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41
Under the Public Health (Tuberculosis) Regulations of 1908 it
is required that any person) who is diagnosed as suffering from pulmonary
tuberculosis and who is now in receipt of, or compelled for
various reasons to seek, any form of Poor-law medical relief, has to be
notified to the medical officer of health of the district within 48 hours.
The notifications have to be made by medical officers of poor-law
institutions, district medical officers, superintending officers of poor-law
institutions, and, as to changes of address, by relieving officers.
Nothing in the regulations authorises the medical officer of health,
directly or indirectly, to put in force, with respect to any poor person
in relation to whom a notification has been received, any enactment
which renders the poor person, or a person in charge of the poor
person, liable to a penalty or subjects him "to any restriction, prohibition,
or disability affecting himself or his employment, occupation,
means of livelihood, or residence, on the ground of his suffering
from pulmonary tuberculosis." Another section of the article which
contains this provision confers upon a local authority (subject, of
course, to the foregoing proviso) power to take all such measures
or to do all such things as are authorised in any case of infectious
disease, by any enactment relating to the public health having reference
to the destruction and disinfection of infected articles or the cleansing
or disinfecting of premises. Certain other powers, as affording
assistance (in the form of appliance, apparatus or utensil), to persons
suffering from this disease, are also conferred.
Judging from the deaths from Consumption, which numbered 44,
there must have been some 200 sufferers from the disease in the
Borough during the year, and of those only 19 were notified under
the voluntary system.
Of 28 cases in respect of whom it was possible to obtain full
particulars, in only 6 cases (21 per cent.) was there a history of consumption
in the parents or grandparents of the patients, whereas in
9 cases (32 per cent.) other brothers and sisters had suffered from the