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The evidence I have adduced would also lead to the inference
that the present epidemic is of a milder type than has been the
case in some former epidemics.
My observation has convinced me that every facility should
be forthcoming to effect the early removal to hospital of all Scarlet
Fever patients, and that no invidious distinction should be made
at any time between so-called non-pauper and pauper patients,
because it is to the interest of the community as a whole that
every means should be used to remove very early all persons
suffering from this disease. It is only right to add that so far as I
am concerned no difficulty has been encountered in this direction
during the present epidemic."
Some very useful and interesting statistics as to Scarlet Fever
have been adduced from an examination of nearly 18,000 cases of
the disease treated in the London Fever Hospital and in the
Metropolitan Asylum Hospitals during the twelve years 1874-85.
From the known mortality from Scarlet Fever at different ages,
and the known case-mortality in hospital cases at the same groups
of ages, the number of cases of attack have been calculated; and,
finally, the proportion of the population that is protected at each
successive age period in each sex, is given, with the relative
proportions between the cases and the unprotected population.
The main results deduced from these calculations, after due
allowance for the hypothetical character of some of the assumptions,
are (I) the mortality from the disease is at its maximum in the
third year of life, and afterwards diminishes with age—at first
slowly, and afterwards rapidly; (2) the liability to attack of the
unprotected is small in the first year of life, reaches its maximum
about the fifth year, and then rapidly decreases with age; (3) the
chance of fatal termination of an attack is highest in infancy, then
declines with age, to the twenty-fifth year of age, and afterwards
slightly increases again; (4) females are more liable throughout
life to an attack than males, but the attacks in males are more
liable to fatal termination than the attacks in females.
The Registrar-General, in concluding his remarks on these
important details, says: "Independently of the plain fact that a very
large proportion of persons go through life without contracting
this disease, it is shown that the longer an attack is deferred the