View report page

5
were registered from Measlevof wlich, number seventeen occurred between
the ages of 1 and 5 years.
Scarlatina caused no less than 152 deaths during the year. It was at
its height in the quarter ended Christmas, when it caused 52 deaths; in the
following quarter the mortality sank to 15. The importance of devising
some means for limiting the epread of the disease was recognized early in
the autumn of last year, and suggestions were printed and circulated with
that view. All authorities are agreed concerning the extreme infectiousness
of the disease, and they all urge, as the basis of successfully combating it,
the total isolation of the sick. Where the original Scarlet Fever poison
sprang from, or whether it is ever renewed, is not known; but it is no
matter of doubt that a person suffering from the disease has power to communicate
it to a healthy person. either by means of the discharges from the
throat and nose, or by the innumerable small flakes of cuticle thrown off
during the stage of desquamation, and not improbably by the secretions of
the kidneys, and the alvine evacuation. Each ml all of these contain the
Scarlatina poison, and medical men have not unnaturally come to the con.
clusion that if the poison so Contained could, on its first exit or separation
from the body, be at once destroyed, the disease would terminate where it
began. Having this end in view, it is necessary that the infected person be
at once separated from the rest of the family ; that the sick room be divested
of every thing likely to harbour the minute particles given off from the body,
each of which is a fresh centre of disease; that the attendants shouid be
those who have had the disease; that no unnecessary communication should
be held with the other inmates of the house; that the evacuations should be
received at once into some vessel charged with a disinfectant, that all soiled
linen, and in fact every thing that has been used by the patient should be
disinfected, by immersion in some disinfecting fluid, before leasing the room ,