The sources and modes of infection / by Charles V. Chapin.

  • Charles V. Chapin
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The sources and modes of infection / by Charles V. Chapin. 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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    As Lingelsheim says, it appears that the nearer we approach cases of the disease the more numerous carriers are, and the more extensive the outbreak the more numerous they are. Adults are more commonly infected than children. Fltigge thinks that carriers are ten to twenty times as numerous as cases, and that is doubtless true. Infection by Carriers. That carriers are the chief source of the disease is the opinion of those Germans who have lately had experience in severe outbreaks, and it is shared by the Scotch health officers. Lingelsheim says that there is no bacteriological or epidemiological evidence to show that the sick are more dangerous than the well, otherwise the cases would occur in groups. On the contrary the carriers mingling freely with the public are the most dangerous. Jehle 1 states that 23 cases occurred in children in the families of miners. None of the miners were sick, but when they were transferred to another mine, children there soon began to develop the disease. Their parents were doubtless carriers. Meyer2 reports an instance where carriers gave rise to three cases. At Leith, Buchanan3 says that the first few cases could be traced to carriers, and Thomson4 makes a similar statement regarding the early cases in Lanarkshire. Flatten5 gives the details of numerous instances of the transmission of the dis- ease by well persons. Carriers explain Spread of Disease. — Previous to the dis- covery of the presence of the specific organism of cerebro- spinal meningitis in the nose, and particularly in the nose of contacts, the mode of extension of the disease was a mystery. Though certainly an infectious disease, and appearing in epi- demics, often quite severe, it was apparently only slightly if 1 Jehle, cited by Warrington, J. Roy. San. Inst., Lond., 1907, XV, 656. 2 Meyer, Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. [etc.], I Abt. Orig., Jena, 1909, XLIX, 305. 3 Buchanan, Brit. M. J., Lond., 1907, II, 852. * Thomson, Med. Press & Circ, Lond., 1908, n. s., LXXXVI, 344. 6 Flatten, Klin. Jahrb., Jena, 1906, XV, 265.