THE BLOOD IN PURPURIC SMALLPOX

Abstract

Bancroft¹found twelve instances of the purpuric type in 1,200 cases of smallpox during the Boston epidemic in 1901. The percentage of this type of the disease in any given epidemic has probably never been accurately estimated. Its clinical and laboratory differentiation from the hemorrhagic pustular form has never been stressed by the epidemiologist or the clinician who prefers to include these two forms under one general term of hemorrhagic or malignant smallpox. In the 1924 epidemic in Minnesota, several cases of the undoubted purpuric type of smallpox were reported to the state board of health and recorded as hemorrhagic smallpox. In the fall and winter of the same year, a large number of cases with clinical purpura were recorded in Minneapolis, of which forty-three deaths of purpuric smallpox were reported. At the Minneapolis General Hospital, forty-eight cases were diagnosed as purpuric out of the total admission of 480