Note 19 — Chapter V · CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE “FINAL REPORT”
Reading edition
As regards the case of the nurses in small-pox hospitals, about which so much has been said, I brought before the Commission some evidence from a medical work, which sufficiently disposes of this part of the question. In Buck’s Treatise on Hygiene and the Public Health, Vol. II., we find an article by Drs. Hamilton and Emmett on “Small-pox and other Contagious Diseases,” and on page 321 thereof we read:
“It is a fact fully appreciated by medical men, that persons constantly exposed to small-pox very rarely contract the disease. In the case of physicians, health-inspectors, nurses, sisters of charity, hospital orderlies, and some others, this is the rule; and of over 100 persons who have been to my knowledge constantly exposed, some of them seeing as many as 1,000 cases, I have never personally known of more than one who has contracted the disease; but there are many writers who believe perfect immunity to be extremely rare. In this connection attention may be called to the exemption of certain persons who occupy the same room, and perhaps bed, with the patients, and though sometimes never vaccinated, altogether escape infection.”
And Mr. Wheeler shows that at Sheffield the hospital staff did suffer from small-pox in a higher degree than other comparable populations (see 6th Report, Q. 19,907).