Herpes in een dorp

William Pickles beschrijft de epidemiologie van een aantal ziekten in zijn plattelandspraktijk. Op kaartjes houdt Pickles alle ziektegevallen in Wensleydale bij en beschrijft dan een van de twee epidemieën als volgt:

‘On April 27 a young married woman began with the initial symptoms of herpes frontalis. She had some pain, but the illness was not severe and she was not confined to bed. On May 18th her baby daughter, aged eighteen months, began with lumbar herpes and also a widespread chicken-pox rash, which is a fairly rare combination. On May 31 a little girl who was devoted to this baby commenced with chickenpox, and gave it directly or indirectly to most of the susceptibles in the village. She was only away from school a week, and this, I believe, explains the case on June 21, which comes out of its turn, suggesting that she was still infectious on the 7th. The epidemic spread to the sister village, and the whole of the sufferers appear on this chart, including one case of herpes zoster… It is difficult, I find, to fix the correct day of commencement in herpes zoster, as the pain begins with a slight soreness …’ En dat in 1937, ver voor de ontwikkeling van ICPC-codes, registratienetwerken of de determinatie van het varicella-zostervirus. (JZ)