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became infected, it is tolerably clear from the enquiries I have instituted that
she received the morbid poison which generates the disease during her visit
in the City Road, and probably at the same time and in the same manner as
her cousin that recovered ; that she brought it home with her and infected her
sister and mother. A servant in the house where the cousin resided also took
the disease and died. Mr. King of East Road, Hoxton, who attended the
cousin and the servant, informs me that there has been a large number of
cases of this disease in that immediate neighbourhood. A fourth death of a
child aged 5 years, the son of a commercial clerk, occurred in Hawthorn Street;
another child of the same family subsequently had a mild attack, and on my
visiting the house on June 2nd I found another of the children suffering from
sore throat. The fifth death was of a female aged 39 years, the wife of a
chemist who resided in Arlington Square. It ought to be known that caution
should be exercised in communicating with persons suffering, during the
prevalence of this epidemic, from any attack of sore throat, and when
the characteristic features of diphtheria are recognized, the patient should be at
once separated from the rest of the family, with as much care as if he were
labouring under scarlet fever. One of the deaths from typhus occurred in
Myrtle Street, Highbury Vale. Every death from fever that occurs in this
row of houses is another imperative call to cover in the Hackney Brook Sewer.
We shall some day be able to count the cost, in lixes, of the delays in adopting
a scheme for the main drainage of London.
Six hundred and sixty persons applied for Parochial Medical Relief during
the four weeks ending May 27th. This is about the average sickness of May
in the last two years. Ninety-five of these were cases of zymotic disease. The
general sickness and the zymotic sickness then have both been less than in
April. In May, last year, 110 cases of diseases of this class were entered.
Measles, scarlatina, and hooping cough, have all been unusually prevalent, but
cases of diarrhcea have been less abundant. The acute attacks of disease of
the organs of respiration have not materially lessened in number, and have
formed a larger proportion of all the cases applying for relief than they
did in May, last year.
EDWARD BALLARD, M.D.,
Medical Officer of Health.
42, Myddelton Square,
June 3rd, 1858.