View report page

129
The contacts that were ailing were referred to their own doctors
and the results of the medical examination afterwards ascertained.
2. Information was sent to the Medical Officer of Health of
the borough in which one of the patients worked.
3. Search was made in the affected tenements and houses for
missed and unrecognised cases possibly being wrongly regarded
as cases of pneumoniae diarrhcea, liver complaint or "influenza."
4. Enquiry was made at the addresses of the patients for
probable "carriers" who might have had typhoid fever in
previous years.
5. Infectious bedding was removed into another borough before
it had been disinfected. Information was sent to the Medical
Officer of Health concerned.
6. School children in the affected schools, absent for illdefined
causes, were visited and referred for medical examination
and treatment.
Diagnosis.—Specimens of blood from suspected cases of
typhoid fever are examined free of charge for medical men by the
Public Health Department. The examinations are conducted at
the Bacteriological Laboratory of the Middlesex Hospital. In
1912, four specimens of blood were reoeived—one gave a positive
Widal reaction, the rest were negative.
TYPHUS FEVER.
A case of this rare disease, formerly known as ship
fever, hulk fever, and gaol fever, occurred in Finsbury in
1912. The patient was a married woman, 39 years old, who had
lived in Pentonville for the two years which preceded her death
with the exception of 3 weeks in August, 1911. She was a
laundress ironer in a Holloway laundry. Her illness began with
vomiting and diarrhcea thirteen days before her death. The case
was first notified as one of typhoid, but suspected to be typhus
soon after her admission to hospital. This suspicion was confirmed
by a post mortem examination which disclosed no evidence
of typhoid. No source of infection was discovered for the original