Throughout the progress of the disease, except in the period of incubation, the patient is able to communicate his disease to persons about him who have not been rendered safe by a previous attack. The way in which he thus communicates his disease varies in different cases. In scarlet fever, the throat and skin are the chief sources of contagion; in influenza, whooping-cough, and measles, the secretions from the respiratory passages; in hydrophobia, the saliva; in enteric fever and cholera, the vomit and stools. =Prevention of the Spread of the Chief Acute Infectious Diseases.=—We may divide these into three classes. (1) Those which are infectious by contact with the patient or by the atmosphere around him. (2) Those in which the intestinal and renal evacuations are almost alone infectious; as enteric fever and cholera. (3) Those in which inoculation through an abraded surface is generally if not always necessary to produce infection. SMALL-POX OR VARIOLA. The contagium of small-pox is very tenacious of life. All parts of the body, and all secretions and excretions contain it. As in typhus it adheres to every article in the room, but unlike typhus is possessed of great vitality, and if not exposed to the air may be active after many years. There is considerable evidence indicating that the contagion of small-pox may occasionally be _conveyed aerially_ for a considerable distance, for even a quarter or half a mile from hospitals in which small-pox patients are isolated. Whether this is the aerial convection of infection, or in part at least due to carelessness of persons connected with the hospital in their movements to and fro, may remain an open question; but such hospitals in the midst of towns are in practice a mistake; and in London small-pox has been found to be more manageable since its small-pox patients were all conveyed to extra-urban hospitals. The means for the prevention of small-pox are (1) Isolation of infectious patients. (2) Disinfection of all infected articles. For particulars under these two heads, see pages 319 and 324. They must be carried out most rigidly in this disease. (3) Vaccination and re-vaccination. =Inoculation of small-pox= virus was largely practised as a means of ensuring a comparatively mild attack, until it was made illegal in 1840. Sometimes, however, the attack thus produced was fatal, and every case of inoculated small-pox became a new focus of infection, and a source of high mortality, especially among young children.