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tabes mesenterica, bowels—and make it the duty of the medical
officer of health to visit the home and enquire into the surroundings,
business or otherwise, and unless the patient could be retained in the
community with safety to it then he should be removed to some
centralised place, working possibly, provided by the State free of cost.
If an earnest effort is to be made to eradicate consumption this
should be done, a bye-issue would I think occur in the shape of injudicious
marriages, and that alone would diminish the cases. I am
assuming that as before shown the knowledge that consumption is not
hereditary is general, but the knowledge that consumption clings to
places rather than individuals is not so general; therefore good might
be done by imparting the knowledge that the disease germ is held by
places and advice and aid given to prevent such retention.
To conclude this question, I say that sanitary authorities might do
good on the lines shown if it had institutions of the most special kind
at command.
Panic must not possess us nor must apathy or unbelief, and everything
of a special kind will be required Special notification, special
investigation, special accommodation, special treatment—in short,
much as I dislike the terms "leper" and "pariah from society," if
consumption is to be exterminated from our islands, consumptives
must be looked upon as lepers and treated as pariahs from society,
and this I do not recommend.
For over three months there was, for the third time, a stoppage of
the constant service of the East London Water Works
Company. The year was one of unexampled drought,
and this is alleged by the Company to have been the
main cause of the deplorable occurrence. Immediate steps were
taken by your Board to minimise the ill effects of this stoppage, and
the members of the sanitary staff spared neither pains, time nor effort
to cope with the difficulty. I need not refer in detail to the steps
that were taken, but I think that what was done in this district was
THE WATER
SUPPLY