28 
and no cther. What the nature of the disease-giving material 
may be—whether chemical or vital, I do not intend to discuss 
to-night. Suffice it to say that from the facts, that it is possible 
to destroy it by means of substances that poison low forms of 
life, and that certain diseases are capable of being set up by a 
few known low forms of life, there is good reason “for supposing 
that the disease-giving matter takes the form of a lowly organism 
or germ. In order the more fully to appreciate the necessity for 
the plea for an Infectious Hospital that Iam to put forward to- 
night, I will give an account of the life history, as shewn in its 
attack on the human system, of one of these diseases. For that 
purpose I will choose the disease of Scarlet Fever or Scarlatina, 
inasmuch as its infectious matter is the most subtle, the most 
persistent and practically the most dangerous with which we 
have to contend. 
A person who has been exposed to its influence or contagion, 
in one of the innumerable and incomprehensible ways in which 
the infection is spread, will feel nothing the matter with him for 
a few days, or it may be a week. Then he will feel hot and 
cold by turns, shortly becoming very hot, gets sick with head- 
ache and sore throat. After a day or two of this condition a 
bright red rash breaks out over the body which again in a few 
days disappears, and if the case be a favourable one all the other 
symptoms disappear likewise. For the next six or seven weeks 
the skin peels off, in some places as fine powder, in others in flakes 
large or small. While such may be a succinct account of some 
cases there are many kinds of divergence from this. In a few 
the disease is so violent and so virulent that the person is killed 
after a few hours irom the onset, and it is difficult then to recog- 
nise what is the nature of the terrible disease. In others the 
disease from the onset gradually intensifies in severity, unyield- 
ing to all treatment till death ensues. In others, again, the 
throat mischief is a great source of danger and of suffering, and 
many are afflicted with other forms of danger, as inflammation and 
eathering in the ears, inflammation of the kidneys, rheumatism, 
&e., whereby, although recovery may take place, permanent 
damage is done to the constitution. Such things as these are of 
daily occurrence in your midst, and although the means of pre- 
vention are largely in your own hands, yet practically no step is 
taken to check the ravages of such calamities. 
The recital of the dangers does not end here. From the time 
the individual begins to get ill until the skin has completely 
peeled off him he is in a highly infectious state. So subtle is 
this infectious matter that in spite of all precautions it is difficult 
to feel assured that, unless isolated, the disease may not spread. 
Anything he touches, or anything that touches him, unless sub- 
ject to most rigid disinfection is apt to convey disease. The 
