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31
and slept in one room only. 41 were two-roomed tenements, 25
had three to eight rooms, 5 were notified from institutions, and
their families had left the addresses given, one requested that he
should not be visited, 5 were not traceable and 11 were inmates of
common lodging houses.
One of the tenements was overcrowded.
One tenement had only one cupboard for food and coal. Four
had no cupboard accommodation at all.
These are very unsatisfactory conditions for a phthisical
household. When the household utensils of the patient are kept
in the same cupboard as the other household utensils ; when his
clothes are hung on the common peg ; when he uses the common
towel and washing basin, the common knives, forks, spoons, cups,
saucers and glasses, when the utensils of the household are all
washed together indiscriminately, the spread of infection from the
patient to his family is greatly favoured.
When in addition to these, the tenement is overcrowded, the
conditions for promoting the disease are as pernicious as they
possibly can be. It is difficult to conceive a condition which
favours the spread of the infection more than overcrowding. In
phthisical familes, the abatement of overcrowding is insisted upon
forthwith.
Twenty-four tenements were on the list of houses let in lodgings,
31 tenements were in the so-called " model " buildings, which, with
their common landings and their many points of contact between
the families who occupy them, are only too well adapted for the
spread of phthisis.
Homework was not carried on in the home of any case notified.
Of the houses occupied by the patients, seven were used for the
sale or preparation of food products.
It is very unfortunate and most undesirable that these con
sumptive patients should have to do with the handling or manufacture
of articles for human consumption. There is not, however,
at present, any practical method of preventing or otherwise satisfactorily
dealing with their employment in such occupations.