CIRCULATION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2582, 17 April 1877, Page 3

CIRCULATION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES.

The circulation of infectious diseases has almost been reduced to a science, and in a paper written by. Dr Fox, medical officer of health for parts of Essex, upon some of the ways by which zymotic diseases may be spread, a number of remarkable instances are given of the facility with which misery and death may be distributed in a locality by establishing centres of contagion at shops, publichouses, and schools, or other convenientpoints of intercommunication. The first case mentioned is that of a publichouse in Essex where the children of the proprietor were ill with scarlet fever acquired in London. The proprietor's wife, with a stern sense of duty, attended on the patients, and also on the customers, the result being that the fever soon spread throughout the neighborhood. Dr Fox remonstrated in vain. There was no legal power to compel a cessation of business during the presence of this communicable disease in the house, which was kept open and business carried on as usual. The next case mentioned was. onei of typhoid fever from polluted milk, which was of the ordinary character. Another case was the appearance of measles in a village school, the managers of which refused temporarily to close it. Case No. 4 was that of smallpox in a restaurant, " the characteristic odour of the disease pervading the bar where the men stood drinking." In case No. 5 it was a tailor who made clothes for people while enteric fever prevailed in the house. In another instance a village grocery and post-office business was the means by which scarlet fever was spread. There was a child lying ill in a room close to the shop, and' the fever soon ran through the village. In another case whooping-cough was successfully spread from a beershop, where children sent for beer caught the disease. .In all these cases the tradespeople were urged to close their shops, but, as there was no law to compel them to do so, they, and the disease they circulated, remained "masters of the situation." —Pall Mall 'Gazette.