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44
Phthisis communicated from husband to wife and vice-versa; but all
my cases have hitherto been among the very poor where even
elementary sanitation was impossible. In the history both
patients had lived throughout in large ventilated rooms, with the best
of food, and careful attention to disinfection; nor was there on either
side, so far as I have been able to discover, any inherited predisposition
to tubercular trouble."
"I could give many more particulars of both illnesses but I
doubt whether they would add anything to the impressiveness of the
main facts as proving the infectiousness of the disease and the
difficulty of treating it and preventing its spread with the means at
present available."
On February 9th, 1909, I received a further letter from Dr.
Muirhead :—
" Mrs. is now in the Tottenham Workhouse Infirmary.
I could arrange nothing outside for her either in the way of medical
attendance or nursing, and for some three months with little of either
she was literally starved into the Union. Had the case been properly
dealt with when suspicion of its nature was first aroused there can be
no doubt at all that the result would have been very different."
Judging from the deaths from Consumption, which numbered 56,
there must have been some 250 sufferers from the disease in the
Borough during the year, and of those only 17 were notified under
the voluntary system.
Of the cases voluntarily notified in Stoke Newington during the
year, in 4 (or about 23.5 per cent.) there was no family history of the
disease. In 6 (or about 35 per cent.) one of the parents was consumptive;
and in 2 cases, although parents and grandparents provided
no history of infection, aunts or uncles had suffered. Brothers
or sisters had suffered in 6 cases.