London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Kensington 1896

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Kensington Parish]

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160
weeks' stay in Paris being defrayed by a voluntary subscription
contributed mainly by the members of your Vestry.
Not long previously another man who also had been bitten in
the face, by another dog undoubtedly rabid, was sent to the
Institute by the owner of the dog. Both of these men
returned home apparently well, and they are still well after the
interval of more than a year.
The question of rabies received attention as a matter of
''urgency" at the meeting of your Vestry held on 29th January,
in order to consider a special report of the Sanitary Committee,
as follows:—
'Your Committee have to report that their attention has been
called to the prevalence of rabies in dogs in many parts of the Administrative
County of London, and to the lamentable fact that two men in
this Parish have recently been bitten by rabid dogs. These men have
been, sent to the Pasteur Institute at Paris, and it may be hoped that
by the preventive treatment carried on there, they will be preserved
from hydrophobia, although the cases cannot be regarded without
anxiety, seeing that in both the bites were inflicted upon the face.
Under these circumstances, your Committee beg to recommend that the
County Council and the Commissioners of Sewers, as the Local
Authorities for London under the provisions of the Diseases of Animals
Act, 1804, be urged to make a Regulation under Article 10 of the
Rabies Order of 1895, of the Board of Agriculture. "For providing for
the muzzling of dogs while in or on any public places . . . . and
for providing for the seizure, detention and disposal, including slaughter,
of dogs not muzzled." Such regulation should be made to apply
to the whole of the Administrative County of London.
'It may be mentioned that Article 2 of the above-named Order
enables a Local Authority to "cause all stray dogs found within their
district to be seized,'' and prescribes the mode in which such dogs so
seized shall be dealt with. This power also the Local Authorities
should be urged to exercise forthwith. How necessary it is, may be
* Having regard to the severity of the injuries, and to the fact that the
bites were on the face, the man was injected with the anti-rabid solution four
times a day for the first three days, and twice daily in the next five days.
The injection was then given once daily for thirteen days, 35 injections in
all being administered in three weeks. The wounds healed in the course of
this time, leaving, of course, scars.