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

John McVail

Date:: 1894

Credit: The aerial convection of small-pox from hospitals / by John 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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10/28 page 8

let me quote from a letter by Professor Wall, of Oxford, to Haygarth, contained in the work to which I have alread}'- referred:— How comes it to pass that apothecaries, inocu- lators, nurses, etc., are continually going from house to house, while they are attending small-pox patients, without any care, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred without communicating the disorder to those who have not had it? Is there not, after all, a good deal of truth behind this query? Everyone believes that a medical man may convey infection from one house to another; but if we consider the number of his outgoings from infected houses in any given week, or month, or year, even in the presence of a small- pox epidemic, or in his whole lifetime, and consider rela- tively to these the number of cases in which any atom of reasonable suspicion exists that he has conveyed disease, we get some indication of the value to attach to the entrances and exits belonging to hospital administration, many of them referring to tradesmen and others who never enter a Avard, and have no direct opportunity of getting their clothing infected; while as to the nursing staff, the pre- cautions observed as to the ablutions and change of clothing are far in excess of anything that is possible to a general practitioner. No doubt, however, it is here to be borne in mind that persons regularly on duty in a small-pox ward should require more thorough disinfection than a medical practitioner on his daily rounds. One or two instances have struck me particularly in reading the more recent literature that has gi'own up around this question. The dustman of one of the M. A. B. hospitals caught small-pox, and though doubtless removed to hospital immediately on the disease declaring itself, he yet succeeded in infecting members of his own household. These people, therefore, were susceptible to small-pox. But, for years before, that dustman had been going in and out of the hospital carrying on his work of refuse removal there, and in and out of his own home, yet he had never brought infection within his doors till he himself was seized with the disease. Similarly, in the course of the Fulham inquiry, no case was found of small-pox occurrence in the houses visited by officers and servants of the hospital, and nine non-resident servants did not carry the disease to their houses in nine different streets. Again, in considering one particular group of cases thought to be due to aerial con- vection, Mr. Power tried to exclude all as to which personal conveyance could be in the least suspected. One excluded case was that of a man who had had a drink in a beershop

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

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