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(3). Disseminating knowledge as to the nature and dangers
of the disease and the ready means at hand for its prevention by
distributing leaflets and letters (a) amongst clergymen, district
visitors, school teachers, etc., and through them amongst the
Lambeth ratepayers generally; and (b) amongst all consumptive
patients in Public Institutions, or attending Dispensaries or
Hospitals.
N.B.—St. Thomas's Hospital, amongst out-patients, distributes
about 1200 of these leaflets annually, and up to the present
3000 others have been issued.
The success with which these methods have met, encourage me
to advise the Council to take one step further forward, and adopt
a voluntary or optional method of notification of this disease
(tuberculosis) in Lambeth Borough, and so materially increase
their knowledge of tuberculous infected centres, and enable me,
as Medical Officer, to take pro rata increased preventive
measures. It is clear that what is required is knowledge of the
infected centres during the patients' lifetimes, and not after their
deaths—the danger arising wholly during life, when a man cr
woman, unfortunately stricken down by this disease, is left to
infect others in crowded rooms, or houses, or districts.
Lambeth is prepared for such notification of consumption, as
the above described methods of prevention that have been in
vogue for the last three years have been highly successful, and
prepared the way for such a further advance being made.
Notification has proved invaluable in combating other infectious
diseases, giving certain knowledge as to their states,
especially their dissemination, their increase and decrease, showing
where help and instruction may, with advantage, be given
and where disinfection can be forthwith effected (more especially
when consumptives die, or change their residences). What has
proved valuable in other infectious diseases, must give similar
good results in connection with tuberculosis, which is (as already
stated) also an infectious disease.
Where overcrowding, defective ventilation, damp, and general
insanitary conditions exist, there consumption will spread, both
directly by the passage of the germs from person to person, and
indirectly by predisposing the inmates of houses, etc., where
such conditions exist, to attack by such germs, by weakening their
powers of resistance and lowering the standard of their general
health. There must, therefore, be no relaxation on the part of
the Council in keeping the borough in as sanitary and healthy