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38
Medical Officers of Health Annual Report.
Careful examination of the houses in which the patients
lived was made, and in only 26 of them was any serious
sanitary defect discovered. It is impossible to doubt that
direct infection plays a preponderating part in the spread
of Diphtheria, and this has been illustrated in several instances
during the year. The spreading by direct infection
probably occurs, apart from infecting their own homes, either
at schools or in the streets when children are playing together,
and in both ways it has evidently spread in Clapham.
Thus, from February 15th to March 20th, there occurred
10 cases of Diphtheria among infants attending the Wirtemberg
Street Board School, who were in contact with each
other at school, being in the same class-room, and playing
together in the play ground, but whose homes were in
different streets. There resulted from these cases other
secondary ones in the infected houses. Probably some
child with sore throat of a diphtheritic nature, but unsuspected,
had been attending school and so started this
epidemic, but it was not possible without examining the
throats of all the children in the class room to be certain
of this. Another instance occurred in the Haselrigge
Road Board School, where at the end of September several
boys sitting near each other in a large room, were notified
within a few days as suffering from Diphtheria, the homes
of some of them not being in the parish.
In the months of September and October, and to a less
extent in November, there were a considerable number
of cases, 45 altogether, notified in Courland Grove, Union
Grove and the streets adjacent to them. It was not possible
to point to any school or part of a school that
appeared to be specially spreading infection, children taken
ill having been attending all the elementary schools in the
neighbourhood, viz., Gaskell Street and New Road Board
Schools, and the St. John's and Christ Church Parochial
Schools. The particular district is fairly densely populated,