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29
of inability to pay such sum application should be made to
the Sanitary Department of the Vestry, by whom such removal
will be effected.
By Order of the Vestry of the Parish of St. Mary, Battersea.
Scarlet Fever.
Eight hundred and thirty cases of this disease were
notified during the year 1895. Four hundred and
fifty-three in which there was not efficient isolation to be obtained
at home, or where, from the severe type of the disease or
other causes, proper provision for the nursing and care of the
sick could not be there obtained, were removed to the Metropolitan
Asylums Board Hospitals, chiefly to the Fountain Hospital
at Tooting, which latter has proved to be of inestimable
value to this district, saving long journies and much valuable
time. Rather less than four per cent, of the cases admitted to
hospital died, being a very low rate and shewing the admirable
treatment there adopted.
The other three hundred and seventy-seven cases, in which
proper nursing and isolation existed, remained at home. These
cases would include the milder attacks, ten proving fatal, being
less than three per cent., contrasting with the cases removed to
hospital.
Diphtheria
and
Membranous
Croup.
These diseases are here grouped together as it is
impossible to distinguish between them in many
instances, diphtheria of the air passages being
generally returned as membranous croup, but not always, many
cases being termed laryngeal diphtheria.
Of these combined diseases, which originate as far as
modern research extends from the same source, and therefore
here grouped together as diphtheria, four hundred and eleven
cases were notified during 1895. One hundred and twentyeight
were sent to hospital, many in extremis, for the sake of
having tracheotomy performed as the only method of averting
death from suffocation. Fifty-three hospital cases died, just
forty-two per cent.