View report page

100
utensils, knives, forks, spoons, cups, plates, saucers, clothes
for wearing week-day, and Sunday clothes, should be disinfected.
The feeding utensils used by the patient are boiled for ten
minutes in boiling water containing a little washing soda. The
wafer must be boiling before the utensils are placed in it.
After disinfection, it is advised that the room should be well
scrubbed out with soap and water.
The Council supplies a special "disinfectant" soap gratis for
this purpose.
Some patients took no special precautions whatever to prevent
the infection spreading to the rest of the family, and were
apparently indifferent as to whether they caught the disease or
not. A few patients thought that by using a spittoon they were
doing all that could reasonably be expected of them—they were
disinclined to put themselves to any further trouble. In every
case it is urged that the patient should have a separate living
room for his own exclusive use and a separate bedroom, or,
failing these, a separate bed. The importance of separate feeding
utensils, of separate towels, and handkerchiefs, of wet dusting
and wet sweeping, of fresh air, open windows and sunshine, of
the nutritive values of milk and eggs is strongly urged in every
instance. In practice it must, however, be confessed that in
Finsbury the achievement of these ideal conditions is only too
often impossible. In such straits the patient is instructed how
to make the best of things as they are.
In only 26 homes was wet dusting adopted at the first visit,
and in only 38 homes was wet sweeping the invariable method.
Two hundred and forty patients were alive to the importance
of milk as a food and drank it daily; 169 were ardent egg eaters.
Death Notification Interval.—Of all the 438 cases
notified during 1912, 77 died before the end of the year.
Eleven died within a week of the time when they were
notified; 42 died within a month.