HOW SCARLET FEVER IS PROPAGATED.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 109, 31 March 1871, Page 3

HOW SCARLET FEVER IS PROPAGATED.

Experiments have lately been conducted at the Birmingham Children's Hospital, which point most conclusively to the fact that scarlet fever is communicated in numberless cases through the medium of the laundry. It has always been a recognised fact with medical men that the clothes of fever patients is a medium of infection ; but it is only now the important fact has been elicited that the mixing of such clothes with others in the wash is art active agent in the spread of the disease. The experiments at the Children's Hospital have resulted in the establishment of a very importaat matter, viz., that when the clothes of the patients in the infectious ward are washed separately from those of the other patients, those other patients do not incur scarlet fever. The observation of members of the faculty having been drawn to this fact, they carried out the principle still further, and watched its development

tt.'tb the narrowest care. Among the results it was established that the patients in the ward over the laundry were more frequently attacked than those in distant wards. Now, if —as seems clear from these experiments—the fever germs are not destroyed by water at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, we have the startling fact that every laundry is liable to be turned into a fever manufactory whenever thoughtless or ignorant persons send the clothes of patients -fco be wasTiecl -fclxere. The auestjon is one of" t]i© utmost -avifv and Its Importance to laborers In tile field of sanitary science cannot be overrated. To stamp out scarlatina we must isolate the washing of the patients' clothes. If they can afford it, the best thing is to burn the clothing; but where that would be too costly for the pockets of the- sufferers, the washing should be done on the ground floor of the same house, and no other clothrtig should be mixed with it. By that means, and the usual pre •autions of isolating the patient, the disease, it is believed, would be narrowed to the house in which it broke out, and, very possibly, to one case.