Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1881 — The Spread of Small-pox, etc. [ARTICLE]

The Spread of Small-pox, etc.

During the last year there has been an undoubted increase in the spread and virulence of contagious diseases throughout the country. The present ijeign of small-pox is rapidly extending outside of the large cities to the neighboring towns and villages. An interesting article incur local columns describes the metliods employed by our Board of Health to deal with this dreaded disease. Scarlet fever has been more than ordinarily fatal, and diphtheria has almost invariably followed it. Even, the comparatively harmless ailment of measles has put on an unwonted malignancy, and in some of the inland cities has* literally swept down the whole population, proving fatal in a large percentage of cases.

The reaseu of this increased malignancy probably may partly be found in unfavorable climatic conditions, butthe principal cause is undoubtedly the criminal carelessness in the handling of individual cases by both nurses and physicians. A feeble effort made recently by our municipal authorities to prevent attendance at the funerals of persons dead of small-pox, scarlet fever, or diphtheria is the only step made in the right direction. The law enforcing isolation even in the first disease is evaded both by physicians and the families in which the cases occur; the patients (each one of whom is for the time a death-breeding cen tre) are permitted not only to remain in the middle of healthy communities/ but the communities are not w arned. Families are suffered to nurse malignant cases of smati-pox and scar let fever in ' one room of a small house, and in others to sell cigars or newspapers, or to go to and from carrying the gems of contagion with them. The fatal effect es such Indivdiual ignorance and carelessness.in this matter was shown in

Philadelphia a few years ago. A pingid case of small-pox occurred in a crowded suberb; the bed on which the patient died Was burned in the street on a heavy, foggy night Forty cases resulted in oneblock, and thence the disease spread over the city until 8,000 deaths in one winter were the fatal fruit of that single act. There can be no doubt that to islolate a case of contagious disease, or even to proclaim the faXJt of its presence, is a difficult and disagreeable experience to a private familv, and even sometimes the cause of great pecuniary loss. Hence, both authorities and*physipians wink at the dodging of sanitary regulations. The patient is hidden in a back room, turned out as soon as possible, neither house nor clothing is disinfected, and everybody hopes the disease will mercifully go no further. Nothing can be easier than to put a stop to the wholesale slaughter by this class of diseases. With svmotlc bidden in certain auouw couuiLions or me atmosphere, i toe poison be Killed by j

• . < ■■ within the reach of t e poorest. It is so tronbleaome to do this that it only will be done when legally enforced here as it is In England. Anothea means of putting a stop to the march of these destroyers would be the establishnienkin each of our large cities of A.' hospital for contag-r ious diseases which should be in no sense charitable, but maintained in such a manner that any member of a resjiectable family attacked by a contagious fever could, on payment of a reasonable sum, secure as good attendance, skilful nursing and other comforts as if he ramained at home. Buch a thing is practicable in London, but here removal to the pest house in every city fejuktly regarded as equivalent to dismissal to the coffin and the worm. If it were practicable here, di-ease would be kept out of hundreds of private families. * _ . Our Catholic friends held last week a solemn feast to St. Blasius, and thousands of supplicants, infected with diphtheria and uninfected, came to have their throats blessed by candles and the aid of the saint. Weha/e nothing to say concerning this act of faith, except to suggest that it would be wise in their -teachers to explain that a reasonable amount of care on their own part, good drainage, and disinfectants would doubtless hold up the bands of good St. Blasius in putting a stop to the fatal scourge.— New York Tribune. -