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food for the first nine months of life, and by keeping all milk vessels
and feeding bottles scrupulously clean. For the neglect of these
simple precautions, the infants of these islands alone are paying an
annual toll of many thousands of deaths. Summer Diarrhœa is the
most fatal of all the zymotic diseases, and if the deaths certified as
due to gastro-enteritis were included (and at the summer period of
the year they probably all have a common origin) the loss of life from
Summer Diarrhœa would be still further increased to the extent of
some 30 per cent.
MEASLES AND WHOOPING COUGH.
The parish was comparatively free from Measles during the
year.
The County Council has under consideration a proposal of the
London School Board, to the effect that Measles should be declared
a dangerous infectious disease, in order to give facilities to sanitary
authorities to proceed, if necessary, against persons who send their
children to school while suffering from the disease.
TYPHOID FEVER.
Of the 16 cases notified during the year, all occurred in different
houses, in one of which there were grave insanitary conditions; in
one the insanitary conditions were slight, and in the remaining 14
there were no insanitary conditions. Two of the cases, doubtless,
contracted the disease outside London. The infection appeared to be
due to the consumption of cockles in one case, and to the consumption
of oysters in another case.
SMALL-POX AND VACCINATION.
The Parish was quite free from small-pox infection during the
year, and in the whole of London only 33 cases were notified and two
deaths resulted.
The year has been a remarkable one in that some experience has
been derived as to the effect of the new Vaccination Act, the three
essential conditions of which are domiciliary as opposed to stational
vaccination, the use of glycerinated calf-lymph as opposed to arm-toarm
vaccination, and the provision of means for avoiding prosecution
for failure to secure vaccination in individual cases under the "conscientious
objector "clause. We cannot here discuss all the details