View report page

26
Voluntary Notification of Consumption
(with tuberculous expectorations).
(Special Report by the Medical Officer of Health).
Tuberculosis is a recognised infectious disease due to the entrance
of a germ (the bacillus tuberculosis) from without into
the human body, and this germ is voided from a tubercular
patient chiefly (of not entirely) by the sputum. Such sputum,
when dried, is apt to be borne about as dust, and may, by inhalation
or otherwise, become a serious menace to the Public Health.
Its promiscuous distribution must, therefore, at all costs, be
avoided.
This infectivity of tuberculosis cannot be too much emphasised,
and the simplicity of the preventive measures that can be
readily taken by all, brought more and more to the knowledge of
the people. As far as possible, every person suffering from consumption
or phthisis (tuberculosis of the lungs), should be presented
with a leaflet such as I have already drawn up for distribution
in Lambeth Borough, containing simple instructions
with regard to the prevention of consumption by disinfection,
etc. The difficulty is to know of the persons suffering from consumption.
Hitherto, the methods I have used in Lambeth (with
the consent of the late Vestry, who adopted my report on December
8th, 1898), have consisted of:—
(1). Systematically disinfecting, free of cost, all rooms (and
contend) that have been previously recently occupied by tuberculous-infected
invalids (more especially those suffering from
the pulmonary form of the disease known as consumption or
phthisis), and which have become unoccupied owing to the deaths
or removals of such patients, either when requested to do so by
the medical men in attendance, or when localities of deaths are
reported weekly by the Registrar General.
N.B.—1481 houses infected with consumption have been dealt
with during the last three years, and the necessary disinfection
and cleansing carried on.
(2). Examining bacteriologically, free of cost, for medical
men and others, sputum from doubtful or suspected infected
persons so as to demonstrate the presence of the bacilli, and so
put all doubt as to diagnosis out of the question.
N.B.—320 samples of sputum have been examined bacteriologically.