London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
St Pancras 1922
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras, Metropolitan Borough]
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In the following table are set out the corresponding figures for the past 10 years, corrected for errors of diagnosis :—
| Year. | No. of Notifications. | Notification rate per 1,000 Population. | No. of Deaths. | Death Rate per 1,000 Population. | Case Mortality per cent. | Percentage of Cases removed to Hospital. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
It will be seen from the table that the wave of increased prevalence reached its maximum
at a time which has caused the figures for 1922 to be less than those for 1921. The number
of deaths and the case mortality rate were much higher than in 1921 (c.p. 1915, when the last
wave of prevalence was subsiding).
Of the notified cases of scarlet fever, 1,143 (or 98.9 per cent) were removed to hospital,
as follows:—
To Metropolitan Asylums Board hospitals 1,138
To other hospitals 5
1,143
(Other statistical facts will be found on pages 33 to 35.)
Return cases.—(Definition : A case of scarlet fever occurring within 28 days of the return
from hospital to the same house of a previous case of scarlet fever.)
Such return cases occurred in 53 houses in 1922. In43 instances onlv one return case occurred
in the house, but in the other 10 instances other cases of scarlet fever followed the occurrence of
the return case : in each of 9 instances there was one such additional case, and in one house
there were 2 additional cases, the total number of return cases being 64. In the following analysis
only the 53 first return cases are considered.
Their distribution according to the month in which they occurred was as follows :— 1921—
| December___ 2 1922— | |||||||
| January | 9 | April | 3 | July | 1 | October | 6 |
| February | 5 | May | 3 | August | 4 | November | 7 |
| March | 6 | June | 0 | September | 4 | December | 3 |
In 44 instances the return case occurred in the family to which the (?) infecting case
returned, and in 9 in a different family in the same house.
In 50 instances only one case had returned from hospital in the 28 days prior to the onset
of illness in the return case, and in each of 3 instances 2 cases had returned from hospital
within that period. The number of possible infecting cases was therefore 56. Of these 22 had