HOW SCARLET FEVER IS PROPAGATED.

Otago Witness, Issue 1003, 18 February 1871, Page 22

HOW SCARLET FEVER IS PROPAGATED.

(Birmingham Daily Pout.)

The ravages of the scarlatina epidemic have ([assumed such formidable proportions and have so far baffled, to a great extent, the zealous efforts of sanitary reformers, that any discovery sending to diminish the extent of the disease must be regarded as a national blessing. Such a discovery has, we believe, been made. 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 caseß through the medium of the laundry. It has always been a recognised fact with medical men that the clothing 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 an active agent in the spread of the disease. The experiments at the Children's Hospital have resulted in the establishment of a very important mattei? — viz., that when the olothes 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 ana watched its development with 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 to be washed there. The question is one of the utmost gravity, and its importance to labourers in the field of sanitary science cannot be overrated. To stamp out scarlatina we must isolate the washing of the patients. 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 groundfloor of the same house, and no other clothing should be mixed with it. By that means, and the usual precautions 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. So important is this matter of infection by means of the laundry, that we understand it will shortly form the subject of a contribution to one of the medical journals.