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26
Medical Officers of Health Annual Report.
to the Board's hospitals during the past two years have
contracted infection from patients previously discharged
therefrom That there is reason to believe that of the
so-called "return" cases some have been due to the reiutroduction
of infection into households owing to the
disturbance of insufficiently disinfected clothes, &c., left
at home and stored away during the patient's stay in
hospital."
This, obviously, is only a partial answer to the allegation,
as it is not asserted that all the "return" cases
are removed to hospital. There have been some very
suspicious cases in this district of discharges from the
nose, &c., in patients returning from hospital, followed
by a renewed outbreak, where every care has been taken
in the disinfection. It is, however, undoubtedly a very
difficult matter to tell when exactly infection has absolutely
ceased in any given patient, and medical opinion
is by no means unanimous on the subject. The methods
adopted at the various hospitals to prevent the discharge
of a patient in an infectious condition appear to be all
that are needed, and probably some few such cases are
quite unavoidable.
Water Supply.
We append a table extracted from the
annual report of Professor Frankland, giving the average
of the monthly examinations made by him of the chemical
and bacterial condition of the water supplied to this district
by the Southwark and Vauxhall and Lambeth Companies.
From this it is seen that chemically the water
was generally satisfactory, and that a large number of
microbes are removed by filtration. Professor Frankland
asserts that the hygienic objection to the use of Thames
water is removed by filtration through sand, if efficient ;
but he states, in reference to the Southwark and Vauxhall
Company, that there were several instances in which
effective bacterial filtration was not obtained. He says—
"Thus, No. 8 filter only delivered two satisfactory sam-