The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1881-03-10
SSsiOlf-POr.

New York Times. |
The cause Of small pox Is univer-
sally admitted to be IL specific conta.
gion, the nature of which medical
research has thus far failed to discov-
er. No disease is, in all probability,
so contagious. A prominent physi.
clan who had given particular atten.
tion to it, and had u very wide and
varied experience in it's treatment |
said, eighty yeaEs aeo that he had
never known single instance in
which persons liable to small pox
could pass any tine with patient in
the chamber without taking the in.
lection. There have been instances
where the poisonous eflluvium has
crossed II river 1880 feet wide and
affected ten or twelve workmen on
the other side. The contagion acts
through the air, by contact with the
skin or by incubation, and may be
impaired bya corpse which has not
been touched. Just what products of
the diseased body are contagious are
not precisely known, but that the
contents of the pistules and dried
scabS are so has been definitely ascer-
tanned. Medical opinion differs as to
the period when the disorder begins
and ceases to be contagious, but it is
prudent to believe it capable of self
propagation us soon as the febrile
symptoms have declared themselves.
How soon the patient ceases to be
dangerous has not been determined
accurately; but the stability of the
contagious principle may be inferred
from the fact that clothing will re-
tain il for months and years, it is
said, when confined. Smallpox APP
pears like all the contagious examine
mata, in epidermiS form at irregular,
and, us far as can be learned, at ca |
PRECIOUS intervals. After an extra
ordinary exemption, perhaps for
years, district may be suddenly in.
vaded by it, where it will continue TO |
prevail for longer or shorter period,
and then spontaneously disappear,
not to he revived for protracted
period. Epidcmics differ much in
intensity, and isolated cases are gen.
orally milder than where the distem-
per RACES. Race has Il good deal to
do with the severity of the disease,
the darker races, notably the negro
and our aboriginals, being very sus-
ceptible to it, and showing very little
power to resist it. Although vaccin-
alton is generally acknowledged to be
Il preventative, some physicians have
recently declared it TO be but par.
TALLY effective. Smallpox, while it
continues to be very dangerous. is far
less so than it used to be. At one
time the proportion of deaths to cases
is one to four. 1t is more apt to prove
fatal in childhood and old age than
in the intervening period. In former
times the eruption was believed to be
an effort of nature to get rid of nox-
ious matter, and stimulating and
heating measures were therefore
adopted to that end. The history of
the loathsome disease is rather oh.
scure. There is no evidence that the
Greek or Arabian writers of the sixth
century knew anything of it. The
first accurate account of it was given
by Rhazes, an Arabian physician, who
lived in the early part of the tenth
century. 1t seems to have reached
England nearly 100 years later, and,
after the crusades, it prevailed in the
temperate regions of Africa, but not
in the far north until some time later.
Early in the sixteenth century it was
carried from Europe 10 the new worIu
where it ragged furiously, killing
$500, 900 of people in Mexico alone.
In lT07 it was introduced into Ire
land, and nearly one-fourth of the
entire population fell victims to it,
ana twenty-six years after it nearly
depopulated Greenland. These ex-
amples corroborate the well-fonnded
opinion that contagious diseases are
always most virulent when they first
occur in Il country or region that they
have not before visited.