The weekly herald. [volume] (Cleveland, Tenn.) 1876-1888, 1881-03-25
SMALLPOX.
The Oriein md Treatment Of the Disease.
Preventive Measures.

The Orisin md Treatment ofihr ni-ea-e..
! Preventive Measures.
: The cause Of smallpox Is universal,
admitted 10 hc a specific cuntagion, Ia,
nature Of which medical research Ina.
tlus far failed to discover. No diseas,
Is in all probability, 80 contagious. 4
prominent physician who has given par
ticular attention to it, and has had a
very wide and varied experience in it,
treatment, said, eighty Years ago, that
he had never known a single instance in
which persons liable to smallpox could
pass any time with a patient in the same
chamber without taking the infection,
There have been Instances where the
poisonous eilluvium has crossed a river
LOO feet wide and effected ten out of
twelve WorkmGn ON the uthersidc. The
contagion acts through the air. by CON
tact with the skin OF 10y incubation. and
may he impaired 10y a corpse which has
not been touched. just what products
OF the disease body are contagious are
not precisely known, but that the con.
tents of the pustules and dried scab3 are
so has been definitely asccrtained. Med
ical opinion differs as to the period when
the disorder begins and ceases TO be con
tagious, but it is prudent TO believe if
capable of sclf-propagation as soon as
the febrile symptoms have declared
themselves. How o the patient ceas-
es to he dangerous has not been deter
mined accurately but the stability of
the contagious principle may be inferred
from the fact that clothing will retain il
Tor months and for years, it is said. when
confined. Smallpox appears, like all
contagious eXanthcmata, in endemic
form at irregular, and, as far as can be
learned, at capricious, intervals. After
an extraordinary exemption, perhaps for
years, a district may be suddenly inya-
ded by it, whore it will continue to pre-
N| nv ]
vail for a longer or shorter period, and
then spontaneously disappear, not to be
revived for a protracted period. Epi-
differ much in intensity, and $50
lated cases are generally milder than
the distempcr RACES. Race has
a good deal to do with the severity of
this disease, the dark races, notably fine
negro and our aboriginals, being very
susceptible to it, and showing very little
power to resist it. Although yaccina-
ION Is generally acknowledged to be
I preventive, some physicians have re-
emily declared it to be but partially
elective. Smallpox, while it continues
o be very dangerous, is far less so than
t used to he. At one time the propor-
ION OF deaths to cases wa one to four.
I IS more apt to prove fatal in child
rood and old age than in the interyen- {
ne period. in former times the 5
ruption was believed to be an effort of {
ature to get rid of n|oxious matter. and
tlmulating and heating measures were
therefore, adopted to that end. The
lstory of the loathsom disease is rather =
bscure. There is no evidence that tbe +
ireek or Arabian writer's of the sixth n
.ntury knew anything of it. The first T.
cclllate account of it was given by +
.hazes, an Arabian physician, who lived f
the early part of the tenth century. n
scames to have reached England ~
100 years later, and after the Cru o.
ldes, it prevailed in the temperate -
'gions of Africa, but not in the far !,
orth until some time later. Early in q,
le sixteenth century it was carried from +,
urope to the New World, where it ID
ged furiously, killing $500, 600 of peo- W
e III Mexico alone. In 1907 it was in 81
oduced into Iceland, and nearly one ci
urth of the entire population fell W
to it, and, 26 years later, it near W
depopulated Greenland. These ey- d
lples confederate the well founded of
onion that contagious diseases are al NJ
lys most yirulent when they first oc- Ia
+ III a country or region that they have &C
Vt before visited. III