"Lodging houses, cheap boarding houses, night shelters, hospitals, jails and prisons, are important factors in the spread and frequently constitute foci of the disease. They should receive rigid sanitary supervision, including the enforcement of measures to free all inmates of such institutions of lice on admission."
"So far as individual foci of the disease are concerned these should be dealt with by segregating and keeping under observation all exposed individuals for 14 days—the period of incubation—from the last exposure, by disinfecting (boiling or steaming) the suspected bedding, body linen, and clothes, for the destruction of any possible vermin that they may harbor, and by fumigating (with sulphur) the quarters that they may have occupied."
"It will be noted that nothing has been said as to the disposition of the patient. So far as the patient is concerned, he should be removed to 'clean' surroundings, making sure that he does not take with him any vermin. This may be done by bathing, treating the hair with an insecticide (coal oil, tincture of larkspur), and a complete change of body linen. Aside from this, the patient may be treated or cared for in a general hospital ward or in a private house, provided the sanitary officer is satisfied that the new surroundings to which the patient has been removed are 'clean,' that is, free from vermin. Indeed, it is reasonably safe to permit a 'clean' patient to remain in his own home if this is 'clean,' for, as has already been emphasized, there can be no spread in the absence of lice. This is a common experience in native families of the better class and of Europeans in Mexico City."
"Similarly the sulphur fumigation above prescribed may be dispensed with as unnecessary in this class of cases."
CHAPTER XI
SOME POSSIBLE, BUT IMPERFECTLY ESTABLISHED CASES OF ARTHROPOD TRANSMISSION OF DISEASE
Infantile Paralysis or Acute Anterior Poliomyelitis
The disease usually known in this country as infantile paralysis or, more technically, as acute anterior poliomyelitis, is one which has aroused much attention in recent years.
The causative organism of infantile paralysis is unknown, but it has been demonstrated that it belongs to the group of filterable viruses. It gives rise to a general infection, producing characteristic lesions in the central nervous system. The result of the injury to the motor nerves is a more or less complete paralysis of the corresponding muscle. This usually manifests itself in the legs and arms. The fatal cases are usually the result of paralysis of the muscles of respiration. Of the non-fatal cases about 60 per cent remain permanently crippled in varying degrees.