Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Hanover Square, The Vestry of the Parish of Saint George]
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distributed, and the Hanover and May-fair have suffered out
of proportion to the Belgrave Sub-Districts.
The deaths from measles were confined to the Belgrave
Sub-District, where there were four. One of the patients
had chicken-pox as well. One single case appears in the
death or sickness rolls of the Hanover and May-fair for this
quarter. These diseases come in great waves, and then
vanish. At the moment of writing (May 1865) the latter
Sub-Districts are full of measles.
The deaths from scarlatina were 17, with which we
group 10 from diphtheria and 8 from croup (although the last
seems to belong to a different order of disease,—a severe
inflammation of the windpipe produced by cold, affecting
young children almost exclusively, and not contagious;
whereas diphtheria seems produced by some definite poison,
affects persons of any age, is contagious, and may begin
anywhere in the throat, not the windpipe; still, in some cases,
it is difficult to decide between the two). Of the scarlatina,
1 death occurred in Oxford-street, 1 in Hertford-place, Mayfair,
1 (complicated with diphtheria) at No. — Brick-street,
an old thickly inhabited house, which, with all care, we never
can keep free from disease. Thirteen cases were distributed
over Colchester and Rutland-streets, Belgrave-terrace, Lower
Belgrave-place, Wilton-place, and Pembroke-place. There
were 2 in one house in Ebury-square, 2 in Pembroke-mews,
3 in Hindon-street, one of these last complicatedwith mumps.
Of the diphtheria, deaths occurred in Lower Brook-street,
also in some very clean stables in Market-street, in Chapelstreet,
in Lancashire-court and John's-court; also in Cornwall,
Coleshill and Caroline-streets and Ranelagh-road.
Whooping-cough destroyed 16 children, pretty evenly distributed
all over the parish; but this of all other diseases is
the one of which we know least, and can interfere with
least.