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12
SANITARY CHRONICLES, 1896.
exhausted. This partly from the large number notified
throughout the metropolis, and partly from the excessive
cubic space which the Asylum Hospital Board had adopted.
Strong representations were made from the Vestry of
St. Marylebone and other local authorities, to the effect
that whatever may be the advantages of a large amount of
air-space for patients in ordinary times, yet when scarlet
fever is unusually prevalent, the evils of allowing sufferers
from an infectious fever to remain at home in crowded
tenements, without the most efficient nursing and medical
treatment, are greater than treating them in hospital, even
with diminution in the cubic space and some slight
overcrowding in the wards. These views prevailed, and the
Asylums Board passed resolutions enabling a larger
number of patients to be admitted than the standard
regulations allowed. So that as a fact there were only a few
cases in this Parish requiring hospital isolation that did not
eventually receive such isolation.
Diphtheria.
Diphtheria showed remarkable alternations. As a
whole it was in excess of previous years. Medical men
are still given facilities for transmitting specimens of
membrane or mucus from suspected throats for bacteriological
examination. Eighty-seven cases were in this way
examined during 1896, and in forty-six the bacillus
diphtheria was identified. In other words, in 53 per cent,
the diagnosis of diphtheria was confirmed. Towards the
latter part of the year the accommodation at the Asylums
Board for Diphtheria also showed signs of exhaustion, and
in several instances patients could not be admitted. In
these cases the Board sent a letter stating that the patient
could not be received, and with the letter a warrant
entitling the medical attendant to receive through the
Board a supply of "anti-toxin," hence, so far as the antitoxin
method of treatment was of service, most of those
who remained at home were treated similarly to those who
went to hospital.
Erysipelas.
Erysipelas during the first half of the year was below