Is Appendicitis Contagious ?

Horowhenua Chronicle, 9 August 1910, Page 4

Is Appendicitis Contagious ?

NEW THBORY OF THE DISEASE.

"We must regard appendicitis as 'contagious," is the disquieting .statement made by Dr. Donald W. C. Hood, in a letter to the editor or the Lancet. "If the disease is due, as I believe it to be," said Dr. Hood, "to the effect of microbie influence, the micro-organism may, under certain conditions, be conveyed from i-idi-vidtial to individual." Dr. Hood refers to the rapid. growth of the number affected with the complaint. Thirteen years ago after some twenty years of active hospital work, he had occasion to state that appendicitis cases were happily rare. "But nowadays," he says, "instead of seeing case after case ruinniin.g a simple benign course, and speedily recovering under medical treatment, we have been called upon to deal with a vast number in which immediate operation is essental, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that whereas in the seventies and eighties those enses were only met with comparatively rarely, they are n°w of almost daily occurrence." Dp. Hood goes <on to discuss "the remarkable increase of the disease." With this increase there has also been a change of type as regards its virulence, and within the memory o>f many n< >w living the disease has become not only far more frequent, but has also assumed a much more serious form. "Appendicitis has without a shadow of doubt become within a few years vastly more common ! u °t only has it become more frequent, but it has assumed a far higher degree of intensity or virulence.