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40
¬tion of persons occupied during the daytime; and lastly, a houseto-house
visitation of a large part of the district was carried out,
by the Vaccination Officer and five assistants, which led to
the discovery of many unvaccinated persons, and was the
means of promoting revaccination on a considerable scale.
The effect of the measures taken was that, by the middle
of December, the endemic was at an end—a result largely
due to the energy exhibited by Inspector Pettit in
searching out cases, and obtaining their removal to hospital,
which was done with great rapidity. Only four of the
sufferers were treated throughout at home, viz., James
K. (case 2) and three other persons, the nature of whose
illnesses was not recognised and whose cases (numbered 7, 49,
and 56) were not notified.
Certain incidents connected with the outbreak are worthy
of mention, the first and most important being the prosecution
of the doctor who had attended cases 1 and 2, for failure to
notify the illness as the law directs. The magistrate believing
that this gentleman, strange as it may appear, was really
ignorant of the nature of the disease he was called upon to
treat, dismissed the summons. Particulars of the proceedings
in this case will be found in another part of the report. A
woman was prosecuted for exposing two of her sick
children, both in her shop and by allowing them to play
in the streets. She was without excuse another of her
children being in the hospital for small-pox at the time of the
exposure. She did not, moreover, deny that she knew that
the two children were suffering from the same disease. The
sudden increase in the number of small-pox cases which
the Asylums Board were called upon to admit to their
hospitals at the end of October, consequent on this outbreak,
and there being "foci of infection in almost every quarter of
the Metropolis," led the Committee for the small-pox hospitals
to close the "lower" hospital at Gore Farm, against scarlet
fever convalescents, and to prepare the "upper" hospital for