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plaints of persons aggrieved, or in consequence of observations
made whilst inspecting various localities. In the next
place there are the enquiries made because the Medical Officers
of Health, from learning the existence of sickness, are led to
infer the existence likewise of some conditions which make
that sickness more intense than it would be otherwise.
Grosvenor Mews, No. 10. This is a house, which, from
its crowded state and the imperfect nature of its drainage,
requires constant observation. A population of 12 families,
comprising between 50 and 60 persons in one house, cannot
be maintained in health without scrupulous care; and on the
outbreak of epidemic disease, such a house is liable to furnish
one or more victims. Besides, there is scarcely a family
inhabiting a single room in the parish that does not occasionally
take in a servant out of place as a lodger; hence,
infection may be carried into the families of the richer
classes. Moreover, common sense and experience alike show,
that if three or four people live night and day, and wash
and cook in a single room, that their bedding, as well as the
walls and ceilings, become impregnated with effluvia, and
that fever once introduced will remain till it has affected
every person susceptible of it.
In the case before us, the peculiar form of infectious disease
which we had to deal with, was scarlet fever, and few
persons who have not had practical experience can form an
idea of the number of mischiefs that may ensue from this
one cause. The patients actually attacked have their lives
endangered; and even when they recover from the fever
they are liable to dropsy and other diseases which follow in
its train, and perhaps may have their whole blood poisoned
and suffer from glandular swellings and scrofula. Besides,
persons who do not suffer from the fever in its fully developed
form, are liable to all kinds of feverish attacks and sore
throats.