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The Finsbury death rate for all forms of tuberculosis in 1914
was 2.44 per 1,000—the corresponding rate for England and
Wales in 1913 was 1.326. The death rate in Finsbury was nearly
twice the death rate in the country taken as a whole.
SMALL POX.
No case of small pox was notified in Finsbury in 1914. The
Medical Officer of Health was asked to see in consultation two
cases suspected to be small pox. One was a case of chicken pox;
the other was a verminous patient, a severe case of the itch that
had become infected secondarily by pyogenic organisms.
One notice of a small pox contact proceeding into Finsbury was
received fiom the medical officer of a port sanitary authority. The
address was visited and found to lie incorrect. The contact was
not seen.
Small pox and other over-sea contacts with cases of plague,
yellow fever, or cholera, alleged to be entering the borough are
frequenty not interviewed because they give insufficient, inaccurate,
or merely accommodation addresses. Sometimes
information is refused by the householder at the address indicated.
These contacts move rapidly from one place to another—sometimes
they merely call at the addresses given to see whether there
are letters. The consequence is that these oversea contacts with
infectious diseases are for the most part, as far as Finsbury is
concerned, not kept under observation or supervision in the
borough. This matter has been referred to in previous annual
reports.
CEREBRO-S PINAL FEVER.
POLIO-MYELITIS
AND POLIO-ENCEPHALITIS.
These diseases are compulsorily notifiable.
For notification purposes, posterior basal meningitis is included
in the term "cerebro-spinal fever." This term, however, is not
to include cases of meningitis due to tuberculosis, syphilis, middle
ear disease or injury.