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54
TUBERCULOSIS.
TUBERCULOSIS.
Notification.
In December, 1912, a new Order [" The Public Health (Tuberculosis) Regulations, 1912]
was issued by the Local Government Board under the provisions of Section 130 of the Public
Health Act, 1875, as amended by the Public Health Act, 1896. The new Order codified the
provisions of the three earlier Orders and repealed those Orders. The principal amendment
introduced by the Order of 1912 was the extension of notification to all forms of tuberculosis
other than the pulmonary. Since February 1st, 1913, every case of tuberculosis has been subject
to notification.
The certificates received during the past year numbered 1,967, of which 656 had to be
forwarded to the medical officers of health of other districts in which the patients resided. The
actual number of certificates belonging to the Borough numbered 1,311. In 1912—the first
year of complete notification of pulmonary tuberculosis—the certificates received (belonging to
the Borough) numbered 1,362, so that although there was during eleven months of the past year
a more extended field of notification, the number of certificates received was actually fewer by 5L
The reduction can be explained partly by the limitation to repeated notification imposed by the
new Order, and partly by the fact that of the stock of old (pulmonary) cases of the disease
having been exhausted by notification in the earlier years. It is to be presumed that the
notifications in the current and future years will approximately represent cases of tuberculosis
coming under treatment for the first time.
The new cases—perhaps, more correctly described as cases reported to the Department for
the first time—numbered 836 last year, viz., 664 of pulmonary tuberculosis and 172 of all other
forms of the disease. In 1912 838 cases of pulmonary tuberculosis were reported for the first
time, showing a decrease of 174 cases in the record of the past year.* Table 36 shows the
sources from which the notifications received during the year were drawn. The largest number
of new cases (380, 45.4 per cent.) were reported by private medical practitioners, the number
reported by the Staff of the Paddington Tuberculosis Dispensary t (172, 20.5 per cent.) coming
next. Attention may be directed to reports by the School Medical Inspectors for which special
provision was made in the last Order. The importance of recognizing the presence of
tuberculosis in young children cannot be over-estimated, both from the point of view of the
children themselves and of that of the prevention of the disease generally.
Of the new patients reported during the year, 13 (10 males and 3 females) could not be
allocated to any of the Wards of the Borough, and 8 (all males) were frequenters of common
lodging-houses. The distribution of the remaining cases (distinguishing the sexes) is shown
below. In nearly all the Wards the morbidity rates were lower last year than in 1912, in spite
of the wider range of notification.

* The 838 new cases reported in 1912 included 57 previously reported as "suspect," while the 664 reported in
1913 included 24 such cases.
† In addition to the 172 "definite" cases certified by the Staff of the Dispensary, information was received
of 203 new patients " suspected " to be tuberculous. (See Table 37.)