114 Disinfecting Powers of Increased Temperatures. 
tagion. ‘The interval, between exposure to infection and the com- 
mencement of the disease, is unusually short, and may be stated at 
from two or three, to six days. When the infection has been receiv- 
ed, the malady produced by it, begins to be contagious before the 
scarlet efflorescence appears ; and it continues so even after the sub- 
sequent desquamation of the cuticle. Every medical practitioner of 
much experience must have been baffled in his attempts to dislodge 
it from families, in which it had gained a footing. In such cases, 
its revivals at distant intervals of time has been sometimes traced to 
clothes or bedding which had been carelessly laid by, without being 
sufficiently purified. In the state of fomites, this species of infec- 
tion has lain dormant many months. Dr. Hildebrand, for example, 
relates that he carried the infection in a coat, which had not been 
worn since his attendance on a scarlatina patient a year and a half 
before, from Vienna into Podolia, where the disease had till then 
been almost unknown.* Generally speaking, too, scarlatina is a 
distinct and well characterized disease; and whenever it is otherwise, 
the doubts may commonly be removed, by comparing it with the 
prevailing epidemic. 
These considerations rendered me extremely desirous to try the 
disinfecting powers of elevated temperatures over the contagion of 
scarlatina. It fortunately happened that in one of the wards of the 
House of Recovery, a patient (a female, aged nineteen, of the name 
of Gerrard) was suffering under that form of the disease, which has 
been termed scarlatina anginosa. The symptoms in the judgment 
of the attendant physician, as well as in my own (taken in conjunc- 
tion, too, with the previous history of the case), left no doubt of its 
nature. ‘T’o make the most of this excellent example of the malady, 
a succesion of flannel waistcoats were worn, each for several hours, 
in contact with the body of the patient, and were then put into dry 
bottles, which were well corked, tied over with bladder, and laid by 
for use. Other opportunities of obtaining waistcoats, similarly infec- 
ted soon occured, in the case of Sarah Gerrard, a younger sister of 
the first patient; of William Johnston, et. eleven; and of Robert 
Green, et. fifteen. In Johnston, not only were the appearances 
quite unequivocal, but he was the last of four children, (not all of 
one family,) who had been infected, in regular sequence, by com- 
munication with each other. 
* Dict. de Med. xix. p. 156. 
