Contagion.
Description
This section of the book is from the "Household Companion: The Family Doctor" book
Contagion.
This is, strictly defined, conveyance of disease by touch or contact.
But some (not all) disorders, which may be transmitted by actual
touch, pass also to a short distance through the air. This is true of
typhus, small-pox, chicken-pox, measles, scarlet fever, mumps, and
whooping-cough, certainly; perhaps, in rare instances, of
diphtheria. Hydrophobia, syphilis, and gonorrhoea are conveyed only by
contact and inoculation; that is, introduction of the virus of the
disease into the blood, or, at least, under the skin. These diseases,
are, in fact, the common diseases that are certainly contagious.
 
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