INFEC′TION

Syn. Contagion. The communication of disease, either by personal contact with the sick or by means of effluvia arising from their bodies. Attempts have been made to restrict the term contagion to the former, and infection to the latter, but this distinction is now discarded by the majority of writers. The following are the principal diseases which are commonly regarded as contagious:—Chicken-pox, cholera, cow-pox, dysentery, erysipelas, glanders, gonorrhœa, hooping-cough, hydrophobia, itch, measles, mumps, ophthalmia (purulent), plague, scald-head, scarlet fever, smallpox, syphilis, yaws. See Disinfectant , .