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food which affected the majority of the cases ; indeed, the only
circumstance common to nearly all was that they drew their
water supply from the Southwark and vauxhall Water
Company's mains.
The number of cases was not large enough to state
definitely that the water was the source of contagion, but the
date of infection in these cases that I have specially referred to
coincides with a period when the examining chemist reports a
particularly bad state of this company's water.
For the rest of the year, however, the notifications
showed a marked lessening from those mentioned in my
previous report and were accompanied by a corresponding
diminution in the number of deaths, there being only 18 compared
with 29 in the previous year, the falling off being
especially noticeable in Peckham and St. George's.
Measles caused 75 deaths as compared with 109 in
1902; 13 of these occurred in Camberwell, 21 in Peckham and
41 in St. George's.
On April 1st, 1903, the new ordinances of the London
County Council in reference to dealing with this disease came
into force. It will be remembered that by their action,
practically all the sections of the Public Health Act which
related to infectious diseases were made applicable to measles,
with the exception of that relating to its notification. Since
this date a record has been kept of all cases of which we
received intimation, which were almost invariably from the
schools. At first we received some information from medical
men in attendance, but they subsequently rightly decided not to
notify unless the fee that is paid in the other infectious diseases
was also forwarded in this.
We not infrequently found that the patient had
been ill some time previously and was now quite well;
indeed it was by no means uncommon to disinfect on the
same day that the notification was received, the patient having
recovered. A reason for this is that on Saturday morning
during school term we get a large number of notifications,
usually equalling in number those received during the
previous week, and consisting of those cases which have
presumably come to the knowledge of the school authorities
during the week, while during the vacations the notifications
are practically nil. I can only repeat what I have said in