View report page

36
further cases resulted. Several suspected cases of smallpox were, also,
reported, but, on being visited by the Medical Officer of Health, were
found not to be suffering from the disease suspected.
Scarlet Fever.
Scarlet fever is always present, and the reason for this is the
mildness of some of the cases—so mild, indeed, in clinical symptoms,
as not to need, in the opinion of parents and relations, the services of
a medical man. The case mortality is very small—0.5 per cent (4
deaths out of 743 cases notified). This mildness of type and smallness
of case.mortality may be the result of the systematic removals of
patients to hospitals for isolation and treatment therein; or, of course,
it may be simply epidemiological or cyclical in its manifestations, the
result of epidemic waves of mildness or virulence over long periods or
intervals. Whichever explanation be correct, sanitary authorities will
be inclined to adopt the former view and to attribute the lessened
inoidence and virulence of the disease on the populations as due to the
moneys expended in the past in isolation and treatment hospitals for
scarlet fever patients.
The statistics for Lambeth for many years past (Parish and
Borough), in so far as scarlet fever is concerned, may, therefore, with
advantage, be put on record, more especially in view of the decision of
the Metropolitan Asylums Board to pay more attention in future to the
isolation and treatment in hospitals of more measles (and whooping
cough) patients than hithertofore in place of scarlet fever patients.
The experiment is noteworthy and will be watched with interest.
These scarlet fever statistics deal with a total of 33,908 cases and
737 deaths spread over a term of 32 years.