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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    the ambulance did not habitually pass, was higher than some and lower than others. Similarly, it was pointed out that some of the persons attacked within the special area surrounding the hospital might have gob their infection in other parts of London to Avhich their daily avocations took them. Tliis is so; but again, is it likely that these people would come home and settle themselves down in regularly decreasing cii'cles around the small-pox hospital ? It is not to be denied, however, that, excluding ambulances which had pi-etty clearly defined routes of trafiic to the hospital, and exclud- ing introductions of the disease from other parts of the Metropolis, such small-pox as depended on personal com- munication from the hospital would tend to range itself in radii corresponding to the lines of communication with the hospital, the amount decreasing with the distance. And I do not for a moment suggest that personal conveyance of one sort and another had not a great deal to do with the matter. Here, as elsewhere, many groups of cases would be secondaiy to, and directly connected with, foci outside of the hospital, and it is in no way surprising that evidence of conveyance of this sort was able to be put before the Commission. But such foci, unless the mischief done by them was always equal, might tend rather to disturb than to emphasize gradation from centre to periphery. And it appears that in the locality around Fulham Hospital practically all cases were sent to hospital after their dis- covery. It has never been suggested, however, that aerial convection excludes personal communication, or that the area around the hospital forms an unsuitable field for the latter method of spreading the disease. The question is. Is personal communication the likeliest M^ay to account for all the facts ? Coming now to the subject of aerial convection, both in Waterhouse's time and more recently, various theoretical considerations have been adduced with regard to the possibility of the survival of infective power through the requisite space for the requisite time. The distance to which an animal odour like the smell of the skunk can be carried, and the phenomena of hay fever, are instances in point. Too much value may easily be attached to such analogies, and they might be used in support of a thesis that measles, or whooping-cough, or typhus, can be conveyed for long distances. I may note, however, that Dr. Water- house quotes from Dr. Aspinwall to the effect that it is a fact well known to every ploughboy, that a skunk can be