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39
which usual precautions against spread of disease failed to get
observed. The various laches of the father, who was manager
of a branch business belonging to a dairy company, were duly
reported to the County Council, the local authority under the
Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, 1878,and the Dairies Order,
who, much to the dissatisfaction of the Sanitary Committee,
simply reprimanded the offender, and threatened condign proceedings
in the case of a repetition of the offence. Sanitary
defects were found at the school in the infants' latrines, and
steps were forthwith taken to abolish the nuisance.
MISTAKEN DIAGNOSIS: DIPHTHERIA AND
ENTERIC FEVER.
In many cases diphtheria and enteric fever are "notified" in
error, the diagnosis proving to be incorrect. Large numbers of
such cases are admitted to the hospitals of the Asylums Board,
and detained, for a longer or shorter time, with what would
naturally be thought a serious risk of catching the diseases
from which on admission they were erroneously supposed to be
suffering. Happily this risk proves, in practice, to be a
smaller one than might have been expected, for it appears that
of 1,202 cases wrongly diagnosed as diphtheria, and admitted
to the various hospitals of the Asylums Board, during the
years 1895 and 1896, only 26 contracted diphtheria, and in
only one such instance "was death strictly due to diphtheria,"
although the average stay in hospital varied from 16 to 31 days
at the different institutions. With regard to enteric (or
typhoid) fever, during the same two years 425 cases were
wrongly diagnosed and admitted. The average stay in
hospital ranged at the different institutions from 17.3 days to
27.7 days, and yet only one patient subsequently contracted
the disease, which did not prove fatal. These interesting
statistics were elicited as the result of an inquiry, directed by
the Managers to be made by the General Purposes Committee,
" into the facts connected with the admission into the
hospitals of a large percentage of patients certified