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2. Nurses of St. John the Divine in Watson Street.
These are connected with the Morden Hill Hospital,
Blackheath.
3. Central Hall Nurses, High Street. Two in
number.
4. Medical Mission Nurse.
5. St. John's Church Nurse.
INFANTILE EPIDEMIC DIARRHŒA.
We may take it that flies are the principal agents in
the spread of summer diarrhoea in young children. We are
absolutely dependent on outside sources for the supply of milk,
and it is readily conceivable that flies contaminate some of the
milk even before it arrives here, and this fly-infected milk may
then give rise to infantile diarrhoea in a district which itself
is comparatively free from flies. If warm weather conditions
prevail, the growth of the bacteria in milk is favoured, and the
greater number there are of flies the greater likelihood there is
that unprotected milk will be contaminated. Luckily we have
taken special pains to do away with collections of manure and
house refuse which are the favourite breeding grounds of the
house fly.
If flies are present in noticeable numbers in a crowded
district it only needs the ignorance and carlessness of one
mother whose child has summer diarrhoea to cause a rapid
spread in the number of cases; the flies acting as carriers of
germs from the infective excreta, and infecting houses where
there is a free access of food.
Flies may therefore be a nuisance and injurious to health
by their mere numbers, or may also be a specific and dangerous
nuisance by being capable of carrying all sorts of disease germs.
A consumptive for instance who has not been instructed may
expectorate on to the ground or into an open vessel, flies settle
on it, ingest some of the tubercle bacilli, and then may immediately
settle on to food suitable for the growth of the germ, and
convert it, especially milk, from being a wholesome food into a
virulent dangerous poison.
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