766 MICROBIOLOGY OF DISEASES OF MAN AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS 



quarantine is evaded by the inmates. In hotels or apartment houses, 

 only that room, suite or apartment occupied by the patient and his 

 family need be placarded; otherwise the same rules should be followed. 

 Milk men are warned that they may continue delivery, but must 

 take no bottle or other receptacle away until the placard is removed, 

 and that all such receptacles must be sterilized before use. 



PLACARDING OF HOUSE INTERNAL 



Under whatever circumstances isolation or quarantine is carried 

 out in houses, hotels, apartments, or elsewhere, except in contagious 

 hospitals, there is fixed to an internal wall at a convenient point a 

 notice, giving the general rules regarding who are isolatable, who are 

 quarantinable, who may go free, and the actual names of all inmates 

 are distributed in writing into these three groups on the notice. For 

 all who may go free, permits in writing are furnished and the fact that 

 permits to go back and forth have been issued is also recorded on this 

 notice. 



We believe the internal placard, properly filled out as above, to be 

 of the greatest educational value; it brings everything down to " brass 

 tacks," inasmuch as the family is classified as to immunity or non- 

 immunity, freedom or restriction, by name in writing upon it, and 

 because there can therefore be no misunderstanding on the part of any 

 individual concerned. 



In the writer's opinion, an internal placard should be used in all 

 infectious diseases to the exclusion usually of the external placard; the 

 latter being used only when the rules laid down in the internal placard 

 are broken wilfully by the inmates. 



QUARANTINE PERIODS FOR CONTACTS 



Contacts are those persons who come into such close relationships 

 with an infected person, during an infectious stage, as may reasonably 

 be held to afford opportunity for the transfer of the infection from the 

 infected person to the other. The existence of such opportunity for 

 infection by no means ensures its occurrence, but in most diseases there 

 is no sure way of determining whether or not infection has occurred 

 other than by watching to see if the disease develops. This period of 

 observation is usually the period of quarantine. In diphtheria, con- 

 tacts may be examined by taking a culture from nose and throat. If 



