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22
OPHTHALMIA NEONATORUM
Ophthalmia Neonatorum is an infectious inflammation of the eyes in newlyborn
children, and is the most common cause of blindness beginning in infancy.
Six cases were notified in the Borough during the year, 1 in St. Giles and
Bloomsbury and 5 in the Holborn District. Two of the infants were treated at
Hospitals, and 4 by the doctors in attendance. In one of the latter cases I made
arrangements for attendance of a nurse from the Metropolitan and National
Nursing Association, Bloomsbury Square.
WHOOPING COUGH.
The Public Health Committee directed the attention of the Council to the
difficulty of preventing children suffering with whooping cough associating, not
only with members of their own family, but with other children to whom they
might convey the infection, and expressed the opinion that in order to ensure more
complete and earlier information respecting cases of whooping cough, and with a
view to further effort being made to minimise its spread, the disease should be
added to the list of notifiable diseases. The Local Government Board approved
this provided that the notification was limited to a period of five years and only
Sections 55, 66 and 68 (1) (a) and (b) of the Public Health (London) Act, 1891,
were applied to the disease. These three sections deal with notification, removal
to hospital, and penalty on exposure of infected persons respectively. This was
agreed to by the Council and the Order came into operation on the 1st day of
April, 1914. 92 notifications of the disease were received during the year 1915.
PHTHISIS (CONSUMPTION) and other forms of TUBERCULOSIS.
The number of deaths from phthisis during the year was 73, or a death-rate
of 1.81 per 1,000, in comparison with 1.97 for 1914. Of these 38 belonged to
St. Giles and Bloomsbury, a death-rate of 1.85, and 35 to the Holborn District, or
a death-rate of 1.77 per 1,000.
During the past year of the 73 deaths, 2 occurred in common lodging
houses, and 22 had been removed to infirmaries from common lodging houses in
the Borough, that is about 32.8 per cent., 17 from St. Giles and Bloomsbury, and
only 7 from the Holborn District.
The corrected number of deaths in London was 6,782, equal to a rate of l.58
per 1,000, compared with l.39 for 1914.
The following table gives the number of deaths in the Holborn Borough and
the death-rates per 1,000 (crude and corrected for sex and age distribution of the
Holborn population in comparison with London) and the corresponding rates for
London for the 11 years 1905-1915, inclusive