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Epidemiology & Infection Epidemiology & Infection

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On the Statistical Measure of Infectiousness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2009

M. Greenwood
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We all recognise that some diseases are more “catching” than others. Every mother knows that measles is very catching and most people set aside a group of common complaints, measles, mumps, whooping-cough, scarlet fever, diphtheria—perhaps roughly in that order—as catching complaints. Then again, still keeping ourselves within the circle of ideas of educated non-medical people, one has such complaints as common colds or influenza which one thinks of as running through a house indeed but does not put quite into the measles category, as one feels that factors determine the spread other than mere proximity to a sick person. Lastly, one has some illnesses, gonorrhoea would be a fair example, which everybody recognises to be spread wholly by contagion, almost always by a particular method of contagion, but does not regard as catching at all in the sense that measles and whooping-cough are catching. When we enquire into the reasons of these opinions they will be found, I think, to be these.

Type
Research Article
Information
Epidemiology & Infection , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , July 1931 , pp. 336 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1931

References

Greenwood, M. and Yule, G. U. (1920). J. Roy. Stat. Soc. 83, 255–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard, G. D. and Troup, J. McD. (1911). Biometrika, 8, 396–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newbold, E. M. (1927). J. Roy. Stat. Soc. 90, 487–535.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, K. (1911). Biometrika, 8, 405–12.Google Scholar
Pearson, K. (1913). Biometrika, 9, 28–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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