No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 185 



means to carry on the work of prevention as m the previous outbreak, 

 and the disease is still spreading, especially in townships, new 

 centres of infection being reported every few days. AH that the 

 ^tate Board can do under the circumstances is to use its best efforts 

 to induce the school boards to organize as boards of health and 

 rigidly enforce llie law of 181)5, for the resh'ictioii of commmiicable 

 diseases. They have ample autliority, but little money. The law 

 ;iuchori/.es (iu'ni to employ a salaried sanitary agent, but makes no 

 provision lor other expenses. They should therefore at once con- 

 fer with the county commissioners and poor directors and make ar- 

 rangements with them for bearing their appropriate share of the pe- 

 cuniary burden which must be assumed, for nothing is more certain 

 than that a small-pox epidemic cannot be successfully managed with- 

 out the free expenditure of monej-. 



But to return to our figures. The two children from Colorado ar 

 lived in January-, 19U1, about twelve months ago. During that 

 lime there have been reported to the Board 2,GSt) cases; of these 1,905 

 liave occurred in cities and boroughs, and 081 m unincorporated rural 

 districts. The population of the cities and boroughs concerned is 

 1,950,510 Avhile that of the rural i)opulation is 14,722; so that the num- 

 ber of cases in the cities should have been forty-three times as great 

 as that in the townships, in point of fact it Avas only about two 

 and two-tliirds as great. From this we make the deduction that, so 

 far as small-pox is concerned, at the present time there has been, com- 

 paring the populations of infected townships with those of infected 

 cities, at least fourteen times as great a prevalence of the 

 disease in the townships as in the cities and boroughs. 

 This statement strikes you as preposterous. And yet a 

 moment's consideration ought to convince you that it is simply 

 what might be expected. In the city, take Philadelphia, Pittsburg 

 or Harrisbui'g for instance, the moment a case of suspicious eruptive 

 disease is discovered by a physician, he notifies the health authorities, 

 who send an expert to determine the diagnosis. Should the case 

 I)rove to be small-pox, the house is placarded, and guards are es- 

 lablished. Within two hours the case has been removed to the 

 Municipal Hospital where the best medical skill is available for its 

 care and recoverv, and the inmates of the house have all been vac- 

 ( inated. The house is absolutely sealed up. No one comes out or 

 goes in, and this strict quarantine is kept up until the danger point 

 lor the inmates has passed. When the house has been thoroughly 

 disinfected they are allowed to go out and mingle with the public. 

 But this is not all. The school authorities, if there is a child in the 

 house attending school, are at once notified. The children are dis- 

 missed and the school closed and not opened again until it has been 

 thoroughly disinfected. In addition to this, all of the school children 

 Lave been already vaccinated in obedience to the State law, 

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