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the doctors in attendance do not like to have the patient removed to hospital
until the diagnosis has been confirmed or otherwise by bacteriological examination.
If there is a reasonable suspicion that the case is one of diphtheria,
an injection of anti-toxin should be given at once. The Council therefore,
with the sanction of the Local Government Board agreed to supply anti-toxin
serum free of charge to the poorer inhabitants of the Borough on the application
of medical practitioners. Tubes containing 500 c.c. of the serum,
prepared by the Lister Institute, were accordingly obtained, and information
of these arrangements was sent to all the medical practitioners practising in
the Borough. Only four such tubes were asked for during the year.
ENTERIC FEVER
Although below the average for the preceding decennlum, enteric fever
was rather more prevalent than during the preceding two years. There were,
excluding duplicates, 25 notifications in comparison with 14 the previous year.
12 belonged to St. Giles and Bloomsbury, and 13 to Holborn District. All
but three of the cases were removed to hospital.
Of the 25 cases two were afterwards returned as not suffering from enteric
fever. Of the remainder, four were nurses who had been attending patients
suffering from the disease; four were certainly not contracted in the Borough,
and four were probably contracted from the eating of oysters, cockles or
mussels.
CEREBRO-SPINAL FEVER.
Epidemic Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis.
No case was notified during the year.
MEASLES.
Measles was again much less prevalent than it was in the year 1906. We
received information of only 86 cases in comparison with 370 in 1906. The
schools principally affected were St. Martin, St. Giles, Tower Street, Christ
Church and Princeton Street.
Of the 86 cases, 77 were children attending school, and of the remaining
nine, four were traced to school infection. In only 10 cases was there no doctor
in attendance. Seventy-five cases occurred in tenements of only one or two
rooms. There were only 10 deaths in comparison with a decennial average
of 28. Of these, four belonged to St. Giles and Bloomstiury and six to the
Holborn District.