The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1873-03-13
Home Correspondence.
A Brief Review of the Report
an SFnall.Pax

As given by d. Nobles N. D., Health Officer to the
Members of the Board of Health of Hilsboro.
The object of this brief review is not to criticize
but merely to aid in protecting the citizens from
that very grave, loathesome, infectious disease,
SMALLPOX.
The contagion of smallpox is usually the product
of secretion or exhalation, and may exist in the
solid liquid, or aeriform state. The contagion of
varioa, or smallpox, most generally acts through
the medium of the atmosphere, the atmosphere be-
ing contaminated by the poisonous effiuvia and
transmitted into the lungs by inhalation, and also
by absorption, injecting the blood.
The question is very frequently asked, at what
period of the disease is 1t communicated or becomes
contagious?
believe it to become contagious from the COM
mencement of the febrile state
| l can now recall one instance; a man who was
exposed to a smallpox patient of mine, while in
the febrile state, who took the smallpox and fell
victim to the disease ON the sixteenth day from the
exposure to the contagion.
To substantiate and corroborate my belief, and
experience in the communicability and transmissi-
bility of the variolous contagion in the ncipient
fehrile state of smallpox, will quote from some
few acknowledged standard authorities:
The late Geo. B. Wood NJ. d. and Professor in
the University of Penn, and consulting Physician
to the Pennsylvania Hospital, says, "Opnon is not
settled ss to the period of disease at which 1t is
contagious believing it to be only after the
commencement of suppuration, while others, with
greater prudence, consider it as capable of self
propagation at any period after the first establish
ment of the fever" woods Practice of Medi-
cine, vol. 1, p. 962).
William Aitken, NJ. D., of Edinburgh, and also
Prof. of Pathology in the Army Medical School,
says sit is not yet determined at what period this
poison is first generated by the patients person,
whether during the primary fever, or not till after
the eruption has appeared; but it probably begins
to form and multiply during the primary fevet."
CThe Science and Practice of Medicine, vol. /, p.
9ls).
Austin Flint, NJ. D.. Prof. of the Principles and
Practice of Medicine in the Bellevue Hospital Medi-
cal College, says: Smallpox is probably communi-
cable in all its stages" Treatise on the Principles
and Practice of Medicine, p. s69l.
Fleetwood Churchill, N. D., on the Diseases of
Infants and Children quotes DR.. Gregory as saying
that "the contagious miasm is given off at every
stage of the disease from the first invasion of fever
to the throwing off of the latest scsbs." (p. COY.
Therefore those who may chance to read this
brief review of the report of the Health Officer to
the Board of Health, 1 will leave the subject to
their discretion and candid judgment, whether or
not it would be safe for an unprotected person, one
who has never been protected by vaccination or
having once had smallpox, to come in contact with
an infected person. and being exposed to the conta
gious effiuvia from the time of attack up to the
tenth day, period of the maturation of the pus-
tules. R.C. RUSS, NJ. D.