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58
The amount paid in fees this year for notifications was
£46 18s. 0d., which is the lowest yet recorded since 1901. The
highest amount was in 1902 when the amount was £175 16s. 0d.
—this was at the time of the Small-pox epidemic.
DIAGNOSIS.—In 21 cases out of a total number of 420, the
patients after admission to a fever hospital were returned home
as not suffering at the time of admission from any notifiable
infectious disease.
Most of these mistakes—over 80 per cent, of them were made
not by private doctors, but at the large general hospitals.
The errors were chiefly in connection with Diphtheria—out of
167 cases removed 15 were returned as not having the disease.
Diphtheria is a disease in which it is of the utmost importance
to secure treatment at the earliest possible moment, so that these
removals, even when the case is a little doubtful are justifiable.
The diagnosis of the cases of Typhoid Fever was sustained in
hospital in every instance.
Five cases of Scarlet Fever were returned home as incorrect.
The small number of mistakes made is an excellent criterion of
the good work done in the district when one considers the difficult
circumstances, the badly lit, stuffy, small rooms in which the
patients are found, often unwashed since the onset of the disease
and in which they are at first seen by the medical men in attendance.
SMALL-POX.
No case of Small-pox was notified in Finsbury in 1909. There
were a few cases in other metropolitan boroughs, derived originally
from persons entering London from Turkish, Levantine and
Algerian ports.
One imported case is interesting as showing how the disease
may be spread.
The patient, a stoker, left a ship at Algiers on September 1st,
1909, with 4 other men and all went into hospital there. Two of