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64
Annual Report of the London County Council, 1910.
Cerebrospinal Fever.
During 1910, 115 persons were certified to be suffering from cerebro-spinal fever and 10 deaths
were attributed to this disease.
The number of deaths in each year since 1901. has been as follows :—
Deaths.(a) Deaths, (a)
1902 4 1907 25
1903 6 1908 12
1904 6 1909 15
1905 5 1910 10
1906 4
As stated in the last annual report, the larger number of deaths attributed to this cause in 1907
was probably an indirect effect of the Council making an Order requiring cases of this disease to be
notified. The requirement of notification did not become operative until the 12th of March, 1907,
and during the remainder of that year 135 cases were notified, or 50 more than in the whole of the year
1908. In 1909 there were 111 notified cases, and 115 in 1910. In March, 1910, the Council
extended the Order for another period of twelve months.

Seven of the deaths were those of infants under one year of age, one that of a child aged
between one and five years, and the remaining two those of persons over five years of age. The notified
cases occurred in every district of London except Chelsea.
Inquiry was made into the notified cases by Dr. Wanklyn, who states that nothing was discovered
which threw light on the causation of this disease; in no single instance was there evidence
that any one verified case had any connection with another. Moreover, he reports that of the cases
originally certified, in only forty did the final diagnosis agree with that originally made, and of these
forty" no bacteriological or post mortem examination was made in twelve cases, and in another
thirteen cases the disease was specified as post-basic meningitis, which is regarded as a sub-acute
form of cerebro-spinal fever. Thus only fifteen cases remain out of a total of 115 in which the acute
form as originally diagnosed, was confirmed bacteriologically."
Anthrax.
On the 6th April, 1909, the Council made an Order requiring the notification of cases of
glanders, anthrax and hydrophobia in man; the Order came into force on the 26th April.
Six notifications were received by medical officers of health relating to persons who were believed
to be suffering from anthrax. In respect of three of these persons the diagnosis was erroneous.
Three other cases which were not notified also became known to the medical officers of health.
The six actual cases which occurred were as follows:—
Hammersmith.—J. R. G., aged 19 years, was employed in the business of animal hair
sorter.
Poplar.—Male, aged 42 years, had been working in a ship at a time when hides were
being loaded.
Betlinal Green.—H. P., a checking clerk at some river-side premises, where he had been
inspecting some foreign hides.
Soutliwark.—A. C., aged 19 years, living in Southwark, but employed as a riverside
labourer in Bermondsey. He had been engaged in unloading foreign hides.
Finsbury.—A man in the employ of a horse-hair manufacturer. He had been handling
English and South American hair.
Bermondsey.—C. L., a wharf labourer, living in Barking, who had been employed in
handling Cape sheep skins in Bermondsey.
None of these cases proved fatal. *
Glanders.
One person was certified to be suffering from glanders, but the diagnosis was subsequently not
confirmed.
A report by Drs. J. M. Bernstein and W. H. Hamer on human glanders in London during the
period 1893-1910 will be found in Chapter XXXII., page 109.
(a) See footnote (b), page 41.