Infective

Some hospitals have special rooms to treat patients with highly infective diseases.

Pyrexia is but a sign of the intensity of the activities of the infective agent, and by artificially reducing the body heat we really do not lessen the virulence of the poison, as shown by the rise of the temperature again as soon as the action of the antipyretic subsides.

Hirsch has followed a group of 85 health care workers who were exposed to blood and bodily fluids of persons with AIDS. Thirty had been exposed by accidentally sticking themselves with needles containing blood and three had been spattered or had an open wound exposed to potentially infective blood.

It is evident that the greater the number of susceptibles, then the greater the increase in the number of infectives.