View report page

34
ENTERIC FEVER.

Three of the patients were treated at home, two at isolation
hospitals and two in general hospitals. All recovered.
No association could be traced between the different cases, nor
between these and any in other districts. Case No. 4 had been an
in-patient at a general hospital for long before the onset, but no
other notifications were received from there. In Case No. 3 blood
tests gave negative results.
DYSENTERY,
Five cases of dysentery were notified, all being bacteriologically
proven to be Sonne infection.
Three were treated at home ; one was removed from a London
hospital out-patient department to a London County Council
isolation hospital, while the other was admitted to one of the
Middlesex County Council general hospitals.
One case proved fatal, this being an adult female of 49 who
fell ill on the 18th November and died in hospital on December 3rd.
FOOD POISONING.
Amongst the provisions of the Food and Drugs Act, 1938,
which came into operation on October 1st, 1939, was one which
required a medical practitioner, on becoming aware or suspecting
that a patient whom he is attending is suffering from food poisoning,
forthwith to send to the medical officer of health of the district a
certificate stating the name, age, sex and address of the patient
and particulars of the food poisoning from which he is, or is suspected
to be, suffering. This clause is one which, by having been
included in a number of private Acts, has been in operation in
many districts. The experience of the medical officers of health of
these districts had already been that, for want of any sort of
definition as to what was to be understood by food poisoning, a
large number of cases were notified which had no public health
interest. While a foodstuff to which an individual has an idiosyncrasy
which results in his suffering from some constitutional