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7
combated by preventive measures, by employing general
means of sanitary purification which can never be effected
in vain.
My own observation leads me to consider that Scarlatina
finds circumstances more favorable to its existence in the
unwholesome condition of newly-built houses than other
diseases of its class. In several instances I have found that
where a new neighbourhood has been formed, and the houses
have been rapidly occupied, disease has been for the most
part of a light kind, with the exception of Scarlatina, which
has not only been frequent but severe. I may instance, in
our own district particularly, the new houses between Bow
Common Lane and Rhodeswell, and, in a less degree, those
in Globe Fields. In Poplar New Town, adjoining Bow
Common, and in Old Ford, both of them contiguous, or
nearly so, to Mile End, and recently built on and occupied,
I am informed by medical men who practise in those parts,
the disease has been rife. The mitigation of the disease in
this particular respect can scarcely be effected by any exercise
of power by the Vestry as a public body, but, perhaps, the
recognition of the fact, and the partial publicity it may
obtain through notice in this Report, may, in some instances,
induce caution in making selection of an abode, when it is
considered that the special probability of domestic affliction
may be diminished by such an exercise of discretion.
The past year has introduced to us a disease which has
been so long in abeyance that we had almost ceased to look
upon its existence as a matter of moment. There has been
undoubtedly a great effort of natural causes, beyond the
present power of human knowledge to estimate, to produce
Small Pox in an endemic or epidemic form. In the last
twelve months this disease has forced itself upon us with a