Page images
PDF
EPUB

In the week of very high mortality, one hundred and eighty-eight, the rate of motion of the air was 1,010 miles; and in the week of low mortality, eight, the movement was only 590 miles.

The Electrical Conditions of the Atmosphere showed a somewhat nearer approach towards one rule. In the twelve weeks, or eighty-four days, of equal mortality of sixteen, there were not less than fifty-seven days in which the electricity was positive; only three days in which there was negative electricity all the day; five days in which positive and negative electricity were shown on each day at different periods; and nineteen days in which the electrical results were nil. In the five weeks, or thirty-five days, in which the mortality was forty-one per week, there were three days and two hours of positive electricity; no evidence of negative electricity; but thirty-two days, minus two hours, in which no electrical results were given. In the week in which the mortality was one hundred and eighty-eight, positive electricity was developed on two days, negative on one day, and on four days none; while in the week of lowest mortality, eight, the electricity was positive on two days, and absent on five days.

From these records we can deduce, as I have already premised, but few facts of value bearing on the effects of special atmospherical changes on scarlet fever. It is worthy of remark, certainly, that during the period of eighty-four days when there was an equal weekly mortality of sixteen, there were fiftyseven days of positive electricity; while in the thirty

five days, during which the mortality was at the rate of forty-one per week, there were thirty-two days in which there was no electrical manifestation. It might be inferred, hereupon, that the absence of electrical manifestation was connected with a high mortality, and, on the contrary, that the presence of positive electricity was connected with a low mortality. But when we see again a week of extreme high mortality, one hundred and eighty-eight, during which we have two days of positive electricity, and a week of extreme low mortality, eight, during which electricity was absent on five days, we can but accept the facts which seem to have an affirmative meaning in the light of mere coincidences. Yet it may be, that in the future some relationship between the presence of electricity and a low mortality from scarlet fever will be traced; for it is possible that, while electricity in no way interferes with the spread of the contagion of this disease, it produces modification in the effects of the poison on the animal organism.

But if there be only this one finger pointing affirmatively towards the relationship of meteorological conditions and scarlet fever, there is a large amount of negative evidence supplied in the statistics I have given. We see, for example, that, with equal mortality, the most opposite conditions of temperature may be presented; but the most interesting observation is that in reference to the movement of the air. Assuming that the disorder were propagated by means of a volatile poison, it is obvious that such poison is limited

in its range of action, or, at all events, that it is not influenced, by the mechanical vibrations of the atmospheric sea. In a dead calm the mortality may in one week be sixteen; and in another week, with a current of air passing over the infected spot at the rate of fourteen hundred and fifty-five miles per week, or two hundred and seven miles per day, the mortality shall be the same; while again with a week of extraordinary high mortality, one hundred and eighty-eight, a current of air may be sweeping over the home of the disease at the rate of one thousand and ten miles per week.

I know how many objections may be brought to bear on the method, laborious though it has been, by which the above considerations have been arrived at. It may be urged that mortality is not a sure indication of the prevalence of an epidemic; it may be urged that the meteorological conditions which attend the fatal end of a disorder are not necessarily the same as those which were present when the disorder was being communicated. And these objections are so valid that I would not dispute them. My sole object is carried out now, if I have indicated all that can be gathered from the best and only resources we at this present have at command.

The Recurrence of Scarlet Fever in the same Person is an interesting fact, and one that deserves to be made a subject of special study. On the possibility of such recurrence, opinion has been divided. The well-known assertion of Willan, that out of two thousand cases of the disease, he had never met with

one in which it had

happened for the second time in

the same person, has been transcribed by almost all writers, and has led many to entertain a belief that the disease could never occur twice in one individual. This belief, however, is quite erroneous. Rayer saw one well-marked instance of recurrence; Bateman and Withering saw several; Blackburne saw two such cases; and Dr. Tweedie observes-"We certainly have met with several well-authenticated instances of a second attack of scarlatina in the same person.' I have known second attacks of scarlet fever in the same person without any doubt. A little girl whom I attended in 1850, took scarlet fever. The disease was very decided in character, but passed over favourably. A month afterwards, the little patient complained of feeling sick and cold, and I feared that the symptoms of dropsy were about to present themselves. Instead of this, the skin a second time became universally red, and the throat sore; the patient passed again through a most marked attack of scarlet fever.

I am able, too, to speak from experience in my own person on this subject, for I have suffered from the disease, not twice only, but thrice. When a child, I suffered severely from scarlet fever, during a time when it was occurring epidemically in my native village. The rash was universal, and intensely red; the throat sore; the recovery slow. In the spring of 1850, whilst attending cases of scarlet fever, I sickened, became ill, and passed through a very severe second attack of the disease. The skin was

again red, the throat sore and ulcerated, and the recovery gradual. Still more curious, whilst attending a boy, in the month of April 1852, who had a severe attack of scarlet fever, I became exceedingly unwell, suffered from shivering, and sore throat, and had a faint red blush on the chest and neck. I am minute in these particulars, because it is important to settle satisfactorily all points that admit of being settled in these inquiries; for by such means difficulties are exhausted, and fewer questions are left for investigation. I have not been able to collect statistical information on this subject of recurrences, so that it is impossible to state their frequency.

I take it, nevertheless, that the phenomenon of recurrence is most exceptional, and it is satisfactory to know that I can discover neither in literature, nor in general experience, one single case in which a second attack of scarlet fever has proved fatal.

I could not conclude this section on the natural history of scarlet fever, without reference to the mortality of the disorder, and specially in respect to the position which the disease holds in this particular to the other diseases of the zymotic class. Every writer on scarlet fever since its full recognition as a disease, has described, in mournful terms, its frightful ravages. Mr. Kearsley, of Philadelphia, writing about it a hundred years since as it appeared in America, says, "it baffled every effort to stop its progress, and seemed, by its dire effects, to be more like the sword of vengeance to stop the growth of the colonies, than the natural progress of a disease." To this day the yearly

« PreviousContinue »