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Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health—1872 — 3. 9
from which they were taken, conseqently, 20 does not include all the deaths which have
happened from fever In the year 1864-5 there died from this disease 128. I have had
occasion to call your notice to cases where, this disease had been carried about by the milkman,
others have since occurred which I will briefly relate. Towards the close of the year
1872, fever appeared in Leeds, in isolated places, and in places where the sanitary condition
was unexceptionable. The cause of this for a while completely baffled discovery. At length
however, it was found, that a milk dealer living in the centre of the town, supplied every
house in which fever was present. But the milk-dealer got his milk from a Farm-house some
distance away, and all within his own house were well. Upon visiting the Farm-house, six
persons were found suffering from the disease, lying in a room adjoining that in which the
milk-cans were kept; and what is more, nursed by the same woman who managed the
dairy. The number attacked were 80, of whom 14 died. A dairyman in Glasgow, had
fever in his house. He supplied 73 families living in five different streets. In these
families 36 cases of fever occurred. In two families thus supplied, two alone used the milk,
and both suffered. This evidence marks the " trail of the milkman " for evil.
In like manner as I brought before you the destructive powers of small-pox when uninterfered
with by vaccination, so I will place before you fever as it rages in localities
where sanitary measures are neglected. In the beginning of the year 1871, fever was
epidemic at Buenos Ayres, the effects of which were similar to those of the plague in London,
only that the mortality was actually higher. It commenced in the low and thickly
peopled districts. It spread rapidly and with ever increasing virulence. Through the hot
months of February and March the death list grew longer and more sad, till early in April
the climax was reached, for in one day there were 700 deaths, out of a population (reduced
by flight and death from 200,000) of 70,000. By the middle of April, not more than 30,000
were left in the city: of this number it was calculated that 7,000 were ill of the fever, and
there were still 300 deaths occurring daily. From this time they fell off to 100, and so
decreased. "Shops were closed, and business suspended, in the market places and the
exchange formerly filled with noise and bustle, now was nothing but silence and desolation.
The streets but lately so full of busy life, were hushed and deserted, traversed only occasionally
by a gloomy dead cart, by some poor family hastily flying at the last moment from
the influence of the deadly foe, by a few forms pale and haggard, on whom the fever had
spent its force, but failed in its work of death, by one or two bold and still unharmed men
hurrying hither and thither to administer what aid they could to the suffering and the dying."
This city of 200,000 souls was without a drain. Cesspools were dug in the courtyard
of every house, through the soil until water appeared, the depth of which averaged about
26 feet. This filled, another was dug close by, and so the process went on. The dry
nature of the soil and of the air keeping at bay disease. The water was drawn from wells
nto which the cesspools drained (A. D. Carlisle, B.A). Means more fitted to bring about
these terrible results could not have been adopted. The mere money loss from this epidemic,
would have built a city of marble, and with such sanitary appliances, as the world must
wait long centuries to see.
Brain and nerve diseases, contrary to general opinion, have for several years been upon
the decrease. The deaths were 20 less than in the former year.