SMALLPOX FROM SPAIN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19046, 17 December 1923, Page 8

SMALLPOX FROM SPAIN.

LONDON OUTBREAK FEARED. WOMAN AT AN HOTEL. The recent outbreak of smallpox in London has been tracked to its source. It was introduced by a woman from Valencia, in the the south of i^pain. ■Hie full story is told in a report of the Public Health Committee of the London County Council. The first case was detected in a South London borough on September 7, the patient being a chambermaid in a London hotel. She had waited on a visitor (a woman referred to as X), who was ill in bed from August 13 to 13 with what w r as originally diagnosed as influenza, with spots attributed by the patient to fish poisoning. She had arrived in England on August 7 from Valencia, wher n smallpox had been more or loss prevalent. Beside the chambermaid a man employed by a laundry which washed the linen of S’s hotel, and two other person's, who at different times had occupied X’s room at the hotel, were infected. Altogether theri were 18 cases. Twelve patients, aged betwen 23 and 79, had not been vaccinated since infancy, and of these one died; five between the ages of 12 and 50 were unvaccinated, and of these one died. One patient had l>een vaccinated in the army in 1914, and suffered a very mild at Lack. ahe mother of three children who contracted smallpox after visiting a child who had the disease contracted smallpox herself. These cases were at Southwick, Durham. There was another suspected case at Clowne. Derbyshire. A doctor at Southwick had his surgery full of people waiting to be vaccinated, when he recognised definite symptoms. of smallpox on the arm of a man who rolled up his sleeves for the operation. The man was hurried off to the hospital, all those in the surgery were vaccinated, and the surgery was disinfected. Further cases were expected, as this man had been going about freely. Tho Sunderland Corporation decided to allow clergymen to visit the borough sanatorium. . the tuberculosis hospital, and the' maternity home only when dying patients were concerned, and then tho visiting clergy had to bo disinfected both on entering and leaving the institutions.