagic small-pox.
Two out of the four persons in one family who had contracted
small-pox, as above-mentioned, were unvaccinated at the time.
One, a boy, aged six, died of confluent small-pox. Another, a girl,
aged two, was vaccinated about three or four days after she became
infected. This child had a mild or "discrete" attack of small-pox,
the disease and the vaccination progressing side by side. Her life
was saved by the vaccination modifying the character of the smallpox.
The two vaccinated cases did well.
The epidemic it may be mentioned has continued with varying
severity to the present time (June, 1885). At the end of May
there were nearly 1,400 patients in the hospitals or the Camp;
as many as 354 patients having been admitted in a single week in
May. The Highgate Hospital is and has continuously been very
full, as many as 100 patients, sometimes, being under treatment at
once, a number far exceeding the limit fixed by the Asylums Board
as the maximum of patients to be treated at one time in any of
then- London hospitals.
WESTERN (LATE FULHAM) HOSPITAL.
From the report of Mr. Sweeting, the Medical Superintendent,
we learn that the Western Hospital was open during the whole of
the year 1884, having been used first for fever only, then for
small-pox only, and finally for both small-pox and fever. The