The mode of infection and duration of the infectious period in scarlet fever / by Charles V. Chapin.

  • Chapin, Charles V. (Charles Value), 1856-1941.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The mode of infection and duration of the infectious period in scarlet fever / by Charles V. Chapin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    sisters, of the patient, do not infect the hallways, stair rails, doors and water closets so as to cause the disease in the other inmates of the house, can there be any appreciable danger of their carrying the virus in their clothes to their work or play ? It will not be denied that infection by fomites may not take place in scarlet fever, nor that there may be some instances of long persisting infectivity by fomites. But it is affirmed that there is no evidence that such a mode of infection plays any appreciable part in the extension of the disease, and there is much e^ddence that it does not. Lifection hy Air. Another explanation of the source of scarlet fever which cannot be traced to direct contact with another case, is that the infection is airborne. This idea of the importance of airborne infection depends very largely on the belief that the desquamating epidermis is infectious, a belief for which it has been shown there is no evidence. The writer like every health officer, has frequently noted that a case of this disease may remain in school or hospital ward for days, or sometimes for weeks, with- out another case developing, or at most only one or two cases. Such facts indicate that the disease is not easily airborne. Visitors to fever hospitals do not contract scarlet fever. Thus of 300 to 400 non- immune students who ATsited the scarlet fever wards of