The aerial convection of small-pox from hospitals / by J. C. McVail.

  • McVail, J.C.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The aerial convection of small-pox from hospitals / by J. C. McVail. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    PROOF.] [ ^ ^ THE AERIAL CONVECTION QF SMALL-POX FROM HOSPITALS. By J. C. McVAIL, M.D. {Read: January Xlth, 1894.) In opening the discussion on the possible influence of small-pox hospitals in aerially conveying the disease to suin-ounding population,, let me state in Limine that my purpose is rather to review existing knowledge than to adduce new facts, unless, indeed, some facts to which I wish to draw attention are so very old as to be entirely new to any of the members of the Epidemiological Society. For it is a trite saying that history repeats itself, and even in I'egard to the discussion of this subject the saying holds true, A century ago, the celebrated Dr. Hay garth of Chester, and Dr. Waterhouse, Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge in New England, had a lengthened contro- versy on this very question, and some of the points then raised are not without interest to us in the present day. Haygarth -was the author of A Plan to Eoctevminate the Small-pox, the plan con.'sisting of small-pox inoculation plus isolation. But the isolation he advocated was not necessarily by means of hospitals. He held that the disease could not spread aerially from one room to another in the same house, and that as to transmission through the open air, in moderate cases, a distance of a foot and a half might be looked on as the limit, and that the infection of fever.s was confined to a much narrower sphei'e—much narrower, that is to say, than a radius of 18 inches. In support of his views he cited experiments (which, he said, must strike every reader of sound sense with iri-esistible conviction) in which moist small-pox matter had failed at this distance, entirely forgetting that only dry matter might be expected to be carried atmospherically. At the same time Haygarth hotly opposed the thesis of a Dr. Paulet, who held that variola was not to be transmitted excepting by actual con- tact. In promulgating his own opinions, he therefore carefully steered his plan between Seylla and Charybdi.s. B