WHOOPING COUGH.
Very few people have reached adult life without having suffered from this disease, as well as measles. This is chiefly due to the carelessness in mixing infected with healthy children. One frequently hears the peculiar and characteristic cough of a child with whooping-cough, in public assemblies, in railway trains, or in the out-patient rooms of hospitals. The contagium of whooping-cough is conveyed chiefly by the expectoration, which becoming dry, may be scattered like that of phthisis, as dust. Clothing conveys infection easily; visits to infected children should, therefore, be prohibited to all who have to mix with susceptible children.
The duration of infection should be reckoned as at least six weeks from the first recognisable symptoms. It may be longer than this.