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Complaint was received from a house in Peckham in respect of
a child suffering from scarlet fever who had been returned as cured
from one of the Asylums board's Hospitals; and two other children
were taken away shortly after suffering from the same disease. The
Asylums Board wrote and said that one of the suspected cases was
ultimately considered to be tonsilitis; and that the other two were
of a mild, anomalous character, but probably scarlet fever.
The number of deaths from scarlet fever continued the downward
progress and again exhibited a remarkable lowering of the case
mortality. In the year there were 27 fewer notifications of this
disease, but the deaths were only 16 compared with the low number
of 24 in 1908. As there were over a thousand cases reported it
means that the case mortality for the past year shows an extraordinary
reduction from the figures of ten or twelve years ago. The
notifications were 1,029, compared with 1,032 in 1908 and 1,532 in
1907. It is quite possible that the actual case mortality is even
lower, for owing to the mild type of the disease it is probable that
many cases escape notification altogether.
There has been no special treatment introduced which could
account for the lowering of the mortality, and it would seem either
that we have a resistent population growing up or else that the
infecting agent of this disease is losing its virulence.
There were 13 notifications of puerperal fever, being three more
than in 1908, and of these four terminated fatally. Every nurse who
has attended any one suffering from this disease has been required,
directly we hear, to come to see me at the Town Hall so that it is
certain that her hands have been properly disinfected and that all
the other necessary precautions have been taken.
There were no notifications of cholera, and the only work
carried out in respect of this disease was the visiting by the Sanitary
Inspectors of persons coming from infected ports and who gave
their destinations to the Port Medical Officer as being some address
in Camberwell. It was found not infrequently, however, that they
did not arrive at the house given. One person who had been
described as unwell by the Port Medical Officer I visited myself,
but found he was suffering from nothing more than a temporary
indisposition.
Two outbreaks of enteric fever which occurred in two distinct
localities in Dulwich, and apparently unconnected one with the
other, are remarkable in the way of showing how this disease, while
not, to use a popular term, catching, may under certain conditions be
passed on from one person to another. In the first outbreak, a child
was attacked by some obscure form of illness, and was nursed by her
mother, who, a few weeks later, started to be ill. When she became
incapable of looking after the first patient, a daughter returned from
service to take charge of affairs, and she too was attacked, and down
to February of this year cases kept on cropping up at this house.
With the gradual disablement of the members of the household, a
married daughter came to the rescue, her husband meanwhile staying
at home. The daughter escaped the disease, but the husband was