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642
The considerations determining any limitations should be: (a) the
risks to other members of the family if the sufferer is not isolated
in hospital, when satisfactory home isolation is impossible;
(b) the state of the patient and severity of attack; (c) the industrial
and wage-earning circumstances of the family, and the possibility
of work being stopped or curtailed in respect of one or other member
of the family if the patient is nursed at home.
DIPHTHERIA.
The notified cases of Diphtheria during 1926, were
above those of the preceding year. They furnished a case-rate
of 1.6 per 1,000 of the population, as against a case-rate of 1.31
for England and Wales generally. The deaths from this disease
numbered 4, and the death-rate was 0.09. During the past 20 years
some very real advances have been made in medical knowledge
upon how to prevent secondary infection from occurring in the
homes of primary sufferers, and of how to reduce, in great measure,
the risk of death among those attacked. Were these two measures
applied early whenever the disease makes its appearance, thousands
of children could be protected from infection and many others saved
from death yearly in Great Britain; but both forms of protection
involve the use of a vaccine, and there is still much prejudice among
the masses against inoculations. The anti-toxine which reduces
the virulence of the attack is very generally employed, and with
strikingly good results; but the preparation which protects
against infection is seldom administered to those at risk who
can be proved by tests to be susceptible to the infection.
ENTERIC FEVER.
The prevalence of this disease is on the decline in England and
Wales generally. The case-rate for Stoke Newington for 1926 was
only 0.11 per 1,000 of the population, and that for England and
Wales was 0.07. There were no deaths from this disease.
PUERPERAL FEVER.
This disease furnished a case-rate for Stoke Newington
for 1926, of 0.15 per 1,000, as compared with 0.07 for