Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras, London, Borough of]
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(5). No provisions contained in any general or local Act of Parliament
relating to infectious disease shall apply to Tuberculosis of the Lung or
proceedings relating thereto under this section.
(6). All expenses incurred by the Corporation in carrying into effect the
provisions of this section shall be chargeable on the District Fund and
General District Rate.
(7). The Corporation shall cause to be given public notice of the effect of
the provisions of this section by advertisement in the local newspapers and by
handbills and shall give formal notice thereof by registered post to every
medical practitioner in the City and any other registered medical practitioner
known to be in practice in the City and otherwise in such manner as the
Corporation think sufficient and this section shall come into operation at such
time not being less than one month afier the first publication of such an
advertisement as aforesaid as the Corporation may tix.
(8). The provisions of this section shall cease to be in force within the City
at the expiration of seven years from the date of the passing of this Act unless
they shall have been continued by Act of Parliament, or by Provisional Order
made by the Local Government, Board and confirmed by Parliament which
Order the Local Government Board are hereby empowered to make in
accordance with the provisions of the Public Health Act, 1875.
(9). The lerm "Medical Officer of Health," in this section shall mean the
Medical Officer of Health for the time being of the City or any person
duly authorised to act temporarily as Medical Officer of Health for the
City.
tuberculosis and laundry workers.
Professor L. Landouzy has examined 1,590 laundry employes treated at the
Laennec Hospital, this class forming fully 6 per cent, of the 23, '49 inmates of
the hospital between 1900 and 1904 (Presse Mcdica/c, Nos. 79-80, Oct. 4-(i).
More than a third of the 1,202 women and more than a half of the 388 men
were affected with pulmonary tuberculosis, generally of the acute form. Surgical
tuberculous lesions were rare among them. Laundry employes, as a rule, are
young and strong, but they become infected from breathing the dried sputa
from handkerchiefs, napkins, and bed linen. .All these articles arc sorted out,
pell-mell, and the employes live and breathe in an atmosphere full of bacillus
dust. This professional tuberculosis of laundry workers may entail endemic
tuberculosis. Sanitary certificates should be insisted on for every house, and
they should state the profession of its inmates or late residents. If they
include a laundry worker, the house should be mistrusted until disinfected.
Tuberculosis among laundry workers is avoidable, and education of the public
will certainly reduce its proportions. When the fear of contagion is once
implanted, protective measures will become mere ordinary reHex actions. The
task of educating the public belongs to physicians. They must make families
understand that they have duties to perform, and chief among them is the
obligation to render harmless the virulent expectorated matters, and to take care
•of soiled linen differently from the present customs. Laundry workers should
be protected by sanitary regu a ions, enforced by public authority if need be.—
>(Public Health, December, 1905, p. 163.)