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clause, with a proviso that before a house is registered it must
first of all be inspected by myself, then brought before a SubCommittee,
who would also inspect the premises and report to
the main Committee, and they in their turn to the Vestry.
The Vestry declined to pass the recommendation. A resolution
was, however, passed, which I trust will be successful, namely,
that the Vestry approach the Local Government Board and
ask that a fresh interpretation regarding the word " landlord "
be inserted in the existing by-laws, so as to get rid of the
difficulty alluded to in my report for 1897. As to the beneficial
effects of registration, I can only repeat what I said last year,
and to ask the members of the Vestry to go and look at the
houses that are on the register and compare them with those
that are not. I feel certain that they will not fail to notice the
difference and the improvement.
It will be remembered that in 1897 the Vestry passed a
recommendation that a certain number of cases of diphtheria
that had been notified should be examined bacteriologically.
A report was presented to the Committee and came before the
Vestry on November 16th. It runs as follows:—
To the Sewers and Sanitary Committee,
Gentlemen, —I have received a report of the examination of the
cases of diphtheria made by Dr. Bousfield in pursuance of the resolution of
the Vestry. I found it impossible to examine the next fifty cases occurring,
as some of them had been removed to hospital before I was aware of them.
I, therefore, took those cases where from the age of the patient I felt
tolerably certain of being able to procure a satisfactory specimen, and
where the circumstances of the case rendered it particularly desirable that
a diagnosis should be rapidly and surely made.
As regards the treatment of the cases from the point of view of the
spread of infection, all those which either seemed to be diphtheria or in
which the specific bacilli were found, although there were no signs visible
in the throat, we considered as true cases of diphtheria, and all the
ordinary measures for the prevention of the spread of infection were
carried out, and only in those cases where diphtheria was absent clinically
and bacteriologically were these precautions dispensed with.
The points brought out in the bacteriological examination are:—
(a.) That bacilli were present in cases where clinically diphtheria
was absent.
(b.) That bacilli were absent in cases where clinically diphtheria
was present.
(c.) That a certain number of cases, amounting in this inquiry