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27
Traders are co-operative and are willing to give effect
to the suggestions pat forward by the Council's officers.
There was no outbreak of disease during the year
attributable to ice cream sold in the borough.
FOOD POISONING
Under Section 17 of the Pood and Drugs Act, 1938, any
medical practititioner, on becoming aware that a person is
suffering, or is suspected to be suffering, from food
poisoning must notify the Medical Officer of Health.

In the one outbreak involving five cases, the patients
were all members of the same family. They suffered from
similar symptoms of pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, thirst and
fever. Diarrhoea persisted intermittently for about a week,
but the other symptoms disappeared after 12 hours from onset.
Investigations showed that all the five patients had
partaken of an early evening meal at home consisting of
soup, cold tongue, potatoes and runner beans. They had
subsequently fallen ill, the times of onset varying from 1½
to 4½ hours after the meal. None of the food was left over
which could have been submitted to examination and,
unfortunately, the patients themselves refused to co-operate
by providing specimens for laboratory examination.
Prom such evidence as could be obtained, it was thought
that the tongue, which had been cooked the previous day and
kept in an unsuitable food larder, might have given rise to
this outbreak. The tongue was one of a consignment of
about 12, all of which had been sold from a Kensington shop.
No other cases of illness were reported in this connection.
The following table shows an analysis of the 28
notifications of individual cases, setting out the nature of
the food suspected or proved to have "been at fault.